João da Veiga Coutinho 1918-2015
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Duarte Braga
May 26, 2023, 10:54:19 AM5/26/23
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Dear all, I am writing a paper on João da veiga Coutinho's impressive book A Kind of Absence. There is very little biographical info on him, can anyone please help me with some info? I was also wondering if there are other writings by him/on him, since it is very difficult to gather info on him.
Best wishes
--
Duarte Drumond Braga
Investigador | Researcher
Centro de Estudos Comparatistas | Centre for Comparative Studies
Faculdade de Letras | School of Arts and Humanities
Universidade de Lisboa | University of Lisbon
Valmiki Faleiro
May 26, 2023, 11:27:40 AM5/26/23
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Dear Duarte,
The Veiga Coutinho family is a kind of neighbour.
If you send me, privately ( valm...@gmail.com ) your contacts, I will put you in touch with the family.
They have, just days ago, lost a contemporary sibling's widow ... husband Bulão da Veiga Coutinho (a highly talented person) was my mate at school.
Agree with you, João (a former Catholic priest) was a very talented person -- didn't have the op to meet him but I could surmise after reading 'A Kind of Absence'.
Best, v
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Frederick Noronha
May 26, 2023, 12:00:19 PM5/26/23
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This is what the journalist-author Ben Antao wrote from Canada in 2009 (Victor Rangel-Ribeiro could probably tell you more once the sun rises in his part of the world):
From: Ben Antao <ben.antao@rogers. com>
I just picked up the book from my bookcase and read the autograph that Joao da Veiga Coutinho
wrote on the flyleaf "To Ben Antao: Best regards. I hope you get as
much pleasure out of my book as I got from yours. Dec 1997". He was
referring to my memoir Images of Goa published in 1990.
When he visited Toronto in July 1999
with his wife and son, I met him at the hotel and we had lunch. He was
quite frail going on about 81 or 82. I had a passerby take a photo of
us, but you can't see the face clearly as he was wearing a cap.
I read his book many times, in small
doses; it's what I call a meditation on the Goan condition. I'd written a
short reflection on it, which is saved in my old computer. I'll look it
up later and may send it to you if interested.
Here are a couple of quotes from the last chapter Genesis.
2. "There is no single way of being
Goan. The history of which we are the product has impacted different
groups in different ways. It is geography and biology that have given
the term such unity as it seems to have."
In a yellow lined "Post it" note stuck
on the flyleaf, he wrote: "I would appreciate a short list of potential
serious readers--if it is not too much trouble. Thanks. JdaVC"
End of quote. FN
--
Frederick Noronha
May 26, 2023, 12:08:40 PM5/26/23
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Dom Moraes apparently wrote the review below (needs to be verified)... FN
Goan exile: in
search of an identity
Somebody
recently sent me a slim paperback called "A Kind of Absence: Life in the
Shadow of History". The author has a very melodious name. João da Veiga
Coutinho, and the blurb tells me that he was born in Margão, but now lives
in Philadelphia. He would seem to be a fairly elderly person, and to have
traveled widely in the course of his career. The book is very difficult to
describe. On the surface it is a collection of essays and fragmentary prose
pieces, but they do not seem to be particularly connected in terms of
chronology. What connects them is that they are all to do with the theme of
exile. The theme interests me. Wherever I have lived I have felt an exile,
and this would worry me less if I knew from where.
The book is about
a specific kind of exile: the exile of Goans from their homeland. The author
seems obsessive about the great numbers of Goans who have traveled, and in
many cases settled, in other countries, and he seems to find this a unique
phenomenon. I don’t think it is at all. I have spent the last few months
traveling through India in search of a book, and in every state I have
visited there is a long history of people who have gone abroad to better
their fortunes in one way or another.
Two Asian countries, the two
largest, China and India, are like this. They have continually been
overpopulated, in the sense that they have always had populations too large
to be sustained by the resources and available technologies of the time. So
people left their birthplaces, at first to look for a life somewhere else in
the country, then, as travel became possible, to look for it
overseas.
Wherever one goes in the world today one sees Chinese
faces, or some indications of Chinese blood; in many places one sees
Indians. Where in India they come from is irrelevant. The numbers that have
left Punjab probably equal the numbers that have left Kerala. That Goa has a
monopoly on exiles is simply not true. The Indian subcontinent has been left
by millions of people over the last two centuries.
But Mr. Coutinho
also inquires into the components of an exile, particularly a Goan exile,
and he seems to take himself as an example. He says that his childhood
memories of Goa are sharp. He recollects the kinds of plants he saw, or
smelt, or touched. But he tells us that he now cannot describe them, since
throughout his schooldays, presumably under the Portuguese, he was forbidden
to use the Konkani words which to him were the natural names for various
kinds of flora and fauna. Some part of this book is well conceived, but it
is also confused, and it uses too many words to describe what, when it comes
down to it, are relatively simple ideas. However, it is a book deeply
committed to itself, and some part of it is very well written.
There
are several ways to look at Goan history, most of which Mr. Coutinho
refutes. What he cannot refute comes down to the simple fact that Goa is a
small place, and that for much of its history it was situated on islands,
like Bombay before the British. It was therefore more or less cut off from
the more important events on the mainland, or they affected it at a second
hand. Any event that affected Goa directly, like the Portuguese invasion and
occupation, naturally had a more powerful effect on the people that it might
have done on the mainland. This produced some curious results. Goan Hindus
submitted to conversion but retained their original casts, almost like
Talismans.
Goan Christianity had other unique features, amongst them
the fact that it was practised with slight local differences from village to
village, as Hinduism had been. The territory drifted rudderless for four
centuries under Portuguese rule, and during this time many people left it
for unmysterious reasons, like the need for employment. In 1961 the mainland
once more directly affected Goa, this time by the Indian occupation or
liberation or whatever one wants to call it. This has had some fortunate
effects and some which are far from fortunate. A great influx of people from
the mainland has caused the state to lose the identity it acquired through
four centuries of colonisation, the only real identity it had ever had. It
has not yet acquired a wholly Indian identity. If and when it does, it will
be like any other small Indian state, allowing for local idiosyncrasies. The
whole reason for Mr. Coutinho’s quixotic quest will disappear.
Many
people have commented on the fact that Goans have a strong sense of their
homeland, which is why so many of them return to it.
These remarks
have been prompted by the decisions of the two famous and sophisticated
Goans to live in the state they were born. Mario Miranda went back to his
ancestral house at Loutolim, Frank Simões built a beautiful villa at
Candolim. Many other Goans have returned home with less publicity, and of
course many other people non-Goans have chosen to live there of late,
because it is a pleasant place to live.
All over India and the world
there are Punjabis who want to retire to Punjab, Keralites who want to go
home. It is a very Indian trait to want to end your life where you started
it. In fact, the modern Indian urban population is still close to its rural
roots.
People still want to identify with the village of their
ancestors. It is worth note the memories of village life that called Miranda
and Simões back to Goa, and which seem to inspire Mr. Coutinho in his search
for the identity of the Goan exile. But judging from what I saw when I was
in Goa last November, soon even the villages may have
vanished.
Panjim, Goa
February 14, 1999
The above
review appeared in the February 14, 1999 edition of The Herald,
Goa.
Frederick Noronha
May 26, 2023, 12:12:28 PM5/26/23
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My comments on the above review (unpublished, written circa 2009) --FN:
>> India they come from is irrelevant. The numbers that have left Punjab
>> probably equal the numbers that have left Kerala. That Goa has a monopoly on
>> exiles is simply not true. The Indian subcontinent has been left by millions
>> of people over the last two centuries.
>> probably equal the numbers that have left Kerala. That Goa has a monopoly on
>> exiles is simply not true. The Indian subcontinent has been left by millions
>> of people over the last two centuries.
Nobody denies that in absolute numbers Goa is completely insignificant
in the South Asian migration story. However, that does not deny two
facts (i) that Goans have been migrating overseas for approx 150 years
or more, much before others parts saw opportunity in large-scale
migration or was compelled by circumstance to do so. One exception is
the British-fuelled indenture labour, but that is another kind of
migration altogether, with the population that went out integrating
completely with their new areas and not planning or dreaming of a
return afaik (ii) Goa's migration, per capita, has been very high.
About the highest in the world (if I recall Robert Newman right, at
levels of countries of Lebanon, Cyprus and other depleted-by-migration
societies....)
in the South Asian migration story. However, that does not deny two
facts (i) that Goans have been migrating overseas for approx 150 years
or more, much before others parts saw opportunity in large-scale
migration or was compelled by circumstance to do so. One exception is
the British-fuelled indenture labour, but that is another kind of
migration altogether, with the population that went out integrating
completely with their new areas and not planning or dreaming of a
return afaik (ii) Goa's migration, per capita, has been very high.
About the highest in the world (if I recall Robert Newman right, at
levels of countries of Lebanon, Cyprus and other depleted-by-migration
societies....)
>> colonisation, the only real identity it had ever had. It has not yet
>> acquired a wholly Indian identity. If and when it does, it will be like any
>> other small Indian state, allowing for local idiosyncrasies. The whole
>> reason for Mr. Coutinho’s quixotic quest will disappear.
Btw, what is a "wholly Indian identity"? Is there any such thing? I
thought every state was unique in its own way, and even the Hindi
speaking belt has its own uniqueness among the areas there.
This kind of thinking of the 'mainstream' and the 'periphery' in a
country with the diversity of India is both simplistic and misleading,
in my view.
thought every state was unique in its own way, and even the Hindi
speaking belt has its own uniqueness among the areas there.
This kind of thinking of the 'mainstream' and the 'periphery' in a
country with the diversity of India is both simplistic and misleading,
in my view.
>> These remarks have been prompted by the decisions of the two famous and
>> sophisticated Goans to live in the state they were born. Mario Miranda went
>> back to his ancestral house at Loutolim, Frank Simões built a beautiful
>> villa at Candolim. Many other Goans have returned home with less publicity,
>> and of course many other people non-Goans have chosen to live there of late,
>> because it is a pleasant place to live.
Again some more stereotyped thinking by someone who seems to
understand Goa only through a few big names. But just because the
writer isn't aware of trends or people beyond Simoes and Miranda, does
it mean they don't exist?
This is like New Delhi deciding it's time that its time that someone
with a Goan sounding name deserves some national award, and they opt
for the most cliched Goans available, i.e. those who are popular in
the 'national mindset' but might not be known or too relevant back
home.
Even more pretentious is the Times of India Goa edition which tries to
define Goa through the three-to-four prominent Goans it has created
through its own projections in places like Bombay. So, stereotype
feeding further stereotype....
understand Goa only through a few big names. But just because the
writer isn't aware of trends or people beyond Simoes and Miranda, does
it mean they don't exist?
This is like New Delhi deciding it's time that its time that someone
with a Goan sounding name deserves some national award, and they opt
for the most cliched Goans available, i.e. those who are popular in
the 'national mindset' but might not be known or too relevant back
home.
Even more pretentious is the Times of India Goa edition which tries to
define Goa through the three-to-four prominent Goans it has created
through its own projections in places like Bombay. So, stereotype
feeding further stereotype....
V M
May 26, 2023, 12:24:06 PM5/26/23
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In the time + context in which it was written, A Kind of Absence was an invaluable little book, and did find many of its intended readers.
My recommendation to Duarte is to contact the publisher Ralph Nazareth: ralphn...@mac.com
VM
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Frederick Noronha
May 26, 2023, 12:30:27 PM5/26/23
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Here's what Robert S Newman (who has reviewed literally hundreds of books) wrote on amazon.com:
Top review from the United States
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 13, 2009
Goa, now a bustling, overcrowded, tourist haven on the Arabian
Sea coast of India south of Mumbai, used to be a sleepy backwater lost
to the world in a Portuguese colonial empire that had forgotten to look
at the clock. A Portuguese-speaking elite dominated the place for many
years, Catholic by religion, Indian by blood, and belonging almost
exclusively to the Brahmin caste [which they had never discarded on
conversion]. In 1961, when the Indian army arrived to expel the
long-lingering Portuguese, this elite abruptly lost its privileges.
Unlike say, the Soviet occupation of various places, nobody was shot,
nobody jailed. All you had to do was join the new rulers, sit back and
fume silently, or, if you desired, exile yourself to Portugal, North
America, or anywhere you could find a secure spot. But now, absorbed
into the new India, a nation teeming with linguistic, religious, ethnic,
and caste minorities, Goans began to wonder "who am I and how do I fit
into such an enormous society ?" The present volume is a very
intelligent, thoughtful, long essay on that topic. The author, a
Catholic Brahmin ex-priest from an elite family living at the very
center of the Indo-Portuguese world in Goa, ponders what it means to be
Goan. Couched in clear, almost lyrical language, it is an attempt to
establish a Goan identity, a series of inquiries conducted at times as a
dialogue with persons unknown, or maybe with himself. The modern
world, as the author notes, has created untold millions of people
without much identity.....the alienated masses, if you like. I admired
this attempt and consider it a valuable book for Goans in particular and
for anyone wishing to understand more about that small, coconut-palm
shaded corner of the world.
My criticism is that the book does not go far enough; the author cannot burst the bonds of his own past. Nobody can do that a hundred percent, fair enough. But if you are going to write on anthropological themes, you must, to some extent, get beyond your own perspectives and the biases you absorbed in childhood. Da Veiga Coutinho sees India as "the other", not as "us". It is alien and scary, dirty, crumbling, chaotic. He rejects any possibility that it could be "home". There are two kinds of Catholic Goans: the christianized and the lusitanized. The former are Catholic, but Indian in most sensibilities. They make up the vast majority of Catholic Goans....even if they disparage what they see as Bad Habits from Beyond the Ghats, they remain--to an outsider's eye, irrevocably Indian. The lusitanized Goans saw themselves as Portuguese, spoke Portuguese, and were actually able to fit into Portuguese society. These were a minority, many of whom now live in Portugal, Europe or North America. There is also a large class of English-educated Goan emigrants to [mainly] the Anglo-Saxon world. In their struggle to succeed and fit in, they have lost their identity to a large extent. Their travails are another matter, however, separate from the content of this book. The truth is that Goa has never ceased to be Indian over the centuries, no matter what the Church or the Salazar regime claimed. To recognize this is the necessary first step in forging a Goan identity. I feel that da Veiga Coutinho was still in denial. He felt more Portuguese than Indian. His personal story is interesting and poetic; his take on the whole matter is divorced from his Indian roots.
My criticism is that the book does not go far enough; the author cannot burst the bonds of his own past. Nobody can do that a hundred percent, fair enough. But if you are going to write on anthropological themes, you must, to some extent, get beyond your own perspectives and the biases you absorbed in childhood. Da Veiga Coutinho sees India as "the other", not as "us". It is alien and scary, dirty, crumbling, chaotic. He rejects any possibility that it could be "home". There are two kinds of Catholic Goans: the christianized and the lusitanized. The former are Catholic, but Indian in most sensibilities. They make up the vast majority of Catholic Goans....even if they disparage what they see as Bad Habits from Beyond the Ghats, they remain--to an outsider's eye, irrevocably Indian. The lusitanized Goans saw themselves as Portuguese, spoke Portuguese, and were actually able to fit into Portuguese society. These were a minority, many of whom now live in Portugal, Europe or North America. There is also a large class of English-educated Goan emigrants to [mainly] the Anglo-Saxon world. In their struggle to succeed and fit in, they have lost their identity to a large extent. Their travails are another matter, however, separate from the content of this book. The truth is that Goa has never ceased to be Indian over the centuries, no matter what the Church or the Salazar regime claimed. To recognize this is the necessary first step in forging a Goan identity. I feel that da Veiga Coutinho was still in denial. He felt more Portuguese than Indian. His personal story is interesting and poetic; his take on the whole matter is divorced from his Indian roots.
Frederick Noronha
May 26, 2023, 2:29:49 PM5/26/23
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A review of the book:
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Absence: what a Goan writer finds when he embarks on a journey
Eusebio L. Rodrigues, who has been at Georgetown
University's English Department, takes a closer look
at Joao da Veiga Coutinho's "A Kind of Absence: Life
in the Shadows of History" (Yuganta Press,
Connecticut, 1997), and finds the author's search has
taught him many things. Including the lesson that
there is no single way of being a Goan. And that Goans
were among the first to experience a dislocating sense
of exile that is modern; and that Goans must learn to
live without roots, and replace roots with horizons in
order to see a world of infinite possibility. Says the
reviewer: "I hope this review will trigger questions
about what it means to be a Goan."
Eusebio L. Rodrigues
Joao da Veiga Coutinho, a Goan whose inner depths have been
disturbed by mysterious eruptions, writes 'A Kind of Absence:
Life in the Shadows of History' to understand what is happening
to him. He undertakes a painful return to the self he was, so
that the act of writing becomes an invitation to a voyage of
discovery. A shy sensitive seeker he will exhume his buried
self, not to tell all, but to toss out bits and pieces that his
reader has to put together before meanings can emerge.
These emerge reluctantly in spurts of meditations, comments,
musings. They erupt out of a life that is deliberately not
channeled into autobiography -- that would be just a construct
-- but as an erratic, bubbling flow, a random quest crowded with
questions.
It is a two fold quest. That of a writer who begins a
search for he knows not what, one who sets forth to
understand his Goanness, and who insists also that his
reader come along with him on a parallel quest. He
talks to his reader, but keeps him at the distance
proper to art. He offers the reader insights but no
explanations, compels him to experience his own
hesitancies, his broodings, his speculations. Treats
the reader as a kinsman, a Goan frPre, capable of
sharing the experience and of understanding its
meaning.
The journey opens with a meditation on history in general and on
Goan history in particular. No generalizations on history are
offered, for the writer will not trap himself in a definition.
History, an ongoing process, involves time, and time never
stops, it flows. Our writer is a Bakhtinian with a dialogical
imagination.
He begins with the Portuguese intrusion, as he calls it, out of
which both reader and writer have sprung, a traumatic episode in
the life of Goa, of India, and indeed in the history of the
world. He refuses to elaborate at this stage, trusting that his
reader will remember traumatic events like the fall of
Constantinople in 1453. But he will not refer to this fall.
Instead, he leaps into texts that have sketched Goan history
hoping for answers to his questions. He will not describe these
writings either, six or seven of them, written mostly by Goans,
nor will he attack their views. They, like him, were fellow
Goans after all, they were searching for something.
So he has exchanges with them.
* With an old French missionary, whose book, its
title, alas, forgotten, had made Old Goa come alive
for the writer’s father who used to make the little
boy accompany him on his rambles through the Old
City.
* With José Nicolau da Fonseca whose book on Goa,
based on cold statistical facts, was a solid
contribution to the British Imperial Gazetteer of
India.
* With Gerson da Cunha who felt completely at home in
the British colonial world, and quite uneasy about
his Goanness.
* With Father Gabriel Saldanha who willingly assumed a
Portuguese identity.
* With Socrates da Costa who lived comfortably in the
shadow of the Portuguese.
* With Claude Saldanha who was convinced that Goa was
a distinct separate country
* With Peregrino da Costa and Bento de Souza who
praise the absorptive quality of Goans that allowed
them to enter the modern world.
* With A. K. Priolkar for whom the coming of the
Portuguese was a mere stain on Indian history to be
wiped away and forgotten.
A marvelous compression of observations on the Goan self this
chapter, with its enigmatic title, Conversations with the Dead.
Pleasant conversations, unlike the quarrels at a gathering of
immigrants in America mentioned in the opening chapter, where a
cynical Goan observes, Goans are like coconuts, brown on the
outside, white inside.
In this chapter, Goan writers and their books are tossed out
casually, no explanatory footnotes are offered. For the writer
expects his reader to know the Goan texts and be familiar with
them. They are handled lightly, only their essence is revealed.
They allow the writer to present earlier dated views of
Goanness, ones that do not satisfy his Goan sensibility. He does
not want to quarrel with them, just wants to talk to them and
about them.
But these talks are, as the chapter title states, conversations
with the dead. The word "dead" sends forth subtle vibrations of
double meaning for the sensitive reader, who begins to be aware
of the writer’s literary skills.
The reference to the dialogical imagination and to the phrase
"archaeological site" (33) for a Goan points to the writer’s
familiarity with the terms of modern literary criticism. He
makes use of the devices of the French symbolists like
Baudelaire, tries out the organizational techniques of T. S.
Eliot, the breaks, the jumps, the allusions. Introduces moments
of epiphany. As when, on a visit to a wall-less ruined church in
Bassein, he rushes up a naked flight of stairs to gaze on an
emptiness, a nowhere, an absence: "I found myself before a sort
of mirror, face to face with myself, my world (17)."
Above all, our writer is highly conscious of language.
Of two languages really. There is a later Portuguese
version of the book, based on the English one,
slightly longer, packed with vowels, syllables,
nasals, making us aware of the writer’s two languages,
the one he studied when he was in Goa, and the one he
learned when he moved away. Language is integral, he
realizes, to being, to his becoming, to the self. Is
inextricably involved with land, with motherland, with
his homeland, with home. His own written language is
nuanced
-- with Konkani songs and phrases of his childhood,
-- with the Portuguese he studied in school,
-- with the Latin of Lent and the Holy Week,
-- with the French of the symbolists.
Later, he remembers what the Duino Elegies of Rainer Maria Rilke
had taught him, the supreme human need for language in order to
exist. Perhaps he needs to discover his true language.
Memories make him jump to Madhya Pradesh where a chicken farm
has been "sliced" (a powerful verb) into rooms for a new
seminary to which he has been sent to devise a curriculum. He
felt an alien here, unmoved by the ancestral presences in river
and on the land, alienated from the language and from the land,
especially when he listens to a baptismal ceremony performed in
Hindi which the whole congregation, but not he, could
understand. Another jump, this time a leap of insight.
He thinks about Goa and about 16th century baptisms conducted in
Latin.
Goans have had their language and the sacred presences
in their soil torn out of their being. Horrified
missionaries banned heathen rites. Churches were
erected on the smashed ruins of temples, just as
mosques in India were often built out of temple
stones. The black and white picture photo on the front
cover presents the hieratic encounter of two sacred
forces seared into the writer’s memory: "In the middle
of the square facing the church, next to the cruzeiro,
the white stuccoed monument surmounted by a black
cross, stands a tree. It is said to be there since
before the church, a silent witness to the sacredness
of the site and to ceremonies once performed in honor
of the exiled divinity (43)."
Yet another leap, an actual one this time, on to a plane bound
via Delhi to Goa, "that uncertain homeland," which he had left
he knew not why and to which he feels compelled to return, why
he knows not: "An unbearable sense of absence colors everything
he sees. He begins a search for he knows not what (73)."
The reader has to be aware of two kinds of search, an outer and
an inner, that merge and dissolve. And use two sets of eyes.
One, for the physical realities of the world the writer had left
a long time ago which has greatly changed. The other will
function only after readjustment, after he has slowed down his
senses and reordered his stunned being, for it involves vision
and memory.
His eye aches as the mind notes erosions in his once familiar
world. Notes: that the ancestral house has aged and gathered
dust; that the old school house looks ill; that the houses on
the street are occupied by strangers; that a whole generation he
had known has vanished into the past.
But this pain, this loss, slowly eases away. It is not
the mind but the senses that have to create his
homeland, his world, the taste and smell of things. He
does not see the land but can smell its faint
fragrance. His being is filled with memories of the
past, with the lost density of his childhood where his
becoming began. But he will not indulge in nostalgia.
He begins to do zazen (76), to sit and meditate. And
re-create his lost world by writing Genesis.
A daring chapter this, the last and longest one, into which the
writer packs his being and his becoming. The Biblical
announcement of the title makes the fifty pages reverberate, and
trumpet forth meanings that jostle and crowd together. It’s
messy this birth, his rebirth, so don’t expect a neat ordered
whole. For different awarenesses, sensations, thoughts, flood
the chapter, so that meanings bubble up like the smells of Goan
paddy fields after the monsoon rains.
The structural order of A Kind of Absence is a fusion of music
and poetry, that of a fado heard in a night club in the Alfama
that senses the lacrimae rerum.
The smells of memory, of the seasons, begin. Memories of the
past and the reality of the present blend together. The rains
revive and generate the smells of the land of his childhood. And
the writer longingly evokes the past seasons, as if the air is
thick with smells and colors of the sacred land. "This is the
time the earth chooses to put out its boldest colors. The
gulmohur catches fire. The pink, the yellow and brown cassia,
the occasional jacaranda hallucinate in the shimmering air
(86)." It is spring that pervades the air: "One knows that the
cashew and the mango are in bloom but the blossoms are almost
invisible, only specks or a touch of red among the foliage
(87)."
A scene out of his past in America bubbles out -- a visit to the
university health center (100) wanting to talk about the
emptiness within him, a sense of absence, the feeling that there
is nowhere to go, no country he belongs to.
He talks to someone called Jones (significantly, the name is of
Freud’s English disciple) who suggests he write, a cure the
writer has prescribed for himself a long time ago, not as
therapy but as a form of spiritual exercise: And he knows why he
has to: "To find the proper human posture, the posture
appropriate to one’s lot and situation. To be restored to
childhood. To still the inner uproar and eventually achieve
silence and with luck perhaps song or laughter (76)."
He proceeds to write.
History and the history of Goa provide the musical background to
his account, vivid, imagistic and impressionistic, not burdened
with factual detail. Europe, as Fernando Pessoa saw it, gazing
across the ocean with greedy eyes on the East at the beginning
of the 16th century.
Tiny Portugal as the first intruder, thirsty for
wealth, drunk with the will to power, armed with naos
and bombards, grabbing a piece of the Indian coast in
order to exercise control over it. Three experiments:
the casados (married men) of Albuquerque which failed;
the unsuccessful ‘Portuguesing’ of the subjects; and
the christianization of the territory, not achieved
through pure evangelization (as was the daring but
limited mode of Roberto de Nobili and of Matteo Ricci)
but by having the land’s "space and time symbols
changed, its language and sacred ecology transformed,
the yearly calendar and seasonal celebrations altered
(106)."
The Portuguese introduced a new culture, a new life, into Goa,
ecclesiastical, spun around the city and the church. The city
was not significant to the writer as a child, except when he
absorbed it on his rambles through Old Goa with his father and
the book of the French missionary.
What he passionately observed and absorbed were the celebrations
and activities of the parish, his home and the church that left
a deep impress on the little one’s sensibilities.
Some were personal, like the celebration of Father’s birthday.
Others took place in the warm atmosphere of the home: the
response to the Angelus bell, the daily reciting of the Rosary.
Many events revolved around the church -— the feast of the
Sacred Heart, the rites on Passion Sunday and the rituals of
Holy Week. It is all lovingly recalled, these events enacted in
Christian space, and lovingly set down so that they will always
be present, and the writer will never suffer a kind of absence.
It is a certain way of always being there, of being a Goan, for
himself as a Goan.
The search has taught him many things: that there is
no single way of being a Goan; that we are no longer
the tribe he referred to at the beginning, one with a
collective identity; that we Goans were among the
first to experience a dislocating sense of exile that
is modern; that Goans must learn to live without
roots, and that we must replace roots with horizons in
order to see a world of infinite possibility; that
what we Goans do have is a sense of freedom.
Dawn is near. Life must go on. The fado will end but its echoes
will linger, for it speaks of universal human longing. We step
out into the dawn with a sense of loss, and yet of possibility,
with a sense of sadness that reaches out to joy. Reconciled to
the human condition, knowing that the search is over, the writer
sings softly to himself about his feeling of freedom:
Another winter is over. I went out for my first long
walk after the months of confinement and saw the
harbinger crocuses. In the fields behind the house
flocks of mallardsare resting before the homeward
flight. Scattered heaps of snow from the last storm
are fast melting, the creeks is filling with the small
noise of tumbling waters. The sound that set me
dreaming in my youth now invites me to remember.
(126-27)
Notes:
1. Joao da Veiga Coutinho, A Kind of Absence: Life in the
Shadows of History, Yuganta Press, Connecticut, 1997.
2. Joao da Veiga Coutinho, Uma espécie de ausLncia, Cotovia,
Fundacao Oriente, Lisboa, 2000.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
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Goa-related writing among the growing readership of Goanet and its
allied network of mailing lists. If you appreciate the above article,
please send in your feedback to the writer. Our writers share what they
have written pro bono, and deserve hearing back from those who
appreciate their work. Goanet Reader too welcomes your feedback at
goa...@goanet.org Goanet Reader is edited by Frederick Noronha
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
##########################################################################
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Absence: what a Goan writer finds when he embarks on a journey
Eusebio L. Rodrigues, who has been at Georgetown
University's English Department, takes a closer look
at Joao da Veiga Coutinho's "A Kind of Absence: Life
in the Shadows of History" (Yuganta Press,
Connecticut, 1997), and finds the author's search has
taught him many things. Including the lesson that
there is no single way of being a Goan. And that Goans
were among the first to experience a dislocating sense
of exile that is modern; and that Goans must learn to
live without roots, and replace roots with horizons in
order to see a world of infinite possibility. Says the
reviewer: "I hope this review will trigger questions
about what it means to be a Goan."
Eusebio L. Rodrigues
Joao da Veiga Coutinho, a Goan whose inner depths have been
disturbed by mysterious eruptions, writes 'A Kind of Absence:
Life in the Shadows of History' to understand what is happening
to him. He undertakes a painful return to the self he was, so
that the act of writing becomes an invitation to a voyage of
discovery. A shy sensitive seeker he will exhume his buried
self, not to tell all, but to toss out bits and pieces that his
reader has to put together before meanings can emerge.
These emerge reluctantly in spurts of meditations, comments,
musings. They erupt out of a life that is deliberately not
channeled into autobiography -- that would be just a construct
-- but as an erratic, bubbling flow, a random quest crowded with
questions.
It is a two fold quest. That of a writer who begins a
search for he knows not what, one who sets forth to
understand his Goanness, and who insists also that his
reader come along with him on a parallel quest. He
talks to his reader, but keeps him at the distance
proper to art. He offers the reader insights but no
explanations, compels him to experience his own
hesitancies, his broodings, his speculations. Treats
the reader as a kinsman, a Goan frPre, capable of
sharing the experience and of understanding its
meaning.
The journey opens with a meditation on history in general and on
Goan history in particular. No generalizations on history are
offered, for the writer will not trap himself in a definition.
History, an ongoing process, involves time, and time never
stops, it flows. Our writer is a Bakhtinian with a dialogical
imagination.
He begins with the Portuguese intrusion, as he calls it, out of
which both reader and writer have sprung, a traumatic episode in
the life of Goa, of India, and indeed in the history of the
world. He refuses to elaborate at this stage, trusting that his
reader will remember traumatic events like the fall of
Constantinople in 1453. But he will not refer to this fall.
Instead, he leaps into texts that have sketched Goan history
hoping for answers to his questions. He will not describe these
writings either, six or seven of them, written mostly by Goans,
nor will he attack their views. They, like him, were fellow
Goans after all, they were searching for something.
So he has exchanges with them.
* With an old French missionary, whose book, its
title, alas, forgotten, had made Old Goa come alive
for the writer’s father who used to make the little
boy accompany him on his rambles through the Old
City.
* With José Nicolau da Fonseca whose book on Goa,
based on cold statistical facts, was a solid
contribution to the British Imperial Gazetteer of
India.
* With Gerson da Cunha who felt completely at home in
the British colonial world, and quite uneasy about
his Goanness.
* With Father Gabriel Saldanha who willingly assumed a
Portuguese identity.
* With Socrates da Costa who lived comfortably in the
shadow of the Portuguese.
* With Claude Saldanha who was convinced that Goa was
a distinct separate country
* With Peregrino da Costa and Bento de Souza who
praise the absorptive quality of Goans that allowed
them to enter the modern world.
* With A. K. Priolkar for whom the coming of the
Portuguese was a mere stain on Indian history to be
wiped away and forgotten.
A marvelous compression of observations on the Goan self this
chapter, with its enigmatic title, Conversations with the Dead.
Pleasant conversations, unlike the quarrels at a gathering of
immigrants in America mentioned in the opening chapter, where a
cynical Goan observes, Goans are like coconuts, brown on the
outside, white inside.
In this chapter, Goan writers and their books are tossed out
casually, no explanatory footnotes are offered. For the writer
expects his reader to know the Goan texts and be familiar with
them. They are handled lightly, only their essence is revealed.
They allow the writer to present earlier dated views of
Goanness, ones that do not satisfy his Goan sensibility. He does
not want to quarrel with them, just wants to talk to them and
about them.
But these talks are, as the chapter title states, conversations
with the dead. The word "dead" sends forth subtle vibrations of
double meaning for the sensitive reader, who begins to be aware
of the writer’s literary skills.
The reference to the dialogical imagination and to the phrase
"archaeological site" (33) for a Goan points to the writer’s
familiarity with the terms of modern literary criticism. He
makes use of the devices of the French symbolists like
Baudelaire, tries out the organizational techniques of T. S.
Eliot, the breaks, the jumps, the allusions. Introduces moments
of epiphany. As when, on a visit to a wall-less ruined church in
Bassein, he rushes up a naked flight of stairs to gaze on an
emptiness, a nowhere, an absence: "I found myself before a sort
of mirror, face to face with myself, my world (17)."
Above all, our writer is highly conscious of language.
Of two languages really. There is a later Portuguese
version of the book, based on the English one,
slightly longer, packed with vowels, syllables,
nasals, making us aware of the writer’s two languages,
the one he studied when he was in Goa, and the one he
learned when he moved away. Language is integral, he
realizes, to being, to his becoming, to the self. Is
inextricably involved with land, with motherland, with
his homeland, with home. His own written language is
nuanced
-- with Konkani songs and phrases of his childhood,
-- with the Portuguese he studied in school,
-- with the Latin of Lent and the Holy Week,
-- with the French of the symbolists.
Later, he remembers what the Duino Elegies of Rainer Maria Rilke
had taught him, the supreme human need for language in order to
exist. Perhaps he needs to discover his true language.
Memories make him jump to Madhya Pradesh where a chicken farm
has been "sliced" (a powerful verb) into rooms for a new
seminary to which he has been sent to devise a curriculum. He
felt an alien here, unmoved by the ancestral presences in river
and on the land, alienated from the language and from the land,
especially when he listens to a baptismal ceremony performed in
Hindi which the whole congregation, but not he, could
understand. Another jump, this time a leap of insight.
He thinks about Goa and about 16th century baptisms conducted in
Latin.
Goans have had their language and the sacred presences
in their soil torn out of their being. Horrified
missionaries banned heathen rites. Churches were
erected on the smashed ruins of temples, just as
mosques in India were often built out of temple
stones. The black and white picture photo on the front
cover presents the hieratic encounter of two sacred
forces seared into the writer’s memory: "In the middle
of the square facing the church, next to the cruzeiro,
the white stuccoed monument surmounted by a black
cross, stands a tree. It is said to be there since
before the church, a silent witness to the sacredness
of the site and to ceremonies once performed in honor
of the exiled divinity (43)."
Yet another leap, an actual one this time, on to a plane bound
via Delhi to Goa, "that uncertain homeland," which he had left
he knew not why and to which he feels compelled to return, why
he knows not: "An unbearable sense of absence colors everything
he sees. He begins a search for he knows not what (73)."
The reader has to be aware of two kinds of search, an outer and
an inner, that merge and dissolve. And use two sets of eyes.
One, for the physical realities of the world the writer had left
a long time ago which has greatly changed. The other will
function only after readjustment, after he has slowed down his
senses and reordered his stunned being, for it involves vision
and memory.
His eye aches as the mind notes erosions in his once familiar
world. Notes: that the ancestral house has aged and gathered
dust; that the old school house looks ill; that the houses on
the street are occupied by strangers; that a whole generation he
had known has vanished into the past.
But this pain, this loss, slowly eases away. It is not
the mind but the senses that have to create his
homeland, his world, the taste and smell of things. He
does not see the land but can smell its faint
fragrance. His being is filled with memories of the
past, with the lost density of his childhood where his
becoming began. But he will not indulge in nostalgia.
He begins to do zazen (76), to sit and meditate. And
re-create his lost world by writing Genesis.
A daring chapter this, the last and longest one, into which the
writer packs his being and his becoming. The Biblical
announcement of the title makes the fifty pages reverberate, and
trumpet forth meanings that jostle and crowd together. It’s
messy this birth, his rebirth, so don’t expect a neat ordered
whole. For different awarenesses, sensations, thoughts, flood
the chapter, so that meanings bubble up like the smells of Goan
paddy fields after the monsoon rains.
The structural order of A Kind of Absence is a fusion of music
and poetry, that of a fado heard in a night club in the Alfama
that senses the lacrimae rerum.
The smells of memory, of the seasons, begin. Memories of the
past and the reality of the present blend together. The rains
revive and generate the smells of the land of his childhood. And
the writer longingly evokes the past seasons, as if the air is
thick with smells and colors of the sacred land. "This is the
time the earth chooses to put out its boldest colors. The
gulmohur catches fire. The pink, the yellow and brown cassia,
the occasional jacaranda hallucinate in the shimmering air
(86)." It is spring that pervades the air: "One knows that the
cashew and the mango are in bloom but the blossoms are almost
invisible, only specks or a touch of red among the foliage
(87)."
A scene out of his past in America bubbles out -- a visit to the
university health center (100) wanting to talk about the
emptiness within him, a sense of absence, the feeling that there
is nowhere to go, no country he belongs to.
He talks to someone called Jones (significantly, the name is of
Freud’s English disciple) who suggests he write, a cure the
writer has prescribed for himself a long time ago, not as
therapy but as a form of spiritual exercise: And he knows why he
has to: "To find the proper human posture, the posture
appropriate to one’s lot and situation. To be restored to
childhood. To still the inner uproar and eventually achieve
silence and with luck perhaps song or laughter (76)."
He proceeds to write.
History and the history of Goa provide the musical background to
his account, vivid, imagistic and impressionistic, not burdened
with factual detail. Europe, as Fernando Pessoa saw it, gazing
across the ocean with greedy eyes on the East at the beginning
of the 16th century.
Tiny Portugal as the first intruder, thirsty for
wealth, drunk with the will to power, armed with naos
and bombards, grabbing a piece of the Indian coast in
order to exercise control over it. Three experiments:
the casados (married men) of Albuquerque which failed;
the unsuccessful ‘Portuguesing’ of the subjects; and
the christianization of the territory, not achieved
through pure evangelization (as was the daring but
limited mode of Roberto de Nobili and of Matteo Ricci)
but by having the land’s "space and time symbols
changed, its language and sacred ecology transformed,
the yearly calendar and seasonal celebrations altered
(106)."
The Portuguese introduced a new culture, a new life, into Goa,
ecclesiastical, spun around the city and the church. The city
was not significant to the writer as a child, except when he
absorbed it on his rambles through Old Goa with his father and
the book of the French missionary.
What he passionately observed and absorbed were the celebrations
and activities of the parish, his home and the church that left
a deep impress on the little one’s sensibilities.
Some were personal, like the celebration of Father’s birthday.
Others took place in the warm atmosphere of the home: the
response to the Angelus bell, the daily reciting of the Rosary.
Many events revolved around the church -— the feast of the
Sacred Heart, the rites on Passion Sunday and the rituals of
Holy Week. It is all lovingly recalled, these events enacted in
Christian space, and lovingly set down so that they will always
be present, and the writer will never suffer a kind of absence.
It is a certain way of always being there, of being a Goan, for
himself as a Goan.
The search has taught him many things: that there is
no single way of being a Goan; that we are no longer
the tribe he referred to at the beginning, one with a
collective identity; that we Goans were among the
first to experience a dislocating sense of exile that
is modern; that Goans must learn to live without
roots, and that we must replace roots with horizons in
order to see a world of infinite possibility; that
what we Goans do have is a sense of freedom.
Dawn is near. Life must go on. The fado will end but its echoes
will linger, for it speaks of universal human longing. We step
out into the dawn with a sense of loss, and yet of possibility,
with a sense of sadness that reaches out to joy. Reconciled to
the human condition, knowing that the search is over, the writer
sings softly to himself about his feeling of freedom:
Another winter is over. I went out for my first long
walk after the months of confinement and saw the
harbinger crocuses. In the fields behind the house
flocks of mallardsare resting before the homeward
flight. Scattered heaps of snow from the last storm
are fast melting, the creeks is filling with the small
noise of tumbling waters. The sound that set me
dreaming in my youth now invites me to remember.
(126-27)
Notes:
1. Joao da Veiga Coutinho, A Kind of Absence: Life in the
Shadows of History, Yuganta Press, Connecticut, 1997.
2. Joao da Veiga Coutinho, Uma espécie de ausLncia, Cotovia,
Fundacao Oriente, Lisboa, 2000.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
GOANET READER WELCOMES contributions from its readers, by way of
essays, reviews, features and think-pieces. We share quality
Goa-related writing among the growing readership of Goanet and its
allied network of mailing lists. If you appreciate the above article,
please send in your feedback to the writer. Our writers share what they
have written pro bono, and deserve hearing back from those who
appreciate their work. Goanet Reader too welcomes your feedback at
goa...@goanet.org Goanet Reader is edited by Frederick Noronha
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
John de Figueiredo
May 26, 2023, 7:57:23 PM5/26/23
to goa-rese...@googlegroups.com
I respectfully disagree with Dr. Rodrigues. The Jews were scattered and persecuted throughout the centuries and they never lost their ideological roots. Learned helplessness is not the answer. Where is a will, there is a way.
John M de Figueiredo
John M de Figueiredo
Sent from my iPhone
On May 26, 2023, at 2:29 PM, Frederick Noronha <frederic...@gmail.com> wrote:
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Goa-Research-Net" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to goa-research-n...@googlegroups.com.
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sharmila pais
May 27, 2023, 4:54:39 AM5/27/23
to goa-rese...@googlegroups.com
Would Frederic Noronha’s post of December 2015 on J. V. Coutinho not help you to find some missing links?
Sharmila.
Sharmila.
Sent from my iPhone
On 26-May-2023, at 9:30 PM, Frederick Noronha <frederic...@gmail.com> wrote:
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/CAMCR53JsBooNbZJciPvGBQoGH1dK8GxK5%2B4Eo7gz4WAV%2BR%2Bv8g%40mail.gmail.com.
Duarte Braga
May 27, 2023, 11:54:12 AM5/27/23
to goa-rese...@googlegroups.com
Dear all, thanks for the priceless suggestions.
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/F75531A4-DB50-4145-939A-C5438FA83A94%40gmail.com.
frederic...@gmail.com
May 27, 2023, 2:13:40 PM5/27/23
to Goa-Research-Net
A tribute to Joao da Veiga-Coutinho (1918-2015) ... via Goanet Reader
24 views
19 Dec 2015, 13:01:29
to The Goa Book Club
Scientist Helga do Rosario Gomes announced on the
GoaResearchNet the death of Joao da Veiga Coutinho, and
shared this note from his son Ravi: "Yesterday, my friend,
mentor, and father, Joao V. Coutinho passed away at
the age of 97. He died as he had hoped: at home,
surrounded by those who loved him. While my heart
is broken, my chief consolation is that his
near-century on this Earth was full of life. Over
the course of his lifetime he was a priest, WWII
POW camp translator, foreign correspondent,
humanitarian aid worker, professor, published
author, loving husband to my mom, Barbara K. Webber
and, finally, a father. He spoke 13 languages and
left a lasting academic impact on the fields of
sociology, education, and theology. He is,
unquestionably, the smartest man I will ever have
the privilege of meeting, and I was fortunate to
have him shape my life. He was a great fan of
Tagore, after whom my name was chosen, who wrote:
'Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only
putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.'
His light will never be extinguished, and he will
live on through the lives of those he loved,
taught, and befriended. I love you, Dad."
Below is a review of Joao da Viega-Coutinho's *A Kind of
Absence*, reviewed by the late Dr George Coelho in the Goan
Overseas Digest (Oct-Dec 1998), a magazine that was edited by
statistician Dr Eddie Fernandes. Dr Coelho was an early
Goanetter, and was pleased by the new forms of networking
younger generations (then) of Goans were taking to. He saw it
as the precursor of a Goan Renaissance.
GO DIGEST WRITES: Born in Bombay, Dr Coelho graduated from St
Xavier's College in Latin and English. He served in the
Indian Armed Forces in World war II, rising to the rank of
Major. He received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from
Harvard University in 1956. He was Health Science
Administrator and International Health Officer at the
National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland until
his retirement in 1996. George has published in
professional journals and edited several books on mental
health issues. In the last 10 years, he has been drawn to his
first love, literature and poetry, attending international
conferences in Portugal and Goa and published essays on Goan
poetry in Portuguese.
----------
Book review by Dr George Coelho
THE FULL TITLE is *A Kind of Absence: Life in the Shadow of
History* (Yuganta Press, USA). It is a beautifully crafted
volume of essays, edited and published by Ralph Nazareth,
poet, professor of literature and President of Yuganta Press,
Stamford, Connecticut.
A timely and significant work, it is conversational in tone,
in the mode of Socratic dialogue. Neither didactic nor
dogmatic, the essays are written in a lucid and elegant style:
they flow with the cadence and imagery of a prose poem. They
invite reflection and meditation.
In his Preliminary Remarks, the author speaks of his essays
as "musings fragmentary in part, explorations....There are
more questions than answers, not because answers that are
widely satisfying are few (this is, after all, a search
undertaken on one's own behalf) but because questions must be
asked and multiplied and lived with, before there can be
answers."
The book cover displays a faint silhouette of the facade of
the Santo Espirito Church of Margao, around which the author
remembers playing as a child in his grandmother's home.
There is history there, the author muses: "Our churches in
Goa are built upon the ruins of destroyed Hindu temples (III,
p42). In the middle of the square facing the Church of the
Santo Espirito, Margao, Salcete, next to the cruzeiro, the
GoaResearchNet the death of Joao da Veiga Coutinho, and
shared this note from his son Ravi: "Yesterday, my friend,
mentor, and father, Joao V. Coutinho passed away at
the age of 97. He died as he had hoped: at home,
surrounded by those who loved him. While my heart
is broken, my chief consolation is that his
near-century on this Earth was full of life. Over
the course of his lifetime he was a priest, WWII
POW camp translator, foreign correspondent,
humanitarian aid worker, professor, published
author, loving husband to my mom, Barbara K. Webber
and, finally, a father. He spoke 13 languages and
left a lasting academic impact on the fields of
sociology, education, and theology. He is,
unquestionably, the smartest man I will ever have
the privilege of meeting, and I was fortunate to
have him shape my life. He was a great fan of
Tagore, after whom my name was chosen, who wrote:
'Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only
putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.'
His light will never be extinguished, and he will
live on through the lives of those he loved,
taught, and befriended. I love you, Dad."
Below is a review of Joao da Viega-Coutinho's *A Kind of
Absence*, reviewed by the late Dr George Coelho in the Goan
Overseas Digest (Oct-Dec 1998), a magazine that was edited by
statistician Dr Eddie Fernandes. Dr Coelho was an early
Goanetter, and was pleased by the new forms of networking
younger generations (then) of Goans were taking to. He saw it
as the precursor of a Goan Renaissance.
GO DIGEST WRITES: Born in Bombay, Dr Coelho graduated from St
Xavier's College in Latin and English. He served in the
Indian Armed Forces in World war II, rising to the rank of
Major. He received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from
Harvard University in 1956. He was Health Science
Administrator and International Health Officer at the
National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland until
his retirement in 1996. George has published in
professional journals and edited several books on mental
health issues. In the last 10 years, he has been drawn to his
first love, literature and poetry, attending international
conferences in Portugal and Goa and published essays on Goan
poetry in Portuguese.
----------
Book review by Dr George Coelho
THE FULL TITLE is *A Kind of Absence: Life in the Shadow of
History* (Yuganta Press, USA). It is a beautifully crafted
volume of essays, edited and published by Ralph Nazareth,
poet, professor of literature and President of Yuganta Press,
Stamford, Connecticut.
A timely and significant work, it is conversational in tone,
in the mode of Socratic dialogue. Neither didactic nor
dogmatic, the essays are written in a lucid and elegant style:
they flow with the cadence and imagery of a prose poem. They
invite reflection and meditation.
In his Preliminary Remarks, the author speaks of his essays
as "musings fragmentary in part, explorations....There are
more questions than answers, not because answers that are
widely satisfying are few (this is, after all, a search
undertaken on one's own behalf) but because questions must be
asked and multiplied and lived with, before there can be
answers."
The book cover displays a faint silhouette of the facade of
the Santo Espirito Church of Margao, around which the author
remembers playing as a child in his grandmother's home.
There is history there, the author muses: "Our churches in
Goa are built upon the ruins of destroyed Hindu temples (III,
p42). In the middle of the square facing the Church of the
Santo Espirito, Margao, Salcete, next to the cruzeiro, the
white stuccoed monument surmounted by a black cross, stands a
tree. It is said to have been there since before the church,
a silent witness to the sacredness of the site, and
ceremonies once performed in honour of the exiled divinity
(III, p43).
Part I: Thinking about History is the first essay, sounding
the major theme of Absence: "There has been no Goan
history... our story remains untold. What is it and where is
it to be found? What are its outlines and what are its
salient features? What are its sources? What should it cover?
What should it show and explain? Our history was largely made
by others. We were caught in it, almost in spite of
ourselves. We have to salvage what is ours; see how much of
it belongs to us (I, p8,9).
This theme of Absence recurs in the following motifs:
i) The loss of a vital connection with an ancestral land.
ii) The lack of a history of one's own, a proper universe.
For "The Portuguese wrote their own story in these parts..."
Part II: Conversations with the Dead discusses several
versions of Goan history written by Goans (prior to Indian
Independence in 1947). The critical issue is: Are Goans
protagonists in Indo-Portuguese history? Or are they mere
stage hands and props providing local color?
The author explains his sense of history: "To have a history
is not simply to have a past. To have a history is to
struggle with the past, and wrest from it its meaning. The
purpose is to define ourself, to find one's place in this
sense, the question 'do Goans have a history?' does not much
mean, 'do they have a past?' as 'do they have a future?' It
means: what does the past say about the future? Has it
created a type of human being who can face the open and claim
a place to stand on?
Part III: A Certain Way of Being There elaborates the theme
of absence in an autobiographical note. The author confesses:
he is unable to name the grasses which he sees during his
visit to a mission station in a village in North India.
His melancholy is an expression of the desire to belong -- to
be acknowledged by the Indian village people whom he has come
all the way to help.
"For just as I cannot name the birds or the grasses, I cannot
exchange more than the barest greeting with the people...
wold it be possible to begin again, to create a space
dedicated solely to straightening out human relationships,
our relationships with the people and our common relationship
to the land?... (III, p37).
The author meditates on the numinous presences dwelling
everywhere, and how they have been denied: "The Indian land
carries a load of symbols and is saturated with presences."
(III, p40). Our churches in Goa are built upon the ruins of
destroyed Hindu temples....
"(For the Goan Christian) how does the Indian land become
foreign if not enemy territory? By what process were we
wanted? Who made the breasts so bitter that we were ever
after unable to be nursed at them?" (III, p42).
Part IV: The Uncertain Homeland develops the major theme of
Absence by projecting the image of the itinerant lodger: "A
man sits in someone's house on a hot rainy way.... He has
moved from another state across the country -- across the
continent -- and is put up by friendly people while his
rented house is being got ready. His things are with the
movers; he does not have what he needs for his work... He has
been there before... in fact most of his life, a guest in
someone's house, waiting for his own to be finished, though
it never quite gets finished... (IV, p57)
Part V: Genesis is the final essay. Here the author proudly
recalls a time when an autonomous Goan personality takes
shape, by the creative moulding of certain Portuguese
elements into the Indian cultural matrix. In the latter half
of the 18th century, for example, far-reaching reforms (in
education, polity, administration and social order) were
inaugurated by the Marques de Pombal, and a new Goan reality
"slowly matured, the idea and reality of a Goan culture
distinct from the cultures of Portugal and India, a creation
of the land's own children."
The author illustrates the Goan expression of this
unique development in several cultural domains. "A
sense of Goanness appeared. There emerged a new
interest in things Goan, Goan political and social
history as distinct from the exploits of Portuguese
heroes and rulers, in ancient local institutions,
their evolution or erosion, family histories, and
biographies of significant men... a new style of
Goan architecture... a new authentically Goan
cuisine, ballroom dancing" and the *mando*, an art
song and dance which created its own choreography
as well as its lyrics and music." (V, p121,122)
The author fondly recalls his childhood in the family
household in Goa which reflected this new multicultural
world: "this was the world they talked about at grandmother's
house, the world we had just missed. Our own world seemed to
pale in comparison. Ours was never free from a touch of
sadness, an apprehension that perhaps home was not really
home, that true life was otherwise if not elsewhere." (V.
p122,123)
Nevertheless, about a hundred years ago, Goans ventured
beyond their island shores and charted a new tradition, our
modern world of uprooting, relocation and renovation:
"Goans must have been among the first to experience
the sense of exile that characterizes the modern
age. Not the emigrants alone, but long before
leaving home for more promised lands, some at least
must have known nostalgia of loss, the sadness
of the irretrievable, resulting from the knowledge
that there was no land where they could hope to
find roots?"
The author ends on a wistful note, but with stoic
resolution: "There is no single way of being Goan... We must
learn to live without roots... we have been severed,
disconnected from the soil and its presence, a history in
which we have been no more than guests, victims, auxiliaries,
that make us turn to an India before that history began. But
the India we can relate to is in the process of creating
itself... Roots have been replaced by horizons." (V. p126).
In their venturesomeness, Goans can join in this process, if
they will, not as pawns or props, but as protagonists.
--
The book *A Kind of Absence* was (at the time of the review)
available from Yuganta Press, 6 Rushmore Circle, Stamford,
CT, USA, pp.127, $9.95.
The author, Joao da Veiga Coutinho, was born in Margao, Goa
to a distinguished family of physicians, priests and
journalists. He studied at St Xavier's College, Bombay and
pursued theological studies at the Jesuit Faculty at Louvain,
Belgium. Emigrating to the US, he was involved with community
development in both North and South America.
a silent witness to the sacredness of the site, and
ceremonies once performed in honour of the exiled divinity
(III, p43).
Part I: Thinking about History is the first essay, sounding
the major theme of Absence: "There has been no Goan
history... our story remains untold. What is it and where is
it to be found? What are its outlines and what are its
salient features? What are its sources? What should it cover?
What should it show and explain? Our history was largely made
by others. We were caught in it, almost in spite of
ourselves. We have to salvage what is ours; see how much of
it belongs to us (I, p8,9).
This theme of Absence recurs in the following motifs:
i) The loss of a vital connection with an ancestral land.
ii) The lack of a history of one's own, a proper universe.
For "The Portuguese wrote their own story in these parts..."
Part II: Conversations with the Dead discusses several
versions of Goan history written by Goans (prior to Indian
Independence in 1947). The critical issue is: Are Goans
protagonists in Indo-Portuguese history? Or are they mere
stage hands and props providing local color?
The author explains his sense of history: "To have a history
is not simply to have a past. To have a history is to
struggle with the past, and wrest from it its meaning. The
purpose is to define ourself, to find one's place in this
sense, the question 'do Goans have a history?' does not much
mean, 'do they have a past?' as 'do they have a future?' It
means: what does the past say about the future? Has it
created a type of human being who can face the open and claim
a place to stand on?
Part III: A Certain Way of Being There elaborates the theme
of absence in an autobiographical note. The author confesses:
he is unable to name the grasses which he sees during his
visit to a mission station in a village in North India.
His melancholy is an expression of the desire to belong -- to
be acknowledged by the Indian village people whom he has come
all the way to help.
"For just as I cannot name the birds or the grasses, I cannot
exchange more than the barest greeting with the people...
wold it be possible to begin again, to create a space
dedicated solely to straightening out human relationships,
our relationships with the people and our common relationship
to the land?... (III, p37).
The author meditates on the numinous presences dwelling
everywhere, and how they have been denied: "The Indian land
carries a load of symbols and is saturated with presences."
(III, p40). Our churches in Goa are built upon the ruins of
destroyed Hindu temples....
"(For the Goan Christian) how does the Indian land become
foreign if not enemy territory? By what process were we
wanted? Who made the breasts so bitter that we were ever
after unable to be nursed at them?" (III, p42).
Part IV: The Uncertain Homeland develops the major theme of
Absence by projecting the image of the itinerant lodger: "A
man sits in someone's house on a hot rainy way.... He has
moved from another state across the country -- across the
continent -- and is put up by friendly people while his
rented house is being got ready. His things are with the
movers; he does not have what he needs for his work... He has
been there before... in fact most of his life, a guest in
someone's house, waiting for his own to be finished, though
it never quite gets finished... (IV, p57)
Part V: Genesis is the final essay. Here the author proudly
recalls a time when an autonomous Goan personality takes
shape, by the creative moulding of certain Portuguese
elements into the Indian cultural matrix. In the latter half
of the 18th century, for example, far-reaching reforms (in
education, polity, administration and social order) were
inaugurated by the Marques de Pombal, and a new Goan reality
"slowly matured, the idea and reality of a Goan culture
distinct from the cultures of Portugal and India, a creation
of the land's own children."
The author illustrates the Goan expression of this
unique development in several cultural domains. "A
sense of Goanness appeared. There emerged a new
interest in things Goan, Goan political and social
history as distinct from the exploits of Portuguese
heroes and rulers, in ancient local institutions,
their evolution or erosion, family histories, and
biographies of significant men... a new style of
Goan architecture... a new authentically Goan
cuisine, ballroom dancing" and the *mando*, an art
song and dance which created its own choreography
as well as its lyrics and music." (V, p121,122)
The author fondly recalls his childhood in the family
household in Goa which reflected this new multicultural
world: "this was the world they talked about at grandmother's
house, the world we had just missed. Our own world seemed to
pale in comparison. Ours was never free from a touch of
sadness, an apprehension that perhaps home was not really
home, that true life was otherwise if not elsewhere." (V.
p122,123)
Nevertheless, about a hundred years ago, Goans ventured
beyond their island shores and charted a new tradition, our
modern world of uprooting, relocation and renovation:
"Goans must have been among the first to experience
the sense of exile that characterizes the modern
age. Not the emigrants alone, but long before
leaving home for more promised lands, some at least
must have known nostalgia of loss, the sadness
of the irretrievable, resulting from the knowledge
that there was no land where they could hope to
find roots?"
The author ends on a wistful note, but with stoic
resolution: "There is no single way of being Goan... We must
learn to live without roots... we have been severed,
disconnected from the soil and its presence, a history in
which we have been no more than guests, victims, auxiliaries,
that make us turn to an India before that history began. But
the India we can relate to is in the process of creating
itself... Roots have been replaced by horizons." (V. p126).
In their venturesomeness, Goans can join in this process, if
they will, not as pawns or props, but as protagonists.
--
The book *A Kind of Absence* was (at the time of the review)
available from Yuganta Press, 6 Rushmore Circle, Stamford,
CT, USA, pp.127, $9.95.
The author, Joao da Veiga Coutinho, was born in Margao, Goa
to a distinguished family of physicians, priests and
journalists. He studied at St Xavier's College, Bombay and
pursued theological studies at the Jesuit Faculty at Louvain,
Belgium. Emigrating to the US, he was involved with community
development in both North and South America.
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