FN: Frederick Noronha’s blog

Some comments on a recently-published essay, part of Jerry Pinto’s Reflected in Water: Writings on Goa (Penguin Books): “Teotonia R. de Souza’s profile of the little-known ‘opium smuggler who tried to liberate Goa’ is as captivating as Frederick Noronha’s portrait of Abbé Faria, eighteenth-century priest, mesmerist and revolutionary, and one of the region’s most famous sons.” (From the book’s jacket and on Penguin.)

And, Karishma Attari’s review in The Hindustan Times titled Furious and funny in Goa: “Every anthology has its strong leaders and its stragglers. Not every piece in this compilation is a winner. Adil Jussawalla’s delicious diary entry is at odds with the dispassionate, somewhat boring account of Noronha’s hypnotist-priest….”

Finally, Peter Nazareth’s comment on the NewDiaspora mailing list which says this: “The book looks like a personal exploration of Goa by Jerry Pinto from Bombay (Mumbai), and he has a two-page “intuitive” introduction — not surprising since he is a poet. So the review was wrong to underrate it: and speaking of the review being wrong, I found Fred Noronha’s search for Abbe Faria to be fascinating, not boring — it is one of the best things I have read by Fred.”

So… take your pick!

Even when going for something related to music, one needs to find some other ‘peg’ in it. Say, some photos to be clicked or the promise of an interview. Thursday evening was different. Longtime cyber-friend (even if we disagree over some issues) and Goa Engineering College alumni Joao Paulo (John Paul) Cota, now based in London and sometime a Goanetter, invited me to the 100th birth centenary celebrations of his grand-dad Maestro Jose Santana Cota (b 1906) on December 28 at his village of Santa Cruz (Tiswadi).

John-Paul has kept close contact over the years, and one can’t but help appreciate his initiative in promoting concepts like the Goan Musical Society there. HIs grand-dad, known as Mestre Cota, learnt violin in his parochial school at Betalbatim, went to Bombay to play in the cinema during the silent era, and returned home early.

For much of his 83 years, he taught and played a generation and more of Goans. He was Mestre-Capela at Santa Cruz (Tiswadi), led bands and choirs, taught music to priests-to-be and at Don Bosco’s in Panjim, performed on Emisorra Goa (Wikipedia: Goa was once home to the Emissora Goa, a powerful radio station that was widely listened to when this small region was still a Portuguese colony. After the end of Portuguese rule, this station was replaced by a station from the All India Radio network.), and more. Leave his mark he did. “They’re the musical family of Santa Cruz,” as my friend Marian explained.

His compositions include the funeral marches Lagrimas de Oiro and Ultimo Caminho, and the Marchas Populares. After a few (but not short) speeches, the evening saw a mix of Latin brass band, mandde, violin, flute, deknni, an English Carol, and even “operatic style manddo” and “rhapsody dulpod”.

Now how more demonstrative of Goa’s diversity, and its melting-pot nature, can that get?

Young Chriselle Mendonca put up a solo performance of Cezar Franck’s Panis Angelicus (Wikipedia: Panis Angelicus is one of three hymn texts written by St. Thomas Aquinas for the Feast of Corpus Christi as part of a complete liturgy of the Feast including prayers for the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours), while Joao-Paulo was spirited in his performance among the brass band playing the ‘Marcha de Santa-Cruz’.

Before the intermission (with a spell of ‘tombola’, what else!) the Rachol Seminary Choir, suited and suave, put up a creditable performance of the Marshal Bartholomew-arranged African-American spiritual “Keep in the Middle of the Road”.

One had to run, for no other reason than it was getting late. Riza had made friends with some girls, and they were all playing ‘catching cook’ at 9 pm! December-end dew enveloped our two-wheeler seat, as we got back to the vehicle. An entertaining evening.

Nice to see expats (and locals) taking the lead in building skills in a sphere where Goa once held sway. For sure, the Net can play a role in building awareness about this. Lot more is possible.

Those Good Ol’ Days
Stories From Two Schools and A College in Mapusa, Goa
December 2006
Price (in Goa) Rs 150. Pp 84 (large size)
BMX http://www.bmxgoa.com

“Must be ink fell on it,” commented three-year-old Aren, struggling to get his words right after gingerly asking permission to see the book. Touching the wrong book can mean big trouble, as the kids have by now learnt. “This looks like my school notebook,” Riza ( commented earlier in the evening, pointing to the cover. “Can I write on it?” she went on to boldly ask, when shown another page with the same texture.

I was thrilled. Obviously, the artist had done a good job in getting across his point!

The ‘artist’ in this case is Britto Old Boy Alex Braganza, the Patto-Panjim based commercial artist better known for the music he and his late brother August created through the many bands they were linked to. The way he and his Broadways team slogged to package this book (if one could call it that) over a ad-busy Christmas season was inspiring. One saw it at close quarters, and learnt a lot more about Alex in those days.

The blue-green-red BMX logo (for three prominent educational institutions in Mapusa) stands out on the cover. The top half of the
page looks like an exam paper, and the title is scribbled across it with a neat schoolgirl’s handwriting. Under the BMX logo is the
Konkani saying, “Mog Assundi”. Particularly untranslatable (like other good Konkani sayings), it could mean anything from “Hey, don’t keep any anger (as we leave)” to “Go with only good memories”.

The “ink” Aren noticed was a blotch of blue on the front cover… meant to depict ink. Which it did. Effectively.

About the book, one can say little here. My name figures as being responsible for editing it… after reading a few pages, I realised
where exactly the errors had crept in! Ouch! But let’s leave that to some others to talk about ….

This “book” (inverted commas, because it has a souvenirish appearance, and a number of ads from alumni and their networks) has some 32 “chapters”. Some are brief, less-than-a-page essays, and other span as many as four pages. Giving that alumni tend to be people in their fourties (if not older) with failing reading-vision, a larger point-size might have made sense. But, being an ‘insider’, I know that money, paper and time factors were more important.

Chapters focus on college and school memoirs from Mapusa. By young students, by students who passed out half-a-century ago. Or teachers and lecturers. By a historian, ex-priest who gives an interesting insight into life during the post-1961 times with the Jesuits. By an engineer who tells a great story of life in Mapusa and Britto’s, warts and all, during the ‘fifties. By an ‘Africander’ boy who moved from Britto’s to the Jesuit novitiate, to political commitment and then working in a prominent global tech company in Britain. And by many more.

There’s also a tribute to ‘Pop’, as Fr Nicolau Pereira, St Xavier College’s longest-serving principal, was known. Interestingly, it
comes from the free-to-share Wikipedia online encyclopedia…. That’s the power of sharable information recycling. You create a Wikipedia entry. Then print it somewhere. When people notice that, the Wikipedia entry will probably grow in quality and depth. Or will it? Let’s be optimistic….

But to know more about the book, check it out. Without publicising it (or building up expectations) further, one could say that two
realisations stuck in my mind while putting this together. Firstly, there are so many people waiting to tell their “story”, if only asked.
They need some convincing that writing is applied commonsense and a discipline anyone can inculcate, hardly rocket science. Secondly, the sharable-content Creative Commons model works — specially when profits are a secondary issue, as for these alumni networks.

Content for this (and an earlier book, ‘Britto Retro’) were largely generated through online electronic mailing lists. This being the
case, it would be unfair for any “publisher” to claim copyrights over the resulting material. All of it (in this book, and most in the
‘Britto Retro’) was put out under a CreativeCommons.org license. It implies a sharable, some-rights-reserved approach (rather than the ‘all rights reserved’ approach of Copyright).

Not only did it make the content sharable (two publications are out, more could result… at least in terms of e-books… ). But it also
ensured that the price of the resultant publication — because of the ‘not for profit’ clause, and also the fact that it could be repackaged anytime more affordably — was itself reasonably priced.

That, to me, was a satisfying experience.

Contributors to this volume include Arlette Azavedo, Cecil Pinto, Benny Faria, Joyce Heredia Fernandes, Charmaine Abreu Lobo, Avelino D’Souza, Caroline Andrade, Alex Pascoal Silveira, Clara Fernandes, Lea Mathias, Jose Da Gama Paes, Ingrid Vallesl Po, Constantino “Tino” de Nazare, Anna D’Souza, Lydia De Souza, Anne Vaz, Sr Margaret Correa (a nun en route to Bamako in Mali when she wrote her piece), Dorothy Desouza Almeida, Dr Teotonio R de Souza, Daniel DeSouza and James Fernandes (both profs at Xavier’s formerly), Aureo De Souza, Lumen de Souza (nee Pereira), Oscar Correia Noronha, Nadia Isabel Miranda Fernandes, Sidney Mendes, and poet Brian “Mr Xavier” Mendonca.

Obviously one shouldn’t be reviewing a book one has himself been closely involved in… On the other hand, the option is that, Goa
being Goa, most books published here never ever reach the reviewer’s eye. (Very few reviewers exist anyway. Neither is there space for locally published books in most publications.) So, while confessing about this confict of interest, I won’t stop myself from keying in these few words.

Believe them at your own peril….

EFY, Electronics For You, the New Delhi-based group that publishes the Linux For You magazine too, had this small surprise for me. A 2007 desk calendar.

What was interesting was the quotes it contained, some from people whom I don’t quite admire … or appreciate their role in changing the world in a certain direction. (Walt Disney, for instance). But whose words are inspiring in a way.

So let me share the same with you:

To talk well and eloquently is a very great art; but that an equally great one is to know the right moment to stop. — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791).

Leave nothing for tomorrow which can be done today. — Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865).

The important thing is not to stop questioning. — Albert Einstein (1879-1955).

Be great in act, as you have been in tought. — William Shakespeare (1564-1616).

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something. –Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895).

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection. –George Orwell (1903-1950).

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. — Aristotle (384-322 BCE).

I can give you a six-word formula for success: ‘Think things through — then follow through.’ –Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832).

Everyone things of changing the world, but no one things of changing himself. –Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910).

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best. –Oscar Wilde (1854-1900).

Kites rise highest against the wind — not with it. –Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965).

When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do. — Walt Disney (1901-1966).

Says the calendar:

How do you feel? The way things are going in your life depends on how you choose to feel. Your feelings are your most sincere expectations. Some see a challenging situation and feel dismayed. Others see the same situation and know that they can choose to feel energized and inspired. How do you choose to feel about things? Whatever it is, that is the way your life will play out.

While passing through Bangalore yesterday, I came across Bangalore Tiger: How Indian Tech UPstart Wipro is Rewriting the Rules of Global Competition by Steve Hamm. This is a 2007-dated Indian edition released by Tata McGraw-Hill and priced a rupee or five (can’t recall) below the Rs 300 mark.

Am only at the beginning of the book. But Hamm seems to be trying hard to tell a tech story in an interesting with, with a human face. There are still a lot of details to contend with.

Some reviews and links (including Amazon.com) to the book are here.

On the back cover, the book promises:

“At one time, the West’s multinationals ruled supreme. Now, the shining stars of India’s Silicon Valley are shaking up the global business establishment. Bangalore Tiger exposes the key principles of Wipro’s transnational business model, offering valuable lessons in improving quality, cutting costs, motivating employees, and streamlining processes. From its mastery of global collaboration and its market expansion strategy to its constant-improvement approach and its market expansion strategy to its constant-improvement approach and ‘zero politcs’ policy, author Steve Hamm reveals the never-before-told story of how ‘The Wipro Way’ of doing business is changing the world.”

Wonder if the book will live up to its promise. If I can keep away from the comp sufficiently long to complete it, will let you know…