Bombay movie icons become writers - in a new collection of short stories

India-Books/Cinema 

Cinema is all about stories. The hundred-year-old history of Indian cinema - and the marginally older world cinema — has been born of and bred on stories - fantasy narratives that are either echoes of real life on reel or the escape to Eutopia tales painted in techni-colour. 

But not every actor or director or the odd crew man is a fascinating story-teller because stories for movies are scripted by writers with a flair for creativity. When insiders of moviedom are told to don the mantle of short story writers. they become autobiographical, acerbic, sad or satirical. The stories, consequently, remain close to the ground. 

"Faction" -  a collection of 22 short stories by film personalities edited by Khalid Mohamed (published by OM Books International) shines with sporadic flashes of brilliance, drama, sentimentality and finesse of the craft — at times introspective that run like soul-searching soliloquise. The reader, however, is held under the spell of the sneak preview into the writer's persona — behind the screen and the director's camera in a kind of magical opera sequence that reveals lives beyond the ambit of everyday— about the stars in our multiplex mindscape. 

"Faction" lures because it is a compilation of stories by characters who people the narratives that we soak ourselves in — away from the grind of life. 

"The collection has been motivated with the purpose of excavating stories from the eclectic cross-sections of film actors and directors —stalwarts, freshers and the in-betweens.' editor Khalid Mohamed said. Most of them, as it happened, "sought to relate to stories attached to their own lives, their own immediate and distant experiences," Khalid pointed out. 

The movie town nourished itself on its memories — often steeped in the nostalgia of childhood or a "dream" that was yet to be lived. Actor Akshay Kumar falls back on his "secret penchant" for romance and his childlike desire to find the perfect love story in the most unexpected of "realistic spaces" in his short story. "Love on the 7.45 am Local Train".  Kumar unravels a surprising facet of his personality in the story- as an accomplished narrator with a flair for an abstract English language - that is the poetic order of the day. He recollects from his childhood memories as a student of Don Bosco School- commuting in a local train from Andheri to Victoria Terminus — a love story between a young woman, Tulip Kumari and a co-commuter.He watched love blossom in the crush of humanity inside the train. 

The couple in Akshay Kumar's tale represents the dilemma of  middle class romance that ends in the dead sands of dreariness. The narrator, a high school student in his late teens, weeps at the end of love that he watched being born "as a 12-year-old". 

"A nylon white umbrella with red rose buds lay on the green rexine seat of the local train. The Don Bosco student picked it up...He took it away with him, shoving it in his khaki satchel. He would keep the umbrella. The man (who left iy behind) would never unfurl it for the woman with a flourish." writer Akshay Kumar says in his story. Then like a July could, the boy wept. The love story had ended.              

Akshay Kumar's search for romance in the crush of Mumbai finds a counter foil in director Basu Chatterji's tale of "The Window". There is love in the times of terror. Chatterji's window comes across as an observation post to a world lurking just outside the industrial nerve of Parel - with the looming threat of "terrorist violence and sudden death". 

Chatterji draws from a cinematic device that reminds the reader of Alfred HItchcock's "Rear Window".  The narrative is fast-paced and full of visual drama - almost like the movies Basu Chatterji makes - close to the Ground Zero where terror plays out as death ritual every decade. The narrative builds around a Muslim family from Lucknow, which migrates to Mumbai for bright lights. The family sends its son to work as a "supervisor" in Dubai - and ekes out a better life with the monthly "remittance" from the Gulf. The girls try to break out of the conventional conservatism with "education" and small-time jobs. Their life becomes idyllic, even "romantic" till one of the girls falls in love with a salesman. The cover of siblings'  "bhai" in Dubai is blown in an arrest by assistant commissioner of police Sagar Singh Rathod, who "uses the family" in the guise of its prospective son-in-law Zafar Ali to "prise information about the 26/11 accused".  The story in the vintage Bollywood tradition ends with a twist. It is tight, full of contemporary conversations and familiar insights into the lives of the lower middle class migrant Muslim families in the fringe Mumbai neighbourhoods. The contrasts make the story wistful - the innocence of the family, the canny crime branch of Mumbai police and the heinous "livelihoods" of brothers in "unmarked" jobs in the Gulf. 

"To share others' lives is rewarding because it enlightens me - that I am not alone in my spells of emotional turbulence," editor Khalid Mohamed says.    

The readers identify themselves in the layers and the shades of the characters in the stories — most of which address complex psychological issues like "filial politics", "colour politics", "social bias", "alternative sexuality", "inspirations", "loneliness", "childhood" and personal blues.   

Actor Nana Patekar pays tribute to his father in an autobiographical account, "And Father Created An Actor"-  that redeems his father as a "tormentor and colour racist" in the actor's childhood  to elevate him to an "inspiration". 

The story seems like a leaf out of Nana Patekar's volatile persona - throwing light on his intense and brooding personality on the screen. 

Gajanand Laxman Patekar, a native of Murud, a coastal town in Maharashtra, dotes on Nana's fair-skinned younger brother Dilip. The dark-skinned actor is "left to fend for himself"- slighted and neglected. A troubled Nana Patekar sinks into bouts of depression and low self-esteem still his father sees him on stage as highway robber turned sage Valmiki's henchman in a Marathi adaptation of the seer's life- who conceived and compiled one of India's two greatest epics "Ramayana" as atonement for his life of theft. 

"My father returned to Murud to see me in the play... At the end of the show, I was shocked. he had tears in his eyes. For the first time, I felt the warmth of his embrace. His son had redeemed himself. he had acted on stage... I felt like Gajanand Laxman's son," Nana Patekar writes in his account. Even now Nana acts "only for his father's applause", the actor admits at the end of his story. 

Stories such as these motivate- leaving readers with a lingering awe in the after hours- like yet another movie in the fine print. The collection, despite few literary failings, rises much above the average gamut of anthologies because of the "vast reserve of untold stories". About the stars we love to watch in our movie-plex fantasy spaces. 

-Madhusree Chatterjee                 

       

Christ of faith was the Jesus of history? Reza Aslan chats

India-Books/Culture 

The 2000-year-old Christian faith is actually an entrenched belief system in the teachings of a preacher from “coastal” Galilee (in modern day Israel) fuelled by the messianic zeal of the followers of a Jewish miracle worker, preacher and spiritualist Jesus Christ —a bunch of villagers, poor workers and farmers who believed in Christ’s divine powers to build a religious edifice that is based on the supernatural powers ascribed to the itinerant godman – rather than the real life and the abilities of the man himself, argues Iran-born writer and scholar of religion Reza Aslan, a resident of Los Angeles.

The argument may sound “radical” and “plausible” to large swathe of the non-Christian world, but the young writer, who is a born again Muslim after converting to Christianity as a teenager, has whipped up storms in the “Christian media” and among the conservatives, revivalists and Bible belt “die-hards” who believe that the “Christian messiah” has been lowered in esteem by Aslan’s arguments about the canons of Christ. As a faith, Christianity still remains one of the most “popular” and according to theologians the easiest “evangelical spiritual code to interpret and adopt”.            

The writer of the acclaimed “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth”, who was in India recently to take part a literary festival, said “he had been obsessed with Jesus for the last two decades”. As a young man, he was drawn by the Christian gospel in a youth camp. “I was fascinated by the evangelical spirit of the Christian camp and the Bible pumping.  I spent four years preaching the gospel to everybody and began to study the New Testament. Much of what I learnt about was that Jesus was an iconoclast. The Jesus of history was the Christ of faith,” Aslan told this writer in a candid conversation about faith, Jesus and Islamic extremism.

“I left Christianity, but continued my study about the historical Jesus. He was a poor pious Jewish peasant, who formed this incredible moment in the world religion – with his unshakeable faith in god, the cause of the Holy land, stories about his miraculous feats and healing powers. He was a real man – but not much is known about his real life. Christ was the one His followers made him,” Aslan explained.

The writer, who has been to Israel many times, says “most of the work that Jesus seems to have done as a preacher was in the first century Palestine. The Romans occupied Palestine in the era in which Jesus lived. It was an apocalyptic world where people feared doom because of the frequent wars, plunder and arson between the local groups of inhabitants, the rebels fighting for the freedom of the land and the Roman army,” Aslan said. Most of the preachers, like Jesus, whose voices reached above the “occupation” were arrested and executed.

The notion of Christianity was malleable, Aslan said. “The millions of people who worship Christ invoke the messiah of the faith. Jesus of history is frozen in time and is largely a product of the world,” the “radical” writer pointed out.   

‘The Christ of faith can be anything you want him to be- anything for his people. He can be a Latin American for the South American and faithful of the Hispanic origin, he can be blonde, he can be blue-eyed and in African, he can be black. Those are all the avatars of ‘Christ’ for the Christians to understand. There is a distance — between the deified and the man. A deity becomes a deity because no matter who you are. God becomes a part of you. On the premise of this argument, Jesus becomes a reflection of you,” Aslan said, exploring the sociological relevance of the “idea” of Jesus Christ, the saviour.

It is a complex history, Aslan contended. “The simplest way to look at the perpetuation of the gospel of Christ is that after his death followers offered a definition to justify his greatness (amid by contentions by several other preachers) — that Jesus was not the messiah, but was the defendant of king David – one of his bloodline who had come to earth to recreate the kingdom of David on earth – whom many people claimed to be the messiah. The people of Jesus changed the definition of messiah – not only to the fellow Jews but to the Romans as well when Christianity was born. And to spread the message of Christ to the non-Jews. The biggest Icon was Paul who was responsible for what have been known as Christianity,” the theologian said.

Aslan said “it was true of all religions”. “We have this mistaken notion that prophets create religions – but the prophet’s followers created Christianity. It is the same in Quran, which was compiled by the prophet’s followers, Buddhism, whose gospel was carried across the globe by the monks and Hinduism – whose followers take the words and deeds of the propjets (and deities).”

In Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Islam alike — “if you believe in the principles of good and evil, it is likely that good and evil play themselves out in the deeds of the gods and endows the actors with cosmic significance”, Aslan said.

The root of all conflicts is in the opposing qualities of good and evil, Aslan said. “This war between good and evil is not debates over politics but identities – that is what I mean by cosmic. The earthly conflicts take on cosmic dimensions,” Aslan observed, connecting the idea of religious terrorism and faith.

In the words of Aslan — faith and interpretations contour the physical topography of societies and their complex functioning ranging from popular perceptions, convictions, lifestyles and the “jihads” across the world.

On shades of terror  

“The most important thing to learn about Islamic terrorism is that an “Islamist is a nationalist, who wants to live in a Muslim nation”, Aslan said. “The idea of a state is what I want Pakistan to be, Syria to be. A jihadist is an anti-nationalist who believes that the concept of a nation state is sin -  isolates the Umma- the pan Islamic community worldwide in the age of globalization. The Mulsim Brotherhood is an Islamist organization while the al-Quaida is a jihadist organization. The western governments, however, treat the two the same way. The same response to the two creates a great deal of confusion and suffering,” the writer said. Aslan addresses these debates and issues in his book, “No God but God: The Origin, Evolution and Future of Islam”.     

“We can deal with Islamic terror because the Islamists want something – the Islamists is Turkey have done a good stable job, the Islamists of Tunisia are now doing a good job (post Arab Spring) but the Islamists in Egypt have done a terrible job. How Islam expresses itself can be dealt with because there is room for dialogue. The Jihadists want something impossible- they are fighting a cosmic war – where there is no room for negotiation,” Aslan pointed out.         

“My argument is two-fold: to help the Islamist away from becoming a jihadist, you need to allow Islamists have a political voice... With jihadists, you have to try to deal with the underlying grievance that dominates their cosmic ideology – take away the grievance, the cosmic ideology will collapsed. You have to understand that jihadist terrorism is different from Islamic terrorism. Islamic terrorism stems from lack of socio-political advantages. Like for a member of Hamas living on a garbage heap with no hope, terrorism becomes a tool. A jihadist is probably a man with a PhD degree – who is globally conscious, does not lack socio-economic opportunities but has a larger vision of the world,” Aslan said.

The set of challenge is “to bring the cosmic paddle down to earth,” “There has been a profound disappointment in people of all countries and religion in the promise of a secular nationalism,” Aslan said.   

   

-Madhusree Chatterjee      

 madhusree.chatterjee@gmail.com  

Forms of Devotion — a cross-cultural mission to spread faith in images

India –Art

New Delhi 
Indian spiritual art — the earliest genre of visual exposition of life since the beginning of civilization nearly 5000 years  ago — has been building bridges across cultures, philosophy, livelihoods, people, traditions and religious beliefs for millennia with invocation rituals around the icons and motifs expressed in this oeuvre. 

Over the centuries, spiritual art has become the representative symbol of the progress of religious schools of thoughts leading to new and complex belief systems from the Vedic-era animism to the late Bhakti (devotion)-age iconography of gods and goddesses. The pan Indian religious ideals spanning Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Christianity, Islam and Sikhism— together with epics like the “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata”  integrate with the core iconography of Hinduism to form what is today defined as the "Indian sacred art".  

The multiplicity of icons in the divine pantheons in turn has added teeth to spiritual art as a mature mainstream genre with "highly nuanced drawings, compositions of scales, stylizations, abstract iconographies and advanced art practices in a variety of medium and regimens - varying across physical terrain of the land”. The thread bindings the different traditions of Indian spiritual art is beauty — a lyricism, figurative complexities, rhythm and refined story-telling that is rarely found in other genres of Indian art. Mythology and epic are its sustenance.

Over the millennia, Indian spiritual art has travelled across the world to spread the spiritual gospel of Orientalism — but found an “empathetic” audience only in the last 100 years with the western art lovers and collectors appreciating the worth of the genre as a “mainstream collectible” for “visual display” in the high art space.    

“Forms of Devotion”— an exhibition of 200 works of spiritual art by 100 artists curated from a collection of more than 1,000 art works by curators Sushma K. Bahl and Archana Bahl Sapra from the Museum of Sacred Art in Brussels — opened to a sneak preview in the national capital in the run-up to its formal inauguration at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts (IGNCA) in January-February 2015.  

The exhibition – featuring traditional spiritual expressions in multi-media and contemporary canvases — is at the heart of a festival of Sacred Arts in India that plans to bring back home genres of art that are “gradually losing their pre-eminence” amid the contemporary and new media arts movements in India.

Spiritual art in India has been struggling to find space in the country’s new artistic stage occupied with “universal themes of internationalism” and rendezvous with new technology to make the indigenous movements cutting edge and global.   

“Art and spirituality are building many bridges between different art forms in India – opening inter-faith dialogues in many different ways. The Scared Art Project began in 2009 with a museum that I set up in Belgium with a focused collection of works from different spiritual streams of practises of India like Hinduism, Vaishnavism, the Shaivaite tradition, the miniature spiritual art of Mysore, Rajasthan and Mysore — created by contemporary artists who have keeping the sacred arts alive for generations through a combination “of the use of traditional imagery and its integration with new techniques and mediums,” says collector Martin Gurvich, who manages MOSA (Museum of Sacred Arts)  in an 11th century chateau Louxemburg in Belgium, owned by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.   

Gurvich, the son of a Uruguayan artist of Jewish origin who settled in Europe, is a Krishna devotee inspired by the ISKCON movement.       

His collection is grounded in his spiritual belief that India “represents the purest and the most plural form of faith that is at once inclusive, diverse and emancipating”. “In the first phase of collecting, I concentrated on the traditional aspects of faith and lot of tribal arts. But curator Sushma K Bahl opened my eyes to the contemporary aspect of spiritual art in the Indian context,” Gurvich said.

The collection is hosted at Chateau de petit Somme, christened as Radhadesh — after Krishna's muse— a sprawling heritage home owned by Gozelon de Montaiqude, who plundered the abbey of St Hubert. After his death, his wife returned it to the abbey as an act of penance —after which it has passed down several owners till the Krishna cult acquired it as a retreat in 1979.  

"The beginning museum is in the fact that several Vaishnavite paintings adorned the walls of the chateau for the last 30 years. They were original art works inspired by ancient Vaishnavite texts, realistic and classical in style. The idea was to build a dedicated space where the cultural roots of the JInfdu JIndu sacred art and its broader connection to the world outside could be studied," Gurvich said. 

Offering insights into the concept of the exhibition and the festival— being described as the first of its kind in India, curator Sushma K, Bahl says “India is a multicultural world, a plural society with multiple voices, identities, ideologies, cultures, faiths and denominations —many ‘India-s’ in one”.

Its eclectic and fascinating mix of arts — essentially meditative, ethereal, spiritual, and assimilative, developed to a high level of

sophistication that permeated its socio-cultural milieu that continues to be inextricably intertwined with life — from birth to death.

“The multi-dimensional project — Sacred Arts Festival — conceptualized around the notion of devotion and sacred, explores the theme through artistic creations in varied genres, from across faiths and  different regions of India, in varied media, modes and manifestations- all recently created. It presents many facets of Indian art, its mystique and philosophies in today's global context.

Reflective of this ethos, “Forms of Devotion”, is a large, inclusive and holistic exposition that celebrates the “multiplicity, diversity, creativity, and vibrancy of devotional art of India in varied hues and forms, curator Sushma K. Bahl said. The creative mosiac of the works that have been commissioned for the exhibition is a strange combination of "contemporary abstraction, expressionism and religious content that address larger issues relating to spirituality and society like — secular faith, environment, Dalit discrmination in Hinduism, deconstruction of popular icons to speak of new realities and continuity of living spiritual traditions.        

“In an inter-disciplinary experimental mode, the collection comfortably floats between the local and the global, the old and the new; as it transcends various faiths and genres — figurative, mythological, abstractions, Hinduism, Buddhist, Jain, Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Zorastrian, Sufi and Zen. As a continuum and popular resource, with multiple  philosophical layerings, created for rituals and offerings, adornment and celebration, be it ascetic or ornate, mystical or provocative, rural or urban, old or new, bazaar art or high end creations, local or global; the assemblage includes representation of icons, epics, and ideas, in art interwoven with life,” the curator said.

There are two-dimensional works such as paintings, drawings, collage, digital work and photography for the walls, but also “sculptures, installations, videos, films, sound, and interactive, site specific, and mixed media works amongst others". 

The collection encompasses research based and conceptual art that explore the theme from different socio cultural-philosophical perspectives. Contextualized in the history, philosophy and ideology of the culture they stem from, the works reflect the depth and substance of devotional and sacred Indian art imbued with pleasure, meditation and reflection, Bahl pointed out.

The project features over 200 works by some 150 artists - some “renowned masters and others emerging ones from across the country. There are some enormous works and some in miniature format, in varied media and modes — “exploring encounters and dialogue”; between ‘continuity and change’ and between “bhakti Shakti and Chintan”.

The traditions of spiritual art in India trace their origin to the early Vedic age with Shavite symbols and nature icons on rock faces, natural surfaces and palmyra manuscripts. Visual interpretations of the myths and the Vedic lores were important documents of India’s early scared arts.  

It evolved over centuries into the Gandhara School of Art – of religious importance – along the silk route of India, Orient and central Asia. The Gandhara School of art painted its canvases around the Shiva-Shakti and Buddhist visual imagery. The arrival of Vaishnavism in the later Vedic age inspired the artists with stories of the 10 avatars (manifestations) of Vishnu, the churning of the oceans to create the pantheon, the war between the gods and the demons and the epics.

The sacred arts thrived on royal patronage in the subsequent era — beginning 10 century (CE)— commissioned by the Hindu kings and later by the Mughal rulers.

Spiritual art drew its life vitals from the temples and epics. The sculptural friezes on the temple art were the earliest examples of sacred art in India- the best examples being the Nathdwara Temple in Rajasthan, the Vishnu and Shiva temples of South India and the Buddhist shrines in north, northeast and eastern India.          

One of the most interesting aspects of sacred arts is its practitioners. Over the centuries, the traditions have been handed down the generations of artists — who have improvised to carry forward the genre. This journey has seen new generations of artists who have been influenced by local, foreign and contemporary movements to create a new idioms of sacred visuals around ancient themes to convey contemporary ideas of faith.

-Madhusree Chatterjee 

Capturing colonial history of Goa with a personal family portrait— in fine print

India-Books/Culture

Colonisation of India by the Portuguese, French, Dutch and British are divided by imperceptible differences in sensitivities that each colonizing nation brought to the honey-milk Indies — a land they had coveted, imagined and ascribed magical geographical and culture nuances in the realms of their wandering mindscapes. While the British treated India as “commercial colony” — geared to producing raw material to be exported to England and imported back as finished products benefitting the colonizing country rather than the colony. “The idea was creation of poverty by economic drain,” says eminent Indian historian Romila Thapar.

But this doesn’t seem to have happened with Portugal. “One does not hear of Portugal taking back goods and bringing back finished products to India,” Thapar says.  It probably left Goa richer than many of its counterpart colonial “settlements” elsewhere.

 These fine and distinctive layers of colonization – the transition of India into a nation state from a colonial state and the chaotic saga of Goa — which was under Portuguese rule till 1961 under its last ruler Antonio de Oliviera Salazar — are the socio-political themes that scholar, teacher and writer Maria Aurora Couto  plays on in her new novel, “Filomena’s Journey” to redraw the journey of her parents, Filomena  and Chico, from the heart of Goa to Dharwad in Karnataka, where Filomena fled with her family of seven children — to seek refuge from her stormy  marriage. Chico, an unusually gifted musician failed to rise above “the decadence of a colonial elite culture”; his frustration destroying the fragile filial mosaic— with “arguments, brawls and binges of extravagance that terrified the children”.  

Filomena  gave her “children the best of opportunities with a meager income from her estates back home in Goa”— and a semblance of tranquility, Couto recalled.  

The novel that the writer Couto describes as a “tribute to her mother— an extraordinarily resilient and strong woman” is also an exploration of Goa’s evolution and integration into the country’s cultural and linguistic centre-stage from a Portuguese and Konkani speaking coastal paradise.

“As a Goan, I feel a lot of things should not have happened. For instance, English was imposed on the state in 24 hours instead of the Portuguese in 1961. When the Portuguese left, instead of employing Goans, officers were brought in from Maharashtra. It was as if one lot of rulers had left and a new lot had come in…” Couto said, picking up the leaves of “the historical debates around the modern Goan identity and history” from her previous book, “Goa: A Daughter’s Story”.  

The stream of indignant alienation runs through the novel reflecting in the clash of cultural ideologies between rural and urban Goa— in the union between the simple, practical and the committed Filomena from her grandmother’s village, Raia, where her “avo” (grandmother) took care of the orphaned Borges (Filomena’s family) brood and the “refined” Chico, from a affluent family in Margao, an old elite settlement  where life flowed to the beat of a classical pre-war Europe.  The couple found it hard to reconcile to their conflicting aspirations to stability, fame, luxurious living and the ensuing “failure”. The alienation is also apparent to the way Goa relates to the rest of India, to faraway Portugal and “post-transition” from the rest of the country – despite being a part of the Indian Union. It is emblematic of an essential dilemma that assailed several colonies at the cusp of de-colonisation— which in Goa arrived nearly two decades after the Indian Independence in 1947. 

“The problem was the intransigence of the Portuguese dictator— who adopted a scotch and burn strategy to destroy everything that Portuguese were behind. Coupled with this was the sudden imposition of English — that gives the people an insecure identity in mainstream India, particularly now with the influx of labour from neighbouring states as an investment. Goa is being ruled by powers from beyond the border. It has a large money order economy (from abroad) and the small captive Goan population in the Union Territory might soon become a minority… Goans have a unique individuality and personality — a society where women have equal rights,” Couto told this writer in an interview.

“People call it neo-colonisation of Goa”, the writer pointed out— grounded at some point in a deep sense of alienation and uncertainty about identity. Couto contexts her narrative in these contrasts — “the feudal culture of my parents in which the elites prospered, the villages  and the transition… Now Goa has immense upward mobility,” the writer explains. 

In the process, the canvas of the family becomes the broad story of the new Goan society. “I did not want to be judgmental in the process of exploration of the tragedy of my father’s life, courage and faith of my mother,” Couto said.  The seeds of the narrative were planted in the three years of transition (1962-1964) when Couto returned to homeland as the wife of senior Indian 

Administrative Service officer Alban Couto to oversee the “change” of Goa from a Portuguese colony to an Indian Union Territory- like Hyderabad. “I was living in the history of the moment”, she said.

Couto had access to “every world” as and IAS spouse – “the Catholic relatives in the villages, the Hindu world of Dharwad in Karnataka where she grew up and the world outside where she lived with her husband – both in the country and abroad”. As a lecturer of English at the Lady Shriram College in New Delhi for 15 years, she was exposed to world literature, creative devices and “historical resources” in archives around the world including Portugal, where she spent time researching from “old Portuguese publications” of the times like the “Dicionario de Literatura Goesa” and “O Ultramar”.

“I realized that newspapers could be a rich source of political history,” Couto said.    

The fact that Couto is one of the last “surviving” few of her multi-lingual generation, who speaks and reads Portuguese, Konkani and English helped her “put together evidence to back her narrative” as a “legitimate history of modern Goa in memory”.

Her real life research began from the period of “transition to the pre-war says of the 1920s and 1930s Goa to dig up family archives”. The events were tumultuous and “cinematic”.

The story begins with the death of Folimena’s mother Lilia at the birth of her fifth child at Raia village on a stormy night followed by the death of her father. It moves ahead with Filomena’s languid “growing up years that flits like expected shadows amid the farms, rivers, orchards, rain and the fields in the village, the Church, festivals, community, cousins and family celebrations” in concert with the passage of seasons, temporality and natural harvesting cycles— set in motion for hundreds of years ago.

At 26, Folimena is swept off her feet by Chico – whom she marries for love in upscale Margao - the dream town. The narrative from the point of Filomena and Chico’s wedding “becomes narrower focusing on the couple’s relationship” till Filomena shifts home to Dharwad with her seven children.

The telling divided into four “segments”  is detailed — like a painting so vivid with colours, events, emotions and exchanges that at times it is difficult to believe that “the story is resurrection of history from documented and memory archives”. She uses “a third person” narrative device — which hides the narrator (the author) from the glare of reader’s consciousness. The “I” factor creeps in occasionally  but Couto is present there constantly — prodding the reader to travel with the story of Goa’s modern history in a language that sheds light on Couto’s “cultural” positioning in a postcolonial India — old world yet lucid.

“I imagined my parents’ courtship. There are passages that read like fiction. I call it a combination of resource and creativity,” Couto said.    

-Madhusree Chatterjee   

(The novel, “Filomena’s Journey: A Portrait of a Marriage, A Family & Culture”, has been published by Aleph Book Company)