Such talent should be encouraged, this book should be read and for the fun of it alone .... (Sheela Jaywant on *Gurus, Girls and a Dude Without a Plan*)
Frederick Noronha
Author: Derek Almeida. Illustrator: Fabian Gonsalves.
Publisher: Both of the Above.2026.
Number of pages: 136.
Price: Rs. 850.
After a long time, a refreshing light read. Took me back to the days of Asterix, Tintin, Phantom, etc. Contemporary, take swipes at what’s happening in India today without any touch of malice or rancour. Clean, wholesome fun, makes one smile at parallels in politics, without taking sides.
It took six years to become a book. That it makes one smile is to be expected; Almeida, who conceived it and wrote the text, has been an editor, a journalist, reporter, humour columnist and expert on Goa.
No, the book is not on or about Goa at all. It’s about a young man in love, trying to impress his girlfriend with money. He innocently bets on Bangladesh winning a cricket match, and wins a large sum of money. Naturally, along the way to his girlfriend’s village, he meets and gets accosted by villains. He cannot overcome his bad luck and decides to become a gau-rakshak to earn some moolah. His adventures don’t halt at cow catching, though. He meets and befriends a guru and spends some time in a forest, too, a modern one, with a mobile tower in it. The story rambled, twisted, but held my attention.
Won’t say it’s the calibre of the Asterix series, but it’s only the first issue. An experiment, paid for by cloud-funding, printed privately, produced very well.
The illustrator, as for any graphic novel (I still call them comics), is the one that has brought all conversations and characters to life. Fabian Gonsalves has given expressions to the cows and birds also. I can imagine the hard work, but cannot imagine this team of two took VI years, yes six, to bring out this book.
At times, I couldn’t help giggling whilst reading it alone. Pg 14: There are a bunch of men chasing a criminal. ‘Get him’, ‘Fry him’, ‘Drown him’, ‘Who are we chasing?’, ‘I’m in it for the cardio…’
Whilst mention of a teashop might appear politically incorrect to some readers, the context has nothing to do with the man at the helm in Delhi. It’s a pity now that the innocent tea-stall has unrelated connotations.
One character who is armed to the teeth actually does have steel or grey material on the incisors and minor molars, visible when he smiles. In some sentences, I read more than I should have: ‘We shall not be cowed down today…’ Another time, the girlfriend is named Gauri (Gau-ri, got it?). Maybe unintentional, but some readers may have a one-track mind.
As for names, one loser is called Outoflaq.
One incident mentioned in the book happened in real life a few days ago in Kerala, when a truck was stopped thinking it was carrying cows for meat; it turned out the cargo was chickens. In the book, there is a mention of very small cows being camouflaged as chickens, caught by the gaurakshaks.
The end could have been less loose/predictable, that’s the only negative I could dig out. All in all, such talent should be encouraged, this book should be read and for the fun of it alone.
Like eating an ice-cream cone. Personal savouring for pleasure and sharing with friends for multiplying the joy of it.
Must mention here, the Broadway Book Store in Panaji is one place where book lovers and time-passers must visit when in Goa. A wide range of titles, no one to rush you, and with many book launches like the one I attended today. We need more such spaces.
It’s hard work to bring out such a book; I hope Derek Almeida and Fabian Gonsalves bring out many more.
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_/ Frederick Noronha फ्रेडरिक नोरोन्या * فريدريك نورونيا
_/ AUDIO https://archive.org/details/@fredericknoronha
_/ http://goa1556.in +91-9822122436 784 Saligao Goa
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