Interview: The Art of Schulen Fernandes

Interview: The Art of Schulen Fernandes

In conversation with Selma Carvalho

Issue no. 9

I was inspired by the work of most Japanese designers. It’s exceptionally tough to take a fabric devoid of any embellishment or print and make it look stunning purely by its construction. That’s the challenge that’s inspiring and worth every minute spent in the design realm. 


The Literary Maladies of Diaspora Goans

The Literary Maladies of Diaspora Goans

By Ben Antao

Issue no. 9

I understand that the place of one’s childhood and early influences leave an indelible stamp on the memory and subconscious, but can it be so profound as to negate all subsequently lived experiences in other lands?  Indeed, this seems to be malady afflicting Goans in the diaspora who at one time in their lives had the luck to sample life in colonial East Africa.

The Knight in the Many Lives of Vamona Navelcar

The Knight in the Many Lives of Vamona Navelcar

By Jugneeta Sudan

Issue no. 8

Quixotically Vamona read chivalrous texts passionately and then implemented the ethos into his existence. Regrettably, reality had moved away and become inequitable, random and prejudiced. It did not share his faith in codes of chivalry. Every time he was subjected to physical abuse and psychic tortures, he drew courage from his readings …

Short Memoir: Growing up in the company of nubile women

Short Memoir: Growing up in the company of nubile women

By Ahmed Bunglowala

Issue no. 8

For a small town guy, St. Xavier’s was a testing place for the first six months. The young men and women—strutting their designer clothes and attitude in the gargoyle-festooned quadrangle — made me very self-conscious of the two pairs of shirt and trouser my mother had put together from her meagre earnings as a part-time seamstress.

 

Short Memoir: Young Under the Apple Boughs

Short Memoir: Young Under the Apple Boughs

By Lawrence Nazareth

Issue no. 8

Nairobi grew progressively, from a railway station and frontier town into the capital city of a newly-established colony, the forested fringe had given way to segregated, residential suburbs; for example, Parklands and Muthaiga, where only immigrants of European origin were permitted to live.

A House of Many Mansions

A House of Many Mansions

By Selma Carvalho

Issue No. 8

Review of A House of Many Mansions: Goan Literature in Portuguese. Portuguese was for centuries, Goa’s prime language: of instruction, of transaction, of cultural interaction, of aspiration, and perhaps more importantly, it was the language of literature. The fact that literature has not yet found its rightful place in Goan historiography shows how miserably we have failed to understand its role.

Legacies of the Racialised Body

Legacies of the Racialised Body

Featuring artist TextaQueen

Issue no. 7

I was drawn to Texta’s sensitive criticality and political awareness, because we have both attempted to explore in our diverse fields what it means to occupy a “position of disquiet” as migrants in white settler-nations formed on the dispossession of Indigenous people. In New Zealand, my mother formed the Goan Overseas Association (GOANZ) ...

Excursions to 'The South'

Excursions to 'The South'

By Clifford Pereira

Issue no. 7

Growing up in rural Kenya in the 1960s and 70s, my knowledge of South Africa was filtered through the politics of the day, inflected as they were by East Africa’s independence from British rule. Looking back, I cannot help but wonder if the information I received about other parts of the continent arose due to the different colonial histories ...

The Bayingyi People of Burma

The Bayingyi People of Burma

By Yvonne Vaz Ezdani

Issue no. 7

She told me she came from the Bayingyi community, descendants of the Portuguese, many of whom had come from Goa several hundreds of years ago, and had settled in the Valley of the Mu River area where she lived. She also described the place as a colony of Catholics.

Bras Sousa: Goan Portuguese Consul in Zanzibar, 1892

Bras Sousa: Goan Portuguese Consul in Zanzibar, 1892

By Selma Carvalho

Issue no. 6

By every definition, elite Goans were what the Portuguese called assimilado. Except for their skin colour, they were bourgeois, metropolitan Portuguese who profoundly believed in the glory of Portugal.