BOOK LINK: Tsunami Simon, by Damodar Mauzo (Ponytale Books)

[Frederick FN Noronha फ्रेड्रिक नोरोन्या *فريدريك نورونيا‎]

Subject: FICTION
ISBN: 978-93-80637-11-2
Title: Tsunami Simon
Author: Damodar Mauzo Translated by Xavier Cota
Publisher: Ponytale Books
Publishing Date: 05/12/2013
Edition: I
Availability: Yes
Territorial Rights: World
Currency: INR
Price:  199
Binding: Paperback
Size, in inches: 5 x 7.75
Weight in grammes: 150
Pages: 186
Languages: English
Illustrations: No
Descriptive note: Thirteen-year-old Simon lives in a coastal
village in South Goa.  He juggles school, dancing, karate
classes and thoroughly loves the sea, especially going on
fishing trips with his father, Gabru.  Despite growing up in
modern times, Simon nurtures a deep love for their
traditional fisher-folk life.  This winter Simon goes to
Tamil Nadu, to spend his Christmas vacation with his aunt.
But the holiday comes to a disastrous end.  One morning, when
out fishing with his uncle, the gigantic waves of the tsunami
strike the coast of South India sparing little that lay in
its path.
Does Simon survive this calamity? What about his family? Will
life ever be the same again?"
Author bio: Damodar Mauzo is a much-loved Konkani author who,
over four decades, has penned short stories, novels,
biographies, and more.  His works have been translated into
Hindi, Marathi, English, Bengali, Portuguese, French and
several other languages.  He was awarded the prestigious
Sahitya Akademi Award for his novel Karmelin.  He is the
recipient of Goa State Cultural Award, Goa Konkani Sahitya
Pratibha Puraskar among several others.  He has also written
screenplays for films including Aleesha, for which he was  
awarded the Best Screenplay Award.  He is at the forefront of
promotion of Konkani language and has also penned numerous
short stories and books for children and young adults woven
around the world of Goans.  His Tsunami Simon was awarded the
Vimla V Pai Vishwa Konkani Puraskar in 2011.  Xavier Cota, a
teacher and a retired banker, is actively involved in sports
administration and social activism.  A recipient of the
prestigious Katha Award for Translation, he has translated  
fiction and other articles from Konkani into English.  His
works have been published in The Week, Gentlemen, Man’s
World, See Goa, Mainstream, Katha Prize Stories among others.
He has also translated Mauzo’s These are My Children the  
first collection of Konkani short stories from one writer
published in English.

[augusto pinto]

Note:

I'm sending a review of Tsunami Simon that I had written when the Konkani version came out and which was part of a profile on Mauzo. 

I haven't got my hands on the English translation as yet, but rereading my review, I see that it will be very interesting to find out how Xavier Cota has managed to juggle with the manner in which Mauzo has treated different Konkani dialects in the book. Those dialects were the focus of my review of the Konkani book.

The full article is here: http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/2009-April/177045.html

Augusto

Tsunami Simon

The first first few pages of Tsunami Simon give the impression that Mauzo is delivering a veiled commentary on the Konkani script/dialect issue. 

What should be their standard dialect and script has been a millstone around the necks the Konkani speaking people in the recent past. This is a power struggle that started when the mainly Saraswat Brahmins elite of the Goan Hindu community  ensured that the Antruzi dialect they spoke became the official or standard dialect of Konkani with Devanagari as the official script. This became the standard taught in schools and colleges, and the Antruzi written in Devangari most easily gets grants and awards from the State and Central government. All this happened when Konkani written in the Devanagari script became the official language of the state along with Marathi which shares the same status. Later the Christian elites and others who felt discriminated against as they were not too comfortable with either the Antruzi dialect or the Devanagari script began to protest.

But there happen to be many other dialects of Konkani which are in turn marginalized by both the Hindu and Catholic elites -  the dialect of the Hindus of Pernem for instance, whose voice the poet Shashikant Punaji articulates in his work; or the dialect of the Saxtti  Christian Kharvi caste which in public discourse is heard only in tiatrs and that too mainly by subsidiary characters or in 'sideshows' by buffoon like figures.

Hence Mauzo in Tsunami Simon is bucking a trend by making Kharvis the protagonists of his story. These are  the Baptistas  whose head Gabru still uses the traditional manual Rampon method of fishing even as almost the rest of the world has switched over to the more profitable but environmentally degrading mechanised trawler method. Obviously the standard theme of most Indian literature - the clash between the modern and the traditional - is going to played out here too. But the voices of these Kharvis (who also use the elite  Bardezi dialect in Church rituals) is offset by the controlling Antruzi voice of the narrator who is a Bamon, as the Saraswat in Goa is called.

 

However there are also other voices that creep in - such as the 'Madrasi' accented Konkani of Gabru's brother-in-law Ponnudurai, once his worker, but who fell in love with Gabru's wife's sister Marcelina and eloped with her to his native state. And there is Hindi and Tamil and English which are also heard suggesting that Mauzo is unlike the Konkani, Marathi and English warriors who habitually battle for linguistic  supremacy in Goa . He perhaps realises that the real language of the land is a rich mix of many tongues.

The story is set around December 2004. The 12 year old son of the family Simon who gives the novelette its name is persuaded by his 'Mashan' or aunt, Marcelina who has come visiting to come back with her for a holiday to Tamil Nadu. Marcelina is now back on good terms with her sister's family after they reconciled themselves to accepting her Tamilian husband Ponnudurai, now the owner of a mechanised fishing boat in a coastal village of Tamil Nadu.

One gets little glimpses of the fishing community which is in a state of transition throughout the book. After their traditional occupation of fishing was hit by the advent of  mechanised trawlers Ramponkars are seeing still further changes happening before their very eyes. Many of their children are getting  educated and are working in white collar jobs and wish to shake off the stigma which they perceive is attached to their caste. Simon is a child who will very likely  break away from his family's way of life for now he is being slowly drawn into the modern world whose culture is dictated by Bollywood cinema, and he will  take to modern fads like learning Karate. However the story does not take us so far.

The backdrop is the great Boxing day Tsunami of 26 December 2004 which was triggered off by an underwater earthquake off Indonesia and which set off giant tidal waves that killed over 3 lakh people and maimed and rendered homeless many more. The tsunami hit the east coast of India and that is where Simon had been at the time, out in the sea fishing with his uncle Ponnu. Simon miraculously escapes as he clutches to the top of a coconut tree but his aunt and uncle are drowned along with many other fisher folk who were the most badly hit by the disaster.

The plot of the story takes us into a relief camp where Simon befriends a girl who is suffering from shock because of the Tsunami and has lost her ability to speak. He names her Mona and they both go through a series of adventures which reveal both the cruelty and the kindness of the world. Simon runs away from the camp with her when he realises that a couple who have come to allegedly adopt orphans may be planning to lure Mona into prostitution or at least slavery. In the meanwhile his distraught parents who come searching for him find he is missing; although there is some hope for them  as they find a picture of Simon featured in a newspaper.

In this book Mauzo has hit on an effective plot, one which gives him scope to dwell on several themes. However his decision to make his story into a short 150 page novelette or novella may have been a mistake. It results in the book giving only fleeting glimpses of such themes as the horrors of relief camps; and the difficulties faced by relief workers and NGOs in them; or the manner in which the media and others use of human tragedies to get publicity and who, when they have milked their subjects' publicity value away, will disappear; or the sexual and financial exploitation to which which street children and orphans are prey. Mauzo gives the impression that he does not wish to dwell too deeply into the darker aspects of human nature, for even the most villainous characters in his book will be seen to have some redeeming feature.

What finally happens to Simon and Mona and the Baptista family is best left for a reader to find out. For Goan readers Tsunami Simon should be read in the original Konkani, as translation would surely kill the lilt of the various voices in the book. Perhaps Mauzo should consider transliterating it into the Roman script. Although it may not be his master-work Tsunami Simon adds yet another tint to Mauzo's palette as he takes us on a tour of South India with Simon Baptista.

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Augusto Pinto
40, Novo Portugal
Moira, Bardez
Goa, India
E pint...@gmail.com
P 0832-2470336
M 9881126350

[Ben Antao]

Dear Augusto

 

I read your review of the Konkani version of Tsunami Simon and have a few comments.

 

1. A translation in English of a Konkani story would lose ‘something’ in translation, especially the Konkani

idioms and sayings so native to the language.  Having translated a few of my short stories first written in English

and later converted into Romi Konkani (A Madhouse in Goa/Xirap), I can say that the tone of the same story would be

different because of the language.

 

     I’ve checked this with a Russian writer who reads and writes both in English and Russian. He told me that Lolita in Russian

feels different from the translated one in English. The point is whether the story in question is interesting or not. Madame Bovary in English

is exciting and interesting whether or not it is as elegant in French. 

 

2. Inside/Out, an anthology of short fiction and non-fiction, carries an excerpt from Tsunami Simon, about a dolphin caught in

Santan’s net, later released into the sea. This episode reminded me of Pundalik Naik’s short story The Turtle, which also ends up being

released into the ocean.  Even assuming Mauzo used the turtle incident to imagine and flesh out the dolphin incident, it is still his

story.

 

3. You refer to ‘'fleeting glimpses” of horrors in refugee camps in the Konkani novella. The problem here is that unless

a writer has actually seen the horrors of the refugee camps with his own eyes, the description as borrowed from media images

is bound to be cursory and not in depth. But this is all a writer can do when writing about such events based on research and secondary

observation from movies and TV images.

 

I’d be interested in your review when you have read Tsunami Simon in English.    

 

All the best and Happy New Year 2014.

 

Ben

[augusto pinto]

Dear Ben who wrote:

 

I read your review of the Konkani version of Tsunami Simon and have a few comments.

 

1. A translation in English of a Konkani story would lose ‘something’ in translation, especially the Konkani

idioms and sayings so native to the language. 

Of course you are right. However, for me the interest would be regarding how the translator handled the job, because there is never just one way of translating a language. Look at the translations of the Bible.

 

     I’ve checked this with a Russian writer who reads and writes both in English and Russian. He told me that Lolita in Russian

feels different from the translated one in English. The point is whether the story in question is interesting or not. Madame Bovary in English

is exciting and interesting whether or not it is as elegant in French.

While what you say is true in a general way, what I'm pointing out is that the different dialects that Mauzo uses are rhetorically important and carry a lot of the burden of conveying the ethos of the story. Anyway, I'll come back on this when I actually read the book.

 

3. You refer to ‘'fleeting glimpses” of horrors in refugee camps in the Konkani novella. The problem here is that unless

a writer has actually seen the horrors of the refugee camps with his own eyes, the description as borrowed from media images

is bound to be cursory and not in depth. But this is all a writer can do when writing about such events based on research and secondary

observation from movies and TV images.

I'm not entirely with you here. No decent fiction could be written about the past if what what you say is correct. This is far from the case; and writers who thoroughly research their subjects can imaginatively recreate what happened when they were not even alive. 

It was far more easy to research into the tsunami which is an event for which thousands were eyewitness and regarding which documentation must be pretty solid.

 

I’d be interested in your review when you have read Tsunami Simon in English.

So would I ;-) Just that I'm a bit slow with these things. 

    

 

All the best and Happy New Year 2014.

 

Ben

And the same to you Ben!!

Augusto 

 

 

From: augusto pinto

Sent: Friday, December 27, 2013 9:12 AM

To: goa-bo...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: [GOABOOKCLUB] BOOK LINK: Tsunami Simon, by Damodar Mauzo (Ponytale Books)

 

Note:

I'm sending a review of Tsunami Simon that I had written when the Konkani version came out and which was part of a profile on Mauzo.

I haven't got my hands on the English translation as yet, but rereading my review, I see that it will be very interesting to find out how Xavier Cota has managed to juggle with the manner in which Mauzo has treated different Konkani dialects in the book. Those dialects were the focus of my review of the Konkani book.

The full article is here: http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/2009-April/177045.html

Augusto

Tsunami Simon

The first first few pages of Tsunami Simon give the impression that Mauzo is delivering a veiled commentary on the Konkani script/dialect issue.

What should be their standard dialect and script has been a millstone around the necks the Konkani speaking people in the recent past. This is a power struggle that started when the mainly Saraswat Brahmins elite of the Goan Hindu community  ensured that the Antruzi dialect they spoke became the official or standard dialect of Konkani with Devanagari as the official script. This became the standard taught in schools and colleges, and the Antruzi written in Devangari most easily gets grants and awards from the State and Central government. All this happened when Konkani written in the Devanagari script became the official language of the state along with Marathi which shares the same status. Later the Christian elites and others who felt discriminated against as they were not too comfortable with either the Antruzi dialect or the Devanagari script began to protest.

But there happen to be many other dialects of Konkani which are in turn marginalized by both the Hindu and Catholic elites -  the dialect of the Hindus of Pernem for instance, whose voice the poet Shashikant Punaji articulates in his work; or the dialect of the Saxtti  Christian Kharvi caste which in public discourse is heard only in tiatrs and that too mainly by subsidiary characters or in 'sideshows' by buffoon like figures.

Hence Mauzo in Tsunami Simon is bucking a trend by making Kharvis the protagonists of his story. These are  the Baptistas  whose head Gabru still uses the traditional manual Rampon method of fishing even as almost the rest of the world has switched over to the more profitable but environmentally degrading mechanised trawler method. Obviously the standard theme of most Indian literature - the clash between the modern and the traditional - is going to played out here too. But the voices of these Kharvis (who also use the elite  Bardezi dialect in Church rituals) is offset by the controlling Antruzi voice of the narrator who is a Bamon, as the Saraswat in Goa is called.

 

However there are also other voices that creep in - such as the 'Madrasi' accented Konkani of Gabru's brother-in-law Ponnudurai, once his worker, but who fell in love with Gabru's wife's sister Marcelina and eloped with her to his native state. And there is Hindi and Tamil and English which are also heard suggesting that Mauzo is unlike the Konkani, Marathi and English warriors who habitually battle for linguistic  supremacy in Goa . He perhaps realises that the real language of the land is a rich mix of many tongues.

The story is set around December 2004. The 12 year old son of the family Simon who gives the novelette its name is persuaded by his 'Mashan' or aunt, Marcelina who has come visiting to come back with her for a holiday to Tamil Nadu. Marcelina is now back on good terms with her sister's family after they reconciled themselves to accepting her Tamilian husband Ponnudurai, now the owner of a mechanised fishing boat in a coastal village of Tamil Nadu.

One gets little glimpses of the fishing community which is in a state of transition throughout the book. After their traditional occupation of fishing was hit by the advent of  mechanised trawlers Ramponkars are seeing still further changes happening before their very eyes. Many of their children are getting  educated and are working in white collar jobs and wish to shake off the stigma which they perceive is attached to their caste. Simon is a child who will very likely  break away from his family's way of life for now he is being slowly drawn into the modern world whose culture is dictated by Bollywood cinema, and he will  take to modern fads like learning Karate. However the story does not take us so far.

The backdrop is the great Boxing day Tsunami of 26 December 2004 which was triggered off by an underwater earthquake off Indonesia and which set off giant tidal waves that killed over 3 lakh people and maimed and rendered homeless many more. The tsunami hit the east coast of India and that is where Simon had been at the time, out in the sea fishing with his uncle Ponnu. Simon miraculously escapes as he clutches to the top of a coconut tree but his aunt and uncle are drowned along with many other fisher folk who were the most badly hit by the disaster.

The plot of the story takes us into a relief camp where Simon befriends a girl who is suffering from shock because of the Tsunami and has lost her ability to speak. He names her Mona and they both go through a series of adventures which reveal both the cruelty and the kindness of the world. Simon runs away from the camp with her when he realises that a couple who have come to allegedly adopt orphans may be planning to lure Mona into prostitution or at least slavery. In the meanwhile his distraught parents who come searching for him find he is missing; although there is some hope for them  as they find a picture of Simon featured in a newspaper.

In this book Mauzo has hit on an effective plot, one which gives him scope to dwell on several themes. However his decision to make his story into a short 150 page novelette or novella may have been a mistake. It results in the book giving only fleeting glimpses of such themes as the horrors of relief camps; and the difficulties faced by relief workers and NGOs in them; or the manner in which the media and others use of human tragedies to get publicity and who, when they have milked their subjects' publicity value away, will disappear; or the sexual and financial exploitation to which which street children and orphans are prey. Mauzo gives the impression that he does not wish to dwell too deeply into the darker aspects of human nature, for even the most villainous characters in his book will be seen to have some redeeming feature.

What finally happens to Simon and Mona and the Baptista family is best left for a reader to find out. For Goan readers Tsunami Simon should be read in the original Konkani, as translation would surely kill the lilt of the various voices in the book. Perhaps Mauzo should consider transliterating it into the Roman script. Although it may not be his master-work Tsunami Simon adds yet another tint to Mauzo's palette as he takes us on a tour of South India with Simon Baptista.

 

--

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[Ben Antao]

 

Augusto: I'm not entirely with you here. No decent fiction could be written about the past if what what you say is correct. This is far from the case; and writers who thoroughly research their subjects can imaginatively recreate what happened when they were not even alive. 

 

The key words here are ‘imaginatively recreate.’ Well, it is not easy to do this even for skilled writers. For example, Margaret Atwood, the Canadian literary icon,

in her Booker prize winning novel The Blind Assassin (2000) has a section about 1930s Depression days in Toronto. The description here felt stereotypical as if she

had borrowed recession images from newspapers. There was no imaginative recreation. Read this and you’ll see what I mean.

 

It was far more easy to research into the tsunami which is an event for which thousands were eyewitness and regarding which documentation must be pretty solid.

 

My view is that it takes a writer at least twenty years from the date of event to find the right perspective and recreate it in a story or novel. I’ve written about this writing issue on Goa Writers forum in the past. I feel Mauzo was too close to the tsunami (2004) to find the correct perspective when he began to write the novella. Further, if you read historical novels you’ll surely find that only a few writers can recreate the past with felicity of expression and detail.

 

Have a great New Year 2014.

This coming year should mark the 100th birth anniversary on Sep 17 of Lambert Mascarenhas, the Goan journalist and author,

living in Dona Paula, if God’s grace should be in his corner.

 

Ciao, Ben

 

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mailto:goa-book-club%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com.

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--


Augusto Pinto
40, Novo Portugal
Moira, Bardez
Goa, India
E pint...@gmail.com
P 0832-2470336
M 9881126350