Two questions relating to Resurge Goa and Dew Drop Inn (Leslie de Noronha)

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Selma Cardoso

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Jun 25, 2018, 9:14:39 AM6/25/18
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Dear members,

Can someone confirm that Resurge Goa was founded by Telo de Mascarenhas, and if anyone can shed light on Telo's relationship with T. B. Cunha (which having read Resurge Goa seems confrontational.)

Re Leslie de Noronha's Dew Drop Inn opened the discourse on gay characters. Is there any substantiated statement about Noronha's own sexual inclination. I remember statements being made but I can't seem to find any hard evidence.

PS: In now way do I intend to use this information in a negative light.

Best,
selma

Nazareth, Peter

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Jun 25, 2018, 10:43:34 AM6/25/18
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Selma,

I am not sure my message came through so I am writing it again.

When I started working on the Goan anthology for Michigan State University, I came across Leslie de Noronha's novel "The Mango and the Tamarind Tree" in the University of Iowa Library. 

I read the novel, thought it was good, and taught it in a new class on Third World Literature.  I think this was in 1983.

Around that time, Professor Darwin Turner, Chair of the Afro-American World Studies Program, assigned Joseph Henry as a research assistant to work with me.  I asked Joe to read Leslie's novel and write a report on it.  Joe wrote the report and recommended publication.  In writing the report, he communicated with Leslie, who was in Bombay.  Joe showed me a letter he received from Leslie which ended with a By the Way that he was gay.

Much later I received a copy of The Drew Drop Inn, perhaps from Leslie, and wrote a review for World Literature Today.  As you know, the protagonist of the first novel, who was torn apart by his mother from the woman he wanted to marry, in the sequel is gay and there is a gay scene in Bombay.

Best.

Peter

Peter



From: Nazareth, Peter
Sent: Monday, June 25, 2018 8:45 AM
To: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [GOABOOKCLUB] Two questions relating to Resurge Goa and Dew Drop Inn (Leslie de Noronha)
 




From: 'Selma Cardoso' via The Goa Book Club <goa-bo...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2018 1:34 PM
To: The Third Thursday Goa Book Club
Subject: [GOABOOKCLUB] Two questions relating to Resurge Goa and Dew Drop Inn (Leslie de Noronha)
 
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sandra lobo

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Jun 25, 2018, 12:31:34 PM6/25/18
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Sandra Ataíde Lobo


CHAM – Centro de Humanidades, FCSH/NOVA-UAC

https://giepcip.wordpress.com/

tmn. +351919214170

Dear Selma,

To which of the phases of Ressurge Goa are you referring to? Both are, of course, of the responsibility of Telo Mascarenhas.
best wishes,
Sandra




 

Selma Cardoso

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Jun 25, 2018, 12:31:34 PM6/25/18
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Thank you Peter. Yes, it's always understood that Noronha's sexual orientation was homosexual. I want to write that Noronha having published Dew Drop Inn in 1994, could not be open about his sexual orientation and that we've come a long way from that today, in advancing the cause of Goan LGBTQ writing (a piece was published in the Joao Roque Literary Journal). Only I don't know if Noronha himself admitted anywhere that he was homosexual.

Was the character in Dew Drop Inn openly gay or obliquely gay?

Best,
selma

Augusto Pinto

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Jun 25, 2018, 12:31:34 PM6/25/18
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On 25-Jun-2018, at 12:04 AM, 'Selma Cardoso' via The Goa Book Club <goa-bo...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Dear members,

...




Re Leslie de Noronha's Dew Drop Inn opened the discourse on gay characters. Is there any substantiated statement about Noronha's own sexual inclination. I remember statements being made but I can't seem to find any hard evidence.

Dear Selma,

As far as I can recall the only person who might have known Leslie de Noronha personally is Eugene Correia  and he mainly pointed out to Noronha’s work as a doctor and again  if I recall correctly, Eugene wrote about Noronha’s writing in The Examiner but I don’t recall him writing about Noronha’s sexual preferences.

If anyone can be accused of referring to Noronha’s sexual preferences (without any malicious intent) on GBC then it is I, it is I, it is I.

Let me straight away plead guilty that I have not a shred of evidence that Noronha was gay. So what made me so sure that he was a homosexual. 

The answer is that as an experienced reader in certain domains I can read things quite confidently based simply on the author’s writing. For instance if someone places a piece of writing before me about themes like education in Goa or politics in Goa from the 60s onward (or even in other eras) this experienced reader would be able to make some quite accurate judgments about it. That’s why when The Great Forwarder started brainlessly sending in matter about Asif Currimbhoy’s Goa it got on my nerves.

Anyway my reading of The Dew Drop Inn and The Mango and the Tamarind Tree offer clues that say that either the author was most probably gay or (rather unlikely) had done some huge amounts of research on the gay scene in elite India during a time when this was quite unlikely.

It’ll take me too long to quote from Noronha’s prose work to illustrate my point but I’m going to quote bits from the first poem from The Prism of Twilight to illustrate what I am saying.

Lilac

Tender days shimmering on the wisteria of memory.

Green, gold, orange, yellow;
Gulmohar, laburnum in full bloom.
Young voices, sandals, tanned bodies.
Crimson deckchairs, bougainvillea petals on the grass.
The whisper of a sprinkler on the lawn.
Wimbledon. Cilynedebourne. Strawberries. Chablis chilled.
A houseboat in Kashmir. The sun-struck beaches of Goa.

Then summer ends and spring begins.

The swim at high-tide;
The scorching virgin sand, strips of sea-weed,
Fresh green rags of raggedy hope.
The cruel, kindly sun pouring gold,
Unguents that soothe
The smarting burns of conscience,
Erythema of shame, blisters of guilt.

The man in the expensive green monokini 
Thinks of the man who was in his room last night 
And wonders if he will come again.
The naked fisherman, lithe, glistening bronze,
A wasted work of pagan art.
A nude beachboy, muscular and flagrantly inviting,
A crude sketch from a sophisticate’s notebook.

...

Augusto 


PS: In now way doI intend to use this information in a negative light.

Best,
selma

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Cecil Pinto

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Jun 25, 2018, 5:14:05 PM6/25/18
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Dear Augusto,

Are there any more homosexuals writers in Goa or in the Goan diaspora that you can identify with your recently revealed skills?

Can you dispassionately read your own writings and identify your gender identity objectively?

This is a most interesting ability that you have. What about international renowned and classical writers and poets? Is it true, according to the well-read you, that Shakespeare was gay? And Homer?

Is Frederick Noronha gay? Or Selma? If so why don't they get a room instead of airing their petty differences in public?

Cheers!

Cecil
==========


On 25 June 2018 at 20:39, Augusto Pinto <pint...@gmail.com> wrote:


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augusto pinto

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Jun 25, 2018, 5:14:05 PM6/25/18
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On Mon, 25 Jun 2018 at 10:01 PM, 'Selma Cardoso' via The Goa Book Club <goa-bo...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
...Yes, it's always understood that Noronha's sexual orientation was homosexual.

It may have been “always understood” but I don’t recall too many if anyone saying so explicitly although I stand to be corrected on this topic.

I want to write that Noronha having published Dew Drop Inn in 1994, could not be open about his sexual orientation and that we've come a long way from that.

Actually by 1994  there were sufficient examples of gay literature like for instance that of E. M. Forster although in India one could argue that it might have been more risky. But given Leslie de Noronha’s own practice it was not something people were much concerned about.

...Only I don't know if Noronha himself admitted anywhere that he was homosexual.

We walk into the territory of the New Critics here. Does it really matter what autobiographical statements an author makes in connection with the literature s/he writes? 

If I were to suggest for instance that I belonged to the LGBT community would that make you revise all that you thought about what I ever wrote. 

I think that it would be smarter to closely read what a person writes and base one’s assessment on this than to depend upon biographical or autobiographical statements.

Was the character in Dew Drop Inn openly gay or obliquely gay?

Hmm... Are you saying you haven’t read the book? Not a sin but please do so asap if you wish to speak authoritatively on the subject. 

If one doesn’t know this then it would be difficult to state that it was “always understood” that de Noronha was homosexual.

Augusto 

Selma Cardoso

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Jun 25, 2018, 5:14:06 PM6/25/18
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Thank you Augusto for that detailed and explicit response :-) That's why we need you on this forum. I too have read a few of his poems which are certainly explicit. But it is still difficult to infer any intent from creative output. In my own writing, three of my short stories published in anthologies, have bi-sexual characters and I would hate to think that anything other than fiction will be inferred from that.

This is a very tricky situation. Sighs deeply.

Warmly,
selma




Selma Cardoso

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Jun 25, 2018, 5:14:06 PM6/25/18
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Dear Sandra,

Thank you for confirming this. I was hoping you'd be able to shed light on it :-)

The particular issue I need verified for my research purposes is dated 1953. I don't have its month of publication. 

Warmly,
selma


Frederick Noronha

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Jun 25, 2018, 5:58:36 PM6/25/18
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Cecil, 

I have another conspiracy theory which, I claim, is better than yours.... 

Whenever Selma is caught up in some controversy (usually of her own making) on the GBC, she will most innocently raise the is-Leslie-de-Noronha-gay query. Gusto can be trusted to fall for the topic with a lot of gusto (bad pun, sorry). A quick look at the archives says we've been at this since at least 2012, if not earlier. This theory is just conjecture at this stage, of course, till I can get some statistical software to analyse the correlation between these two coincidences. (Hoping to get the open source PSPP rather than SPSS, let's see.)

I'm not sure Augusto is explaining the logic of New Criticism adequately ("Does it really matter what autobiographical statements an author makes in connection with the literature s/he writes? If I were to suggest for instance that I belonged to the LGBT community would that make you revise all that you thought about what I ever wrote." This seems like a particularly lame argument, followed by an extremely inapt example. What if it were the other way around?)

But anyway, there are many issues involved here, as I see it.

I'd prefer to be overcautious here on two grounds. Firstly, de Noronha is not around to give his version. Secondly, sometimes gossip and loose talk can go about in creating versions which are not necessarily true. 

For instance, someone quoted Eugene in this discussion. Since I've self-confessed the "My problem is Eugene.." thingy barely two days ago, let me un-diplomatically state that I do get the impression that Eugene sometimes uses facts loosely. (Of course, everyone who writes, me too, is some time or the other guilty of this, but one needs to be cautious.) I've seen Eugene quote me in some convoluted way on an occasion or two, which is why if he sends me a personal email query, nine out of ten times it's silence now from my end.

Coming back to the point: Eugene has come up with this story: "a relative of my cousin worked for him as his houseboy/cook. He would tell me that Leslie would have many male friends at his place, which incidentally I visited to say hi to the houseboy (now dead) when I was in Bandra (leslie wasn't there)." This sounds more like gossip, if not malicious gossip to me, rather than fact. Sorry!

At another (and more serious) level, I think we're completely missing the point (and the plot) by discussing de Noronha's sexual orientation, rather than more relevant aspects of his work. Are we just following some red herring? Is this being fair to our writers? Would we discuss the alcoholism of a writer, rather than his work? Or the diabetes and amputations of both the legs of a Dalgado rather than his solid writing delving deep into many Asiatic (sic) languages? Or would we be focussed on the fact that someone is suffering from cancer (it was relevant in Paulo Varela Gomes' case, as he wrote his best books while literally on his deathbed... but only worth mentioning in passing)?

For the record, in Sandeep Bakshi's 2011 (Univ of Leicester) thesis, de Noronha share one chapter with a Sri Lankan author,  [https://lra.le.ac.uk/bitstream/2381/10250/1/2011BakshiSPhD.pdf] 

In that work, the focus is on de Noronha's "contestations of certain predominant literary tropes of fiction of the Raj" in a way that works "against the master narrative of European imperialism". 

In Bakshi's view: "Noronha‘s narrative appends racial and genealogical signifiers onto homosexual guilt and ends in the rape and suicide of one of its central characters. Similarly, the authors draw upon and rework different literary tropes of British Anglo-Indian fiction. Noronha rereads the colonial obsession with rape as a key signifier of inter-cultural relations but adapts it to the enunciation of same-sex desire." (p. 58)

Incidentally, GBCer Peter Nazareth gets quoted a few times in this work.

Hope I've stoked the pot enough with this much for now. But I still can't but help wondering why all the most interesting discussions come up after 9.30 pm.

See below too,

Regards or some,

FN
9822122436



Leslie de Noronha

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Leslie de Noronha was a writer of Goan origin. He is one of the early Indian writers in English.[1] He was also a medical doctor and a music critic.[2]

Noronha has himself described The Dew Drop Inn as "not a political or historical story, neither a love story" and has said that he conceived of the idea and planned it in 1958, while in New York. He added: "Then, on December 18th, 1961, the Indian militia entered Goa and, after 36 hours that electrified the world, the mighty Portuguese Empire came crashing down with the maximum of drama possible. And I found myself with the MS [manuscript] of what was overnight virtually a historical novel."[3]

Critic Peter Nazareth, who wrote a review of The Dew Drop Inn that was published in World Literature Today, said: "It is a sequel to The Mango and the Tamarind Tree: Raoul in the first novel gives up his lover (born in Kenya of a caste lower than his) because of pressure by his mother. In the sequel, Raoul regrets having given her up and he has now become gay --- there are explicit descriptions of the gay scene in Bombay. He dies, near the end, in a plane crash." Some critics suggest that Raoul's story parallels the author's.

The author was a doctor in England. He believes in the advice he once received there: that a trivial incident can change a life. This happens in the book too. Shantimarg is a fictitious montage of "all Himalayan hill stations". Medical colleges at Bombay and London get featured here too. This book in part is "to a great extent autobiographical, if highly dramatized".The Mango and the Tamarind Tree was Noronha's earlier novel.

Another of his publications, Poems, was published by the Writers' Workshop in 1965.

Agarwal and Sinha comment: "With a growing interest in Indian English literature, there has been a sudden spurt of fiction, many of them first novels during the nineteen seventies. Notable among those novelists are — BK Karanjia, Leslie de Noronha, Timeri Murari, ...".[4]

Donna J Young describes his novel The Mango and the Tamarind Tree as offering an "insight into the feelings of Goans who had a Portuguese identity that changed into a Goan one after the end of the colonial period. On the surface, the novel deals with the affluent but disintegrating Albuquerque family. In reality, De Noronha is showing the disintegration of Portuguese identity in Goa by having the novel’s main character Raoul break with many traditions. He refuses to go through an arranged marriage, falls in love with a woman from a lower class, and he sells the family home after his mother’s death. Raoul’s heritage is his enemy. It kept him from marrying the woman he loved and from the international career he loved. By giving up his traditions Raoul symbolizes Goans giving up Portuguese traditions and shows the upheaval that frequently accompanies major political change and the reaction to it...."

His work is included in The Golden Treasury of Indo-Anglian Poetry, 1828-1965, edited by Vinayak Krishna Gokak.[5]

Works[edit source]

His works include:

  • The Dew Drop Inn, Writers Workshop greenbird book. 1994. Original from the University of Michigan digitized on 29 May 2008. ISBN 8171897304, 9788171897308. 297 pp.
  • "FROM 'THE MANGO AND THE TAMARIND TREE'." Journal of South Asian Literature (1983): 7-13.

External links[edit source]

References[edit source]

  1. Jump up^ Frederick Noronha. "Re: Dr. Leslie de Noronha". Goanet. Retrieved 28 Oct 2015.
  2. Jump up^ J. Clement Vaz. "Composers of music, singers and artistes (in Profiles of Eminent Goans, Past and Present)". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 28 Oct 2015.
  3. Jump up^ Noronha, F.; D'Mello, P. "Goa in creative writing". GoaResearchNet. Retrieved 28 Oct 2015.
  4. Jump up^ Agrawal, B. R., and M. P. Sinha. Major Trends in the Post-Independence Indian English Fiction. Atlantic Publishers & Dist, 2003.
  5. Jump up^ Vinayak Krishna Gokak (ed.). "The Golden Treasury of Indo-Anglian Poetry, 1828-1965". books.google.com. Retrieved 28 Oct 2015.




On Tue, 26 Jun 2018 at 02:44, Cecil Pinto <cecil...@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Augusto,

Are there any more homosexuals writers in Goa or in the Goan diaspora that you can identify with your recently revealed skills?

Can you dispassionately read your own writings and identify your gender identity objectively?

This is a most interesting ability that you have. What about international renowned and classical writers and poets? Is it true, according to the well-read you, that Shakespeare was gay? And Homer?

Is Frederick Noronha gay? Or Selma? If so why don't they get a room instead of airing their petty differences in public?

Cheers!

Cecil
==========

On 25 June 2018 at 20:39, Augusto Pinto <pint...@gmail.com> wrote:


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Selma Cardoso

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Jun 25, 2018, 6:24:13 PM6/25/18
to goa-bo...@googlegroups.com, Augusto Pinto
First of all let me say, rather sadly, that Frederick and Cecil serve only to derail a discussion on literature. Let me say, that they have not read enough biography, review or criticism to understand how examination works. If they had, they would understand that aspects of our life inform our work and no aspect is beyond scrutiny. Then let me leave it at that.

For the purposes of this discussion, I will address only Augusto's queries randomly.

1.  Yes, a lot of biographical information can be gleaned and inferred from written texts. However, it has to be substantiated using external sources of letters, diaries and other documentation. I realise within the Goan context this is next to impossible. The correspondence with Peter however would act, in some part at least, as a corroborating source and it should be documented somewhere for posterity. 

2. Sadly, I haven't read Noronha's full works, just excerpts. I'm not discussing Noronha at all though. I only need this information for one sentence in relation to something else. But I see now, I can't use it at all. 

3. I didn't mean LGBTQ writing in its entirety. I just meant in relation to Goa.

All best,
selma

sandra lobo

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Jun 26, 2018, 10:35:16 AM6/26/18
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Dear Selma,


We can follow this conversation in private. 7


But in any case I can inform that thanks to the work of two researchers, Lucas Mestrinelli and Filipa Lopes, we now know more about Ressurge Goa, as they have detected some issues at Torre do Tombo and the Portuguese National Library. I myself have some issues that belonged to my father. Due to the common virtual exhibition that we have promoted last year most of these issues are now available online, some of them at the site of the exhibition - http://expocomum.org/cla#ressurge_goa - and others at the site of Torre do Tombo. In fact, Torre do Tombo has in the occasion made available significant documents that regard Telo Mascarenhas, adding to the issues they hold - https://digitarq.arquivos.pt/viewer?id=7543535; https://digitarq.arquivos.pt/viewer?id=7543541

Best


Sandra




De: 'Selma Cardoso' via The Goa Book Club <goa-bo...@googlegroups.com>
Enviado: 25 de junho de 2018 17:08
Para: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com
Assunto: Re: [GOABOOKCLUB] Two questions relating to Resurge Goa and Dew Drop Inn (Leslie de Noronha)
 

Eugene Correia

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Jun 26, 2018, 10:35:16 AM6/26/18
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Well, Fred I haven't seen Lesli with hus male friends but, believe me, this "relstive if my cousin" will not tell me a lie. Whether Leslie was obliquely 
gay or not gay if best left to you. I know what I know, and for you it could be gossip. I have addressed the issue in an earlier post.
Would a cook tell me openly about his employer? There was a hint, and as I said such things were not ssid openly on those days. I was never interested to dig further, and I can still get someone closely associated with the treatre world to speak about Leslie. But it would be "off-the-record". 
If I have misquoted the hughly quotable Sir. drederick, please excuse me. I am niot loose with facts. If I am not 100 percent sure, I will not say so. However, I may go around in circles.
There was a Goan guy involved in theatre and he was a gay. It was jnown to very few, and I knew. Now he's in Australia with the same man.
We bever talked about it openly but only in whispers. In such circles, there's always a "whisper-network" and, like the current White House, there are leaks? If you know, it 's said that the White House leaks. from the top.
I suppose what I wrote in my post if ages ago. and the one I sent earlier are on the same lines.

Eugene

Sent from my iPad

Eugene Correia

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Jun 26, 2018, 10:35:16 AM6/26/18
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Fred, it's nice to know that I happened to land in Leslie de Noronha's house is a made-up story by me? What do I stand to gain by saying so? Must I win some brownie points from you? I don't care if you believe it or not. 
I also remember meeting the famous Indian badminton player Nandu Natekar just as I exited the building. He asked mecin a surprised tone, "You stay here?"  I replied, "No, no.... just visited soneone."
Niw, i remember, Leslie de Noronha worked for Glaxco, as the "relative of my cousin". The cousin is from my dad's side {dad sister's daughter' and the houseboy/cook was her cousin from her dad's side).
Fred, let me know if you want to. know the name of the houseboy/cook. I can put you in touch with his daughter, who wasbin Kuwait but not sure if she's still there.

Eugene, a gossip writer. Will put this in the burb appearing at the end of my column for OHeraldo, if you give me the oermission to say the new title is courtesy of Frederuck Noronha.





Sent from my iPad

On Jun 25, 2018, at 5:58 PM, Frederick Noronha <frederic...@gmail.com> wrote:

Nazareth, Peter

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Jun 26, 2018, 10:35:16 AM6/26/18
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Folks,

I mentioned earlier the letter Leslie de Noronha wrote to Joseph Henry.  I forgot to mention that Leslie said that the novel was his story, which I took to mean that it was based on his own life.  At the bottom he wrote, "By the way, I am gay."

I did a special study of DH Lawrence for my Honours degree in English at Makerere University College and the first Literary essay I published after graduating, in Transition edited by Rajat Neogy, was on Lawrence.  One of his dicta stuck in my mind and I follow it.  It is "Never trust the teller, trust the tale."

What Leslie wrote to Joe Henry came out of nowhere and we did not find it relevant to the meaning of the novel.

It the years that followed, I heard various things about Leslie and I began to suspect that he made up stories about his own life.  None of them was relevant to the novels he wrote.  Did he do this deliberately because he felt that Goan readers tended to assume that fiction was autobiography and he enjoyed misleading them?

I was introduced several years ago at a conference by an American professor of political science who took his "facts" about my life from my novel "In a Brown Mantle", all of which had nothing to do with my own life.  E.g.  unlike the narrator, I was not a politician, I did not study in a mission school, I did not embezzle money and put it into a swiss bank account...

Peter



From: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com <goa-bo...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Frederick Noronha <frederic...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, June 25, 2018 4:58 PM
To: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [GOABOOKCLUB] Two questions relating to Resurge Goa and Dew Drop Inn (Leslie de Noronha)
 
Cecil, 

I have another conspiracy theory which, I claim, is better than yours.... 

Whenever Selma is caught up in some controversy (usually of her own making) on the GBC, she will most innocently raise the is-Leslie-de-Noronha-gay query. Gusto can be trusted to fall for the topic with a lot of gusto (bad pun, sorry). A quick look at the archives says we've been at this since at least 2012, if not earlier. This theory is just conjecture at this stage, of course, till I can get some statistical software to analyse the correlation between these two coincidences. (Hoping to get the open source PSPP rather than SPSS, let's see.)

I'm not sure Augusto is explaining the logic of New Criticism adequately ("Does it really matter what autobiographical statements an author makes in connection with the literature s/he writes? If I were to suggest for instance that I belonged to the LGBT community would that make you revise all that you thought about what I ever wrote." This seems like a particularly lame argument, followed by an extremely inapt example. What if it were the other way around?)

But anyway, there are many issues involved here, as I see it.

I'd prefer to be overcautious here on two grounds. Firstly, de Noronha is not around to give his version. Secondly, sometimes gossip and loose talk can go about in creating versions which are not necessarily true. 

For instance, someone quoted Eugene in this discussion. Since I've self-confessed the "My problem is Eugene.." thingy barely two days ago, let me un-diplomatically state that I do get the impression that Eugene sometimes uses facts loosely. (Of course, everyone who writes, me too, is some time or the other guilty of this, but one needs to be cautious.) I've seen Eugene quote me in some convoluted way on an occasion or two, which is why if he sends me a personal email query, nine out of ten times it's silence now from my end.

Coming back to the point: Eugene has come up with this story: "a relative of my cousin worked for him as his houseboy/cook. He would tell me that Leslie would have many male friends at his place, which incidentally I visited to say hi to the houseboy (now dead) when I was in Bandra (leslie wasn't there)." This sounds more like gossip, if not malicious gossip to me, rather than fact. Sorry!

Eugene Correia

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Jun 26, 2018, 10:35:17 AM6/26/18
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I did write that I once landed in Leslie de Noronha's apartment, but nit sure whether it was on this forum or on goanet. I read both the books and Indtill have copy of aThe Dew Drop Inn. My copy of The Mango and te Tamarind Tree is missing.
A relative of my cousin worked as a coo/housekeeper for Leslie. Often hecwould say to me that if I am in Bandra please drop in, anf
d gave me the address of the building and flat no. It was a sea-facing building pm Bandra's famous Road and it was a posh building whis name I forget.
When I entered the apartment and sat on the sofa I saw a photo and asked the cook if it was Leslie. Hecsaid yes and that this was his place. I had seen Leslie at some English olays, and I read hus revuews in The Examiner, the weekly published by the Archdiocese of Bombay. The cook, now dead, told me about the many partiesbut he didn't explicitly say so, but I gathered that Leslie as gay.
He was working for a famous drug-manufacturing compnay, and I think he was educated in US or UK. He was son of Dr. socrates Noronha. 
I have written from memory.
I support what Agusto says. Leslie didn't show hus homosexuality on his sleeve. In those days in Bombay, it was a closely-held secret. Leslie belonged to the elite Goan society. Now people openly say they are atheists but in thise days those who were atheists, like gays, remained in the closet.
Selma msy have something up her sleeve (in case she wears blouses that covered the arms). haha
Selma will be dissapointec with me for not showing any documentsry proof. But I can surely get a theatre person to validate Peter's and my 
point.
Looking forward to a piece on the literary site on gay Goan writers.

Eugene



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Eugene Correia

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Jun 26, 2018, 10:35:18 AM6/26/18
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Anyone who writes with  "gay abandkn" is "gay" My defination, right. Have I loosely quoted anyone?


Eugene

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Selma Cardoso

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Jun 26, 2018, 12:12:37 PM6/26/18
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My eyes have now gone bleary reading about Eugene's encounter with Leslie's cook. I think Eugene's evidence is credible when taken with Peter's evidence.

If anyone is doing scholarly work on Leslie de Noronha or on queer writing in Goa/India, I do suggest for the sake of posterity, that they get in touch with Eugene's theatre friends and interview them. In fact, such documentation is important, so that future enquiries do not have to be met with the usual comments from Goan MOOs (Ministers Of Offence).

Best wishes,
selma

Wendell Rodricks

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Jun 26, 2018, 12:12:37 PM6/26/18
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Dear all,
As an openly gay man, I am disappointed and disgusted at this faggot-obsessed group.
Are you guys drinking and posting?
I knew Leslie personally and he would be reeling in his grave that he, his bedroom and not his works, are being discussed in this outrageous manner by ‘supposed’ intellects.
One can discuss whether a person’s work is a referral to oneself. But this discussion has gone beyond decency.
When I am gone, I am sad to, but unafraid, to say that many of those obsessed with this sexual preference topic will be dead and replaced by a generation who cares not a fig about anyone’s private lives but about the work one leaves behind.
Next topic please. And let’s keep it on point and not way off point.
W

Selma Cardoso

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Jun 26, 2018, 12:12:38 PM6/26/18
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Dear Sandra,

Thank you so much for these wonderful links. I will read them carefully. Thank God for online digitization. We no longer have to spend hours at the library fiddling with the microfiche  which I never did get the hang of and would repeatedly have to disturb the library to help :-)

Warmly,
selma

Eugene Correia

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Jun 26, 2018, 12:12:39 PM6/26/18
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This story is taking good turns. PNow Peter wuotes Leslie's letter. but he  "suspects" Leslie's intentions. This l aves ir wide ooe and back to whre it all started. peter has documented mentary proof. as Selma wanted, with Leslie he himself admitting it, 
Discounting what the "cook" said about the many parties, who ch probably kept him busy, and knowing well that he would never lie to me, I "almost understood" the implication of the cook's narrative.
Still, Fred will beliefevthst what I wrote years sgo, and I narrated the same now in different words, was " gossip". 
Should I write what one eriter told me when asked why the writer isn't getting his/her published by Fred? Fre d will dusmiss ut as "gossip" nbut I care a hang what he believes in or he doesn't believe in.

Eugene

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Cecil Pinto

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Jun 26, 2018, 1:43:00 PM6/26/18
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Well said Wendell.
Now we know who the real liberals are and who the fakes and wannabes are.

Cheers!

Cecil

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Selma Cardoso

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Jun 26, 2018, 1:43:00 PM6/26/18
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Dear Wendell,

As much as I respect you, I am afraid you are way off base here. 

No one is 'faggot-obsessed' here. We all have our own sex lives to be obsessed with. No one has been remotely derogatory. Just as we discuss Virginia Woolf's bisexuality (her strange unconsummated relationship with Vita Sackville, and in turn Sackville's life itself has been studied at length) as has that of Daphne du Maurier and E. M. Forster. 

It is imperative that we discuss lives in relation to their work and carry out due process in documenting their lives. It is true that biography and the necessary documentation and critical examination that goes with it does not lend itself easily to Indian writing but great strides have been made in this respect in recent years. There is a book coming out soon which will closely examine the sexual life of Gandhi and the legitimacy and the agency (if any) of the women involved in his experiments. There is also a book coming out on F N Souza which is revelatory. I do hope we don't squirm away from learning about Souza's sex life and ask what it has to do with his work. In short, everything. 

Being gay does not mean one falls outside the course of that discussion. It terms of the LGBTQ journey, it is all the more important to document. It is not Leslie de Noronha who would be turning in his grave, it is Oscar Wilde who was imprisoned for his sexuality and died of a broken heart, that would be horrified that in 2018, we shy away from discussing these issues freely.

All best wishes,
selma




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Wendell Rodricks

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Jun 26, 2018, 4:58:29 PM6/26/18
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Dear Selma,
I am NOT way off point, and don’t lecture me about about Woolf, Wilde and whoever. I am not some twit who hasn’t read their works.
What if this group starts discussing your and Augusto sexual preferences based on your writing? Will you be happy? People are questioning Fredrick’s preferences. That is deplorable and outright deranged. 
Please don’t be defensive about being offensive.
I am deeply insulted and disgusted. And have every right to be.
Also don’t give me examples about writers and their sex lives to justify yourselves. If some people on this group, you included, are interested, so be it.
As they say, keep sex, religion and politics out of conversation to stay civil in public
W

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Cliff Pereira

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Jun 27, 2018, 2:45:19 AM6/27/18
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Dear Mr. Nazareth,

You raise some interesting points about the reception of fiction. Indeed while recent comments on Goan Book Club clearly attest, many audience attach more relevance to the authors lives then their works. Though I must add this trend is not universal, nor should it be important to the recognition (both negatively and positively) of the works and the authors. 

I have found that perhaps the areas where audiences read fiction as fact more then any other are in the realms of contested historical fiction and culturally sensitive fiction. Both of which of course relate to concepts of identity, which in any case are constructs and not facts. Do you think this trend by readers to take the fictional event as factual or the fictional characters as defining the author (in terms of gender, sexual orientation, race, religion or income level) is related to the lack of public discourse on the subjects, and the need somehow to either sensationalise or simply enter dialogue?

I would appreciate your views on the above question.

Cliff
From: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com <goa-bo...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Nazareth, Peter <peter-n...@uiowa.edu>
Sent: June 26, 2018 12:12 PM

Selma Cardoso

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Jun 27, 2018, 2:46:38 AM6/27/18
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Although briefly I thought I would exclude the reference to Leslie de Noronha's sexuality from what I am writing I've reconsidered my position for the following reasons:

1. In 2012 we had this exact same discussion on Goa Book Club (thank God for archives). Peter Nazareth at the time related the story of Noronha having written in a letter that he is gay. Peter has consistently maintained the veracity of that note. Peter Nazareth is a credible and consistent source. 

2. Eugene has consistently maintained his version of events. Eugene if you do feel inclined to put me in touch with your theatre friends, I am ready to interview them and record for posterity verbal testimony. In the years to come, this will better serve researchers.

3. Having re-read the Wikipedia entry, it clearly says there that, 'Some critics suggest that Raoul's story parallels the author's.' So the discussion about Leslie de Noronha's sexuality has in fact been in the public domain for quite some time and no one has contested it.

4. Public discussion cannot be held hostage to misplaced outrage.

Best wishes,
selma

Nazareth, Peter

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Jun 27, 2018, 12:49:22 PM6/27/18
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Dear Cliff,

The biggest problem I found when I began work on the Goan issue of JSAL was that most Goan writers wanted to be recognized in America through their writing.  This was a gigantic illusion, when I considered what I was doing and publishing and teaching in the fields of African writing, Caribbean writing, African American writing--where the primary purpose of the writing was to create the suppressed world, explore the political meanings, track down the lost history, create the aesthetic meanings.    When damnation came from established western critics and intellectual agents masquerading as major critics, the writer had trained him/herself as an indication that as a flag that one was on the right track.

Recognition, if it came, was to be a by-product.

Best.

Peter



From: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com <goa-bo...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cliff Pereira <cliffj...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2018 6:17 PM

Selma Cardoso

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Jun 27, 2018, 3:22:29 PM6/27/18
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For the sake of elevating the course of this discussion, let me address Cliff's queries.

Cliff writes:
Indeed while recent comments on Goan Book Club clearly attest, many audience attach more relevance to the authors lives then their works. 

Response: No, audiences don't attach more relevance to author's lives. Authors lives are examined in tandem with their works. Hence, we can understand Orwell's 1984 better when examined against his politics in real life, the time he spent in Spain and the prevailing politics of his contemporaries including a certain antisemitism which creeps into his work. Likewise, we can better understand Pablo Picasso's Blue period because we know what was going on in his life at that time.

Cliff:
Though I must add this trend is not universal, nor should it be important to the recognition (both negatively and positively) of the works and the authors. 

Response: The trend in fact is becoming universal given the revival and spread of biography as a genre. Works are not generally recognised because of the person. The person is recognised and studied because of his works. No one is interested in examining anonymous lives. Those of our public figures will be scrutinised and studied. 

Cliff:
areas where audiences read fiction as fact more then any other are in the realms of contested historical fiction and culturally sensitive fiction. Both of which of course relate to concepts of identity

Response:
I don't know of people who read fiction as fact unless the writer alludes or admits to their fiction being informed by facts. Writers do draw on their own life experiences to create fiction. Hence the works of Dickens are largely auto-biographical and scholars have gleaned very accurately the facts from the fiction right down to the places he is writing about. The same goes for Jane Austen and the Bronte Sister's works. Secondly, historical fiction is a very wide genre in itself. At one end of the spectrum is fantasy historical fiction which has very little to do with facts. At the other end, is documentary historical fiction which will stick as close to the facts as possible. 

Cliff:

Do you think this trend by readers to take the fictional event as factual or the fictional characters as defining the author (in terms of gender, sexual orientation, race, religion or income level) is related to the lack of public discourse on the subjects, and the need somehow to either sensationalise or simply enter dialogue?

Response: Yes, there certainly isn't enough dialogue on these subjects as is evidenced from these discussions. What we need to do, as Goans perhaps but also as members of the human race, is de-sensationalise these topics and defer from knee-jerk reactions. We can most certainly have discussions regarding authorial privacy, and its limitations, or how we can re-construct sentences that would be more sensitive, but what we shouldn't do is clamp down on legitimate discussion. We can be polite in discussion instead of seeking to score points and settle scores. 

No great cause has ever been served in society by suppressing speech or thought or expression. I'm appalled that in a forum relating to discussions about books and authors that is what we are calling for.

Best,
selma

Cliff Pereira

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Jun 29, 2018, 4:05:51 AM6/29/18
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Dear Peter,

Thank you, for your response. I value your professional observations and can relate to them. Thank you so much.

Cliff


Sent: June 27, 2018 4:57 PM

Cliff Pereira

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Jun 29, 2018, 4:05:51 AM6/29/18
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Dear Selma

Thank you for you detailed responses to my questions. 

I can also notice the increasing use of biography as a means of vocalising a stance. Thinking of the recent Michael Cohen alleged difficulties in publishing his book and the publishing of James Comey's book (A Higher Loyalty) which has some interest here in Hong Kong for English-language readers. Of course the biggest problem here is Hong Kong is that most people don't read, in any language. Those who do really shine even on a casual meeting.

The general view here and in Hong Kong and in China is that lives of the author stop at the bedroom door. Sexuality or sexual orientation is not up for discussion by the state or by the general public. Biography's about people with money and power are especially popular reading. But again nobody is "scrutinised" for their role or actions in the bedroom. This leads to a paucity of literature in any language on LGBT topics or lives, or on other serious issues such as marital rape, domestic violence or the abuse of domestics from Indonesia and the Philippines.

There is sadly a trend among young readers here to take historical fiction as facts, especially if it is backed by a wikipedia entry that is not referenced or referenced from dubious sources. Gavin Menzies's  books are a good example as these are available in Chinese, and uphold the notion of China as the Middle Kingdom (read into that - centre of the world).  

Part of this is due to the Chinese system where all books go through a political censor and are amended to suit the line of the state as demarcated by some department. So there is little room for expression out of those perimeters. One of my collaborative works went through the same system and is used as a university text book (in Chinese). My Canadian colleague and myself refused to have our names on the cover and opted for the third page as "specialist researchers". 

By the way, given that the authorities have even raided book shops and control printing in such a stringent manner here in Hong Kong, I have in no way called for the suppression of free speech, so I am not sure why you have replied to that. 

Thanks for taking the time to get back

Cliff


From: 'Selma Cardoso' via The Goa Book Club <goa-bo...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: June 27, 2018 6:27 PM
To: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [GOABOOKCLUB] Dew Drop Inn (Leslie de Noronha)
 

Selma Cardoso

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Jun 29, 2018, 5:10:19 AM6/29/18
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Thank you Cliff. China is perhaps the best cautionary tale for us all as to what suppression inevitably leads to.

While I don't speak on behalf of the LGBTQ community, what I gather from discussions with LGBTQ friends is not a fear of opening up about their sexual lives but rather the fear that the sum total of their lives will be reduced to their sexuality rather than seen as complex individuals with a myriad of intersecting issues. 

Not relating to Cliff's post but on this issue, three pertinent cases of authorial privacy come to mind. One when Ted Hughes (who although divorced from her but appointed custodian of her estate) destroyed Slyvia Plath's diaries. Acolytes of Plath never forgave Hughes for this because almost all of Plath's writing was informed by her intimate relationships, depression and multiple suicide attempts.

Conversely, the publication of Anais Nin's diaries revealed to us her motivation for writing explicit erotica. We learnt for instance that much of it was written for a private collector (like an art collector) who paid for it.

A more recent case has been that of Einstein when the BBC broke the story of how Einstein's diaries reveal a racist streak. Whether the BBC was right in divulging this and tarnishing the man's reputation posthumously has been a much debated question of late. I believe so, because discerning scholars of Einstein's life rebutted with the many instances of him defending civil rights for minorities. So rather than suppressing aspects of public figure lives we can all learn to have nuanced understanding of them.

That's it from me I think, on this thread, other things beckon. Also it's revealing my preoccupation with biography which I love as a genre :-)
All best,
selma


Nazareth, Peter

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Jul 2, 2018, 1:52:45 PM7/2/18
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Dear Cliff,

I have a feeling that I did not something I wanted to say so I am saying it now.

Some of the folks on Goa-book-club may know that I taught a class in 1992 called "Elvis as Anthology", which received a lot of local and global media attention (I estimate that it was seen or heard or read about by by 700 million people).

The class came about as follows.  In 1988, visiting my daughter Kathy in Boston, I came across  an LP with a track called "I Feel So Bad" by Chuck Willis, which he had released 1953.  Elvis recorded and released this song in 1961.  I was stunned because Elvis sounded just like Chuck Willis.  It was rhythm 'n' blues.  It was about feeling so bad and not knowing whether to stay or to leave.  The two versions opened with the same kind of piano and both had a saxophone solo, the first time on an Elvis single.

I played it to Jonathan Walton, a colleague of mine in the Afro-American World Studies program (he was a professor of history).  He listened and then urged me to teach a class on Elvis because "no one in the US is listening".  He would not let go of me and kept insisting I teach the class everytime I saw him.  "Write it down and you'll know what to do!" he said.

At the end of the semester, I  met him at a farewell party.  He was leaving because he was going to teach at another university.  As I wished him goodbye, I said, "See you!" 

"Will you?" he said.

My wife Mary and I went to Toronto for the Goan conference at the University of Toronto.  We stayed with my sister Ruth and brother-in-law Cyril.

Our younger daughter Monique phoned us from Boston to tell us that Jonathan had died.

I could not go to his funeral, at Chicago, because the Goan conference was about to begin.

At the memorial service to Jonathan at the University of Iowa Pentacrest, I had spoken first.  The spirit had moved me and I said that I would teach a class on Elvis to Jonathan.

Two years passed and I had not figured out how to teach it.  Back in Boston in the summer, I said, "Jonathan's spirit is moving away.  I got to teach this class!" I said.  I had the answer soon after when I re-read Ishmael Reed's novel "The Terrible Threes".

Jonathan Walton was very popular at the University of Iowa.  The memorial service had been attended by  many people of all races and colors and occupations and classes and sexes.  They spoke movingly of Jonathan.  A student musician played a tribute to him that he (the student) had composed to him, even though he had never met him.  He said he had been trying to decide whether to study history or music, mentioned it to a friend, the friend mentioned it to Jonathan, and Jonathan told the friend to tell him to study music, which he was doing.

I dedicated my "Elvis as Anthology" course description to him. 

When I went to the University library to reserve books for the class, I explained to the librarian how I came to teach the class.  She knew Jonathan Walton.  "He must have seen the gleam in your eyes," she said.

I taught the class 23 times and always dedicated it to Jonathan Walton.

Jonathan was gay.  I did not mention it because it was not relevant to the class I was teaching, but it was well known in Iowa City, which had a gay nightclub. 

I never knew how Jonathan died but one of his friends, also our colleague, told me that it was from AIDS.

My wife, daughters and I still miss him.

By the way, I realized after playing the two tracks one after the other that there was a difference: Chuck Willis decided to stay and Elvis decided to leave, which we realize from the slightly faster place and a whooping sound like a train whistle so you know that he is leaving.

Peter

 



From: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com <goa-bo...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Nazareth, Peter <peter-n...@uiowa.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2018 10:57 AM

Frederick Noronha

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Jul 2, 2018, 2:29:35 PM7/2/18
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Peter, the profs at Iowa really seem to be into something! Just came across this today
 
Way off topic, I'm afraid (Selma, please don't point out), but you gave me the bott ghalpak sangkear hatt ghalta chance:

HISTORY & CULTURE

I don’t care for the term ‘Indology’: Philip Lutgendorf

Philip LutgendorfPhilip Lutgendorf
Vikram Zutshi30 JUNE 2018 18:38 IST
UPDATED: 02 JULY 2018 12:08 IST
  •  
  •  
  •  

Chai addict, Ramayana translator, Sholay lover, this scholar says his love for the country could be because of past-life samskaras

Philip Lutgendorf retired last month (June 2018) after teaching for 33 years as Professor of Hindi and Modern Indian Studies in the University of Iowa’s Department of Asian and Slavic Languages and Literature. His book on the performance of the Hindi Ramayana, The Life of a Text, won the A.K. Coomaraswamy Prize. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002-03 for his research on Hanuman, which appeared as Hanuman’s Tale, The Messages of a Divine Monkey. His interests include epic performance traditions, folklore and popular culture, and mass media. He runs a website on popular Hindi cinema, and has researched the cultural history of tea drinking in India. He is presently translating Tulsidas’ Ramcharitmanasfor the Murty Classical Library, and was President of the American Institute of Indian Studies from 2010 till this year. Excerpts from an interview:

Tell us about your project to map the history of chai in India. Where did you have the best cup of chai?

I became interested in chai by drinking a lot of it, starting from 1971 on my first visit to India. There was no bottled water in those days, and chai was among the safest things to drink, so I consumed cup after glass after purvaaall day. Naturally, I became ‘hooked,’ and I also associated it with the many things I liked about India. But I only began thinking about it as something to study in the early 2000s, when I started to realise that tea-drinking had no ancient history in India (unlike in China) and was in fact introduced on a large scale only during the late colonial period and, in many places, after Independence.

This led to research during 2010-2011 into the history of the promotion and adoption of chai — its transformation from a cash crop to benefit the English to an indigenous industry and ‘national drink’. The subject became a lens through which (in lectures, several published articles, and a book I intend to write) I examine changes in lifestyle and eating habits, urbanisation and public space, marketing and transportation, in 20th century South Asia.

I am not a ‘tea snob’, but my preference is for strong Assam CTC with plenty of milk (buffalo, if possible!), cheeni kam, and a little fresh grated ginger. My morning brew (which I make daily in the U.S.) is along these lines.

I have had excellent ‘footpath ki chai’ in many places, and I find it all the more delicious in a stainless steel tumbler or a small, panelled glass, or in an unglazed purvaa (although these seem to be disappearing now).

I still remember the bliss of a heavy metal tumbler of piping hot chai seasoned with pepper that a sadhu gave me when I arrived tired and cold at an ashram near the Gaumukh Glacier on my first pilgrimage to Gangotri-Gaumukh in 1984. Jaan mein jaan aa gayi thi....

You have taught Indian cinema in American universities and written about it. How did your interest start?

I like to think that I entered the world of popular Indian cinema through a kind of ‘back door’.

When I first began research in India in the early 80s, I idealised and romanticised ‘folk’ performances and had little interest in modern mass media, Indian or American. My middle-class Indian friends generally told me Hindi films were trashy, inept imitations of Hollywood, and I believed them.

I remember seeing the hoardings for Sholay in 1975 — those giant, cracked Roman letters à la Ben Hur — and having absolutely no interest in watching it (hard to imagine, given I now consider it a must-see classic!). I owe my change of heart, oddly enough, to Ramanand Sagar.

When his Ramayan aired on Doordarshan and became a cultural phenomenon, I was asked to write an essay on it for a conference in the U.S. So I watched the serial, and was captivated by the way it echoed many ‘traditional’ performance genres I had studied for my Ph.D., and by its surprisingly sophisticated reinterpretation of episodes from the epic. I ended up writing something of a ‘defence’ of the serial against its many, mainly Anglophone Indian, critics.

The serial opened my eyes to an Indian ‘filmi’ aesthetic that was notably different from Euro-American cinema, and I began to understand that it had its own history.

In the early 90s, there was little scholarship on popular Indian cinema, and it was a ‘black hole’ in the Cinema Studies curriculum of U.S. universities, where India would be represented in World Cinema classes by one screening of Pather Panchali…

There was a technological dimension to this ignorance too; Indian films simply weren’t available except in dreadful pirated videos with horrible image quality and incomprehensible subtitles.

Around this time, I ran a seminar for Iowa’s Cinema Studies faculty, in which (through a small grant from the Ford Foundation) I paid them to watch some of these videos — great classics like Pyaasa, Shri 420, Mother India, and (yes!) Sholay, and then discuss them.

Despite the rotten image quality, my colleagues began to realise that there was a lot more to Indian cinema than Satyajit Ray, and one result of the seminar was a semester-long survey course on Indian cinema — one of the first in the U.S., I believe — that I co-taught with the great film scholar Dudley Andrew.

It also led to my website, Philip’s Fil-ums: Notes on Indian Popular Cinema, which I started in the late 90s. I specifically wanted to provide cultural and contextual information that would make Hindi films more meaningful to non-Indian viewers.

What got you interested in studying (what some people call) ‘Indology’?

Like most U.S.-based academic scholars who work on various aspects of South Asian culture, I don’t much care for the term ‘Indology’, which smacks of the ‘orientalist’ pretension that a Western scholar can ‘master’ all-around, expedient knowledge of another civilisation.

But of course it is perfectly reasonable to ask how a first-generation Euro-American (my father was an immigrant from the Netherlands after World War II), born and raised in New York, ended up studying Hindi literature and then living in Banares for several years and researching its culture. Some Indian friends explain it as “past-life samskaras,” and of course this could be true.

But what I consciously know is that I became drawn to Indian culture while in high school and read translations of the Gita and Upanishads and some books about Sufism. I came in contact with a spiritual master who has profoundly influenced me (Meher Baba), and felt the desire to visit India. It was the most ‘different’ place I had ever been to, yet I felt oddly at home, and people were extraordinarily welcoming and hospitable.

This led to several more trips, and in time to my pursuing a Ph.D. in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, where I studied Hindi and Sanskrit. Storytelling, especially about Sita-Ram, has remained one of my main scholarly interests.

Tell us about the American Institute of Indian Studies that you have headed for a number of years. What are you working on next?

The AIIS was founded in 1962 by scholars at 12 American universities “to further the knowledge of India in the U.S. by supporting American scholarship on India” and to “promote and advance mutual understanding between the citizens of the U.S. and India.” Unlike the Fulbright programme, which is government aided, AIIS is an NGO created by scholars, for scholars.

Its members include more than 85 institutions, including most major research universities in the U.S. and many smaller, liberal-arts colleges as well.

The AIIS funds pre- and post-doctoral research in a great range of disciplines, giving about 30 fellowships annually to U.S.-based scholars (many of whom are now of Indian heritage or are Indian citizens) to spend extended periods in India. It also offers world-class training in some 15 Indian languages to American students at schools in India. And it runs two extraordinary open-access archives in Gurgaon devoted, respectively, to South Asian visual arts and architecture, and to music and performance.

As to what I am working on (as I enter the vanaprastha phase): I have three volumes (of seven) still to go in my translation of Tulsidas’s epic, and I hope to get back to my chai research and produce a book on the subject.

I have a few other research ideas... and four young grandchildren, with whom I hope to spend more time as they grow!

I feel I have been extremely fortunate in my career, and friends in India have always given me — with characteristic South Asian hospitality — much more than I have been able to give back.

The interviewer is a filmmaker, columnist and scholar. When not travelling, he hangs out with his cats, toucans and pet iguana.

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