A 12th birthday…. Delhi, datacard, Wales, Jews and more…

Last weekend, I missed the chance of reminiscing about old times and
Goanet. This was because of a visit to New Delhi just then, spending
two days marooned at the guest house and spacious campus of the IIT.
There was more-than-full access to all that highly-subsidised food
that goes into building our elite team of technologists in these parts
of the world; but there was virtually no access to email for almost
two entire days.

Felt like kicking myself hard not making a decision fast enough, over
that Reliance datacard [0]. It now costs less than five thousand
rupees (just a wee bit less, Reliance style, it’s actually priced at
Rs 4990). This datacard allows you to access the Net via a laptop from
almost any part of India. No worrying about ISPs (internet service
providers) or changing all those complex settings to get online again.
And rates are affordable too. Rs 1500 pm unlimited access to
cyberspace. Speeds are said to be fast too, one is told, both on this
service and on others like Airtel (a bit more costlier; they’re
offering Blackberry in India too, but at quite a stiff price).

If you don’t want an unlimited Reliance account, Rs 400 pm will get
you free 10 pm to 6 am surfing, and the rest of the day at 30 paise a
minute. Little higher than what a fast cybercafe charges, with the
bonus of mobility. Across India (minus remote areas, I guess).

[And no, this isn’t an ad for Reliance… I agree with Samir’s
criticism of their corporate ethic. This is not a company I admire.]

In Delhi, the highlight of the trip was the priviledge of shaking
hands with Jimmy Wales (40), the founder of the Wikipedia.

Just before he rushed off to speak, I asked him [2] how one brought
together scattered bits of information in one place, on the Wikipedia.
“Yes, a portal would work,” he shot-back. And, like true leaders, he
was honest and encouraging at the same time, “You … just do it…. I
don’t know how it’s done myself,” he added, with a mischevious smile.

At the same conference [3], there was another of the persons whose
work I had been an admirer of for long. For more about Eben Moglen [4]
see the Wikipedia… definitions going around in circles, eh?

Like the other Jewish leaders whose ideas and work (and sometimes,
flesh and bones) one encountered — Free Software Foundation leader
Richard M Stallman, Karl Marx and Jesus Christ — Moglen too came
across as very millenarian in perspective. If Christ’s belief in the
inevitablity of changing the status quo actually brought about a
self-fulfilling prophecy that ultimately contributed in the collapse
of the Roman Empire, Marx too envisioned the inevitability of the
Revolution. Never mind that he got it wrong about where it would break
out (the affluent world would have nothing to do with it, and have,
ever since Marx’s warnings at least, been too well taken care of to
think revolt.)

In turn, Stallman’s own heroic work is making the global Free Software
movement a
reality is clearly spurred on by his view of proprietorial software
being sinful, not just extortionately expensive and inconvenient.
Then, there is Moglen’s confidence that the proprietorial software
model simply cannot last.

Doubting Thomases like me can never be sure. But, at the end of the
day, when the history of computing gets adequately and fully written,
we’ll anyway all be very grateful that a few emails actually brought
down someone like Richard Stallman to Goa, and Farmagudi earlier in
this decade. This happened at a time when everyone was forgetting RMS,
the “Linux” and “Open Source” movement were overpowering “GNU” and
“Free Software”, and the media obsfucation of the debate and its
origins were almost wholly complete.

Moglen’s own confidence in the victory of Free Software brought out a
few unsupressable smiles from my Indian-born Chinese-descent
lawyer-friend Lawrence Liang and myself. But we were all in awe of the
fluency with which he spoke about issues involved (the dangers of
software patents, why anything worth copying is worth sharing, the
creation of Copyleft and more).

“He’s been part of the movements which created these ideas,” said
another friend. That probably explained why he could speak so fast,
and so fluently, almost as if he was playing a recording… having me
struggling to take down notes for a change!

It was a great learning experience.

Jimmy Wales had some inspiration for me personally on how
not-for-profit initiatives (though he runs for-profit ones too) in
cyberspace can be run. And how important it is to actually get the
fundamentals right. More than enough food for thought…. including
discovering that he ran a site offering “adult” services in the past
😉

Moglen — a former software hacker at the age of 13 turned professor
of law and history of law at Columbia University who now serves pro
bono as General Counsel for the Free Software Foundation, and is the
Chairman of Software Freedom Law Center — kept mentioning the need
for “having fun” while creating software. Maybe we journos should
equally think of enjoying our supposed-to-be-creative work.

It was also nice to meet very briefly with Mishi Choudhary, a young
lawyer who had emailed me a few times in the past. When she had said
she planned to bring Eben Moglen down to India, I didn’t quite believe
her (but then, never let anyone know of your doubts… you never know
when they pull off something *you* thought impossible).

Not just that, she actually went ahead to found the India branch of
the Software Freedom Law Centre. (This is a network to bail out guys
who try to create quality software and then run into trouble with the
law or with arm-twisting ega-corporations. See what another youngster
from the Free Software movement in India, Anand Babu, now in the US,
achieved in the Fairplay case [6] The PlayFair project enabled people
to play their purchased iTunes tracks on “non-Apple authorised
hardware, provided an authorised key is available”.).

While in Delhi, Osama Manzar handed over a copy of the book offering
links to prize-winners of the Manthan Awards, for e-content in India.
Many innovative ventures there. Not surprisingly, Goa didn’t even get
a single mention; not even a nomination! Which made me thing: we
probably have a long, long way to go … still. .

[0] http://wapurl.co.uk/?QIGZLVR
[1] http://www.linuxworld.com/news/2006/100806-india-ip.html
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales
[3] http://www.in.redhat.com/news/article/80.html
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Moglen
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales
[6] http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/8675/print

Two books from Tony Martin

Khalil Ahmed’s Broadway Books on Saturday (Aug 19, 2006) released Tony Martin’s new books Life is Beautiful and Time Pass. At a somewhat formal function, the release was done by Dhempe College mentor-to-a-generation and theatre person Ms Isabel Santa Rita Vas in Panjim this evening.

Fr. J Loiola Pereira, Director of Diocesan Centre for Social Communications Media Fr J Loiola Pereira andGoa Art College lecturer Willy Goes (also a musician and writer himself) spoke.

Fr Loiola Pereira in his foreword to Life is Beautiful says, “‘Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but by the moments that take our breath away.’ I can assure the reader that each of the stories in
this book will provide such a precious moment.”

“Each tear-jerking story here hits the consciousness like a winged missile making an impact that lingers. You will love reading them. Again and Again. They will make you think. They will make you feel. They will rip the strings of your heart apart and knock your soul out of its unfeeling slumber. And if you feel like crying as you read, Good. It shows you are still human,” says Tony Martin in the preface to the book.

Willy Goes feels that at a time when more and more of our students turn out to be nothing more than rote-machines, a sense of critical thinking in children is the need of the hour and Times Pass is a small but positive step in that direction.

My former journalist college Mr. Martin (whose real name is Anthony Baretto, something everyone has probably forgotten) teaches English at Shri Nirakar Education Society’s SS Angle Higher Secondary School and is the author of Naked Goa, It’s a Funny World and The Practical English Teacher..Miguel Braganza compered.

Anthony M Barreto aka Tony Martin can be contacted at Galgibaga, Canacona, Goa — 403728 M: 9422390701 R: 91-0832-2632012 and via his website Canacona.net

Report about goabooks.swiki.net

Report on soc.culture.indian.goa Usenet newsgroup about an earlier venture to set up a book review site for Goa which somehow didn’t survive due to technical problems.

The Goan literary tradition – what does the future hold? (by Selma Carvalho)

[BY SELMA CARVALHO] Reading the E-Seniors notebook, I am struck by how strong the literary tradition is, in Goa. The beautiful narratives transport us to a time most of us are unaware of and would be lost forever but for the eloquent words of these men and women.

It is amazing how a small state in India managed to produce so many great writers spanning four languages. The feat is akin to that of Ireland. It is said that the lush Irish green, its wet weather and a hoary Celtic imagination often fueled by myriad spirits is what brings out the writer and poet in the Irish.

Certainly we share the green, the wet and the spirit in its many forms, with the Irish. There is a wandering minstrel and poet in every Goan soul and it
stirs to life with pen and paper.

Much of Goa’s unpublished talent that came of age as the colonial era snaked to an end, doubtless received little encouragement to follow a life in the arts. Nevertheless the wandering mistral persevered amidst this reluctance. Some became professors at universities and took to writing only part-time.

The generations that followed fared much worse. The choice after secondary schooling was narrowed down to three streams of education, science, commerce or arts, of which arts was definitely looked upon with much disdain. Perhaps the quantum of those that followed their literary ambitions had diminished but certainly not the zeal and the talent, which is evident in the prolific writers of Goa today.

What does the future hold for the Goan literary tradition? It is for the literary luminaries of today to pave the way, to battle outmoded ideas that exist
surrounding a life involved in the arts and create opportunities for young writers to put their best pens forward. A society bankrupt of its artistic heritage and future is a society bereft of imagination, values, foresight and ultimately its soul.

Ben Antao has lovely scenes, flashbacks, monologues (review by Silviano C Barbosa)

Novel, “Penance” by Ben Antao
Publisher Goan Observer, Goa, India
Soft cover, 329 Pages

I have just finished reading the Canadian novel, “Penance” by Canadian Goan author Ben Antao and published by Goan Observer, Panjim, Goa, India.

It’s too bad the North American publishers still shy away from Goan novels and novelists. I am sure if Rohinton Mistry had submitted this novel to Alfred Knopf or any other big name publishers, it would have been published. But Rohinton has not yet published any Canadian based novel so far, a fact not ignored by his Canadian critics.

Author Ben Antao has succeeded in his first foray into a mainstream Canadian novel. The fact that Ben has based this novel on a more than familiar Catholic way of life and the fact that he is married to his Canadian born wife and also the fact that he worked as a professional high school teacher in Toronto, has all worked very well for him in his portrayal of the Canadian Catholic teachers’ intricate way of life in this Canadian novel. As a result the ethnic novelist leaves no stone unturned in making it a full fledged Canadian novel, and not an ethnic one.

This novel is well written with some lively scenes, flashbacks, monologues, a keen human observation and a precise narrative. The book has been well edited. The novel is just about 60,000 words, a little too short for a full fledged novel, and the reader ends up wanting for more. But the author makes up for this by using double line spacing, which makes the book much easier and faster to read and also makes it 329 pages long.

The first part of the novel follows the pattern indicated on the book’s blurb, as the author uncovers the background of his characters with his typical show-and-tell craft, which most modern novelists adhere to. The second part is lot more interesting and as the novel comes almost to an unexpected end, it holds the reader’s undivided attention so much so that you can’t possibly put the book down as the tragic end just bowls you over.

The author employs so much of his Catholic religious belief and doctrine in his writing as the novel progresses and regresses with flash-backs and transitions and taking us back to the sixties, that it almost looks like you are reading Bible at times, replete with visuals of existence of God and some explicit sex thrown in, all at the same time and on the same page. The imagery used in this novel, especially the conservative way of life of all the characters, who happen to be staunchly Catholic, and who eventually become teachers, shapes up a real world full of living colours.

The author skillfully puts all pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together in the story and switches between characters seamlessly and makes transitions very easy on the reader. I must point out I had a little hard time figuring out the timeline of the story though. The book is heavy on emotions, except in one case where I was certainly looking forward to a really emotive meeting between the father and his young son, who longed to see his father after a long separation from his mother, but unfortunately the author missed a great opportunity to quench the reader’s thirst for this sensational reunion. But the end is completely captivating and suspenseful, and makes up for all the logical sequences in the first part. I found all four characters to be too
perceptive of each other, a fact not too common in real life.

All the scenes are eloquently accomplished, complete with minute details such as the facial and body features and even the clothes, the deportment and demeanor of each character. Sean’s (the son) character, which was more conspicuous by its absence in the first half, figures prominently at the very end. The morality of the story may not have much bearing or relevance in today’s modern times, but it did occupy a pride of place in the Catholic society right up to the sixties, and brings lots of nostalgia to those who lived through those innocent times.

After reading this novel, if you are a true believer in the Roman Catholic Church, you will never look at the opposite sex in a luscivious way, especially if you are married or committed, else you would have to pay for your dear life with grave consequences as depicted in this novel. Ultimately, no matter what you believe in, you will have to pay for your sins. There is no free lunch. Like they say in Goa “Korit to Bogit”. And pay you must, either now or later, as the title aptly says it all, through
“Penance”!

I loved this novel!

Silviano C. Barbosa, Author of the novel, “The Sixth Night”
http://ca.geocities.com/goaraj@rogers.com/

BOOK REVIEW: Building clouds… in cyberspace

—
Building Tag Clouds in Perl and PHP
Jim Bumgardner
O’Reilly
Ebook in PDF format
2006
ISBN: 0596527942
Pp 48
$9.99 US, $12.99 CAN
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/tagclouds/
—

Tag clouds? What are those?

O’Reilly’s new e-book ‘Building Tag Clouds in Perl and PHP’ by Jim Bumgardner explains a concept every serious user of cyberspace would have at least heard of.

Says Bumbardner: “Tag clouds are everywhere on the Web these days. First popularized by the web sites Flickr, Technorati, and del.icio.us, these amorphous clumps of words now appear on a slwe of web sites as visual evidence of their membership in the elite corps of ‘Web 2.0’.”

Wikipedia says: “A tag cloud (more traditionally known as a weighted list in the field of visual design) is a visual depiction of content tags used on a website. Often, more frequently used tags are depicted in a larger font or otherwise emphasized, while the displayed order is generally alphabetical. Thus both finding a tag by alphabet and by popularity is possible. Selecting a
single tag within a tag cloud will generally lead to a collection of items that are associated with that tag.”

If you’re a content person like this reviewer, why bother at all about all this stuff? As long as I get my neatly-laid out keywords that give me a clue of what’s where, why worry?

But then, someone has to do the job of getting the tag clouds to work. And that’s where this book is born out of a need.

It may be a fad. But one which has “real merits” when used popularly, as Bumgardner explains. This e-book analyses what is and isn’t a tag cloud. It offers design tips for using them effectively, and also shows how to collect tags and display them in the tag cloud format.

Interesting background on issues like craiglist’s weighted cities list, and statistically improbable phrases (SIPs) or capitalized phrases (CAPs) lists provided by Amazon.com. SIP has word order corelating to the improbability of the phrase.

In the CAP list, the word order relates to the frequency with which the phrase appears in the book.

After some interesting history about tag clouds — which takes us to Flickr (who doesn’t know this photography-sharing web site?), tag roots in the blogging community, and Jim Flanagan’s Zeitgeist idea — things start to get technical.

There’s code, graphs and how-tos.Time for me to leave it to techies, who prefer raw coding to merely writing book reviews!

Marriage how-to tips…

‘Getting Married in Goa’ is the Plus Publications’ marriage guide, in a new edition. It’s edited by Ilidio de Noronha and Lester Fernandes, with Cedric Silveira as editorial co-ordinator.

Obviously advertisement-driven, it also contains quite a bit of useful information. Starting with customs and traditions (the Catholic kazaar, the Hindu lagn, and the Muslim nikaah), matchmakers, cybermates, and the “countdown” to marriage.

If you got married here, you know how puzzling it can be in this information-poor state. Useful tidbits of information include brides’ and grooms’ checklists, budgeting your wedding, and even a section on “the Goan art of gifting”.

Getting ready for your big day, and details on the ‘law on marriage’ is also included. Honeymoon tips and more are also included. So is a section on ‘family planning the natural way’.

Quite a useful book. Good value for money. Provided you have marriage on you mind, that is.

%T Getting Married in Goa
%S The Complete Wedding Guide
%A Ilidio de Noronha & Lester Fernandes (eds)
%I Plus Publications E2, S2 Martins Enclave, Caranzalem
%E plusgroup@sancharnet.in plusgroup@rediffmail.com
%C Caranzalem, Goa
%D May 2006, 3rd edition
%G ISBN 81-903087-1-8
%P pp 176, Rs 125 US$5.95, Euro5.95, UKP4
%K guide, Goa, marriage

Konkani, with a Romi and Bardeshi touch

Reviewed by Frederick Noronha

One problem with books in Goa is that you never know when a new one is published. Obviously, book reviewing is a task not done very much seriousness here (except for a few publications like Goa Today). While castigating others, this reviewer also needs to accept blame for some long delays sometimes. This very title, for instance. That it is a labour of love is no excuse for not getting it done on time!

Reviewing Edward de Lima ‘Spoken Konkani: A Self-Learning Guide’ 2006 cannot be an easy job. He’s an agreeable person, one you couldn’t pick up a fight with in public. And he was also in charge of our National Cadet Corps troop during the lone year one tried this out almost a generation ago. He could immediately build up a rapport with boys in the troop.

This is a simple book by him, which promises to teach you a bit of spoken Konkani, not too much, in a simple and easy manner. It has 20 ‘units’ — the author’s long years in academia shows. Dr Lima recently did his PhD on the Dharwad-based Goan writer Armand Menezes.

This is a welcome addition. One says so because of where one comes from, and one’s belief in the need to promote and encourage a diversity of languages (Konkani, whether Devanagari and Roman and its many other scripts, Marathi, English, Portuguese, Kannada, Malayalam, Sanskrit too … and anything else).

It is obviously a departure from the dogmatic days of Devanagari-Konkani-alone approaches. Strange how so many writers (of the non-Devanagari camp) just took a break in their writing, without even realising how dogmatism was blocking creativity, ever since Devanagari became the lone accepted script post 1987.

Lima proffers to teach you Konkani by way of conversations at situations you are likely to encounter. The post office (with email around, it’s not that important anymore), the hotel, the doctor’s, the restaurants, and so on.

At the start of the slim book, there’s a guide to pronunciation. What one found useful was, at the very end, a listing of months, Konkani numbers, time, useful words and phrases, spices (mossalo), taste (ruch), nature (soimb), cereals (dhanya), vegetables (tarkari or bhaji), fruits (folam), Goan fish (Guenchem nustem), parts of the body (kuddiche andde), animals (zanvaram), birds (suknni or sonvnim), and the ever-complex set of relationships in Konkani (nathem). As an aside, I just disagree with Lima when he says “hippy” is a derogatory term for a foreigner in today’s Goa.

People in coastal Bardez will use this term for any Caucasian, without the bat of an eyelid. And why blame them, when hippies are the foreigners they first encountered (post Portuguese departure)? Even my decent academic friends get labelled thus quite frequently.

This is Lima’s third release. The second was a reprint. When we met many moons back, and I promised to do the review, he told me the earlier publications — in 2001 and 2002 — had done well. Artist Ramanand Bhagat has a neat illustration on the cover. Maureen’s at Panjim is the printer. The book, priced at Rs 100, was printed with a 50% financial assistance through the Goa Konkani Academi’s educational scheme.

It’s devoted, rather quaintly, “to my mother whose words I first learnt to lisp”.

Released in February this year, the book was inspired, says the author, by his several cousins — second-generation Goans in England, Canada and Australia — who were keen to learn to speak Konkani, while just on holiday in Goa.

Says Edward da Lima (58): “I wrote the book in the Roman script because it would enable all English readers easy access to the language. To learn Konkani in the Devanagari script would have been a formidable task, as they would first have to learn the script.”

It’s written in the dialect predominantly used in Bardez in North Goa, or Bardeshi. “I found it easier to write in that dialect as I speak that dialect myself,” the author told me. He says Konkani has the strong form of consonants like n, t, d, ch and l — which do not exist in English — and hence his transliteration guide could help readers navigate this “treacherous sphere”.

Any challenges while doing this work? Says Lima: “The problems are the same faced by all translators. There cannot be an exact translation of any sentence from a source language like English to a target language like Konkani without compromising its core meaning. It is a difficult task to find an accurate, meaningful and creative synonym to each word.”

Did you know that the the English words “please”, “excuse me” and “sorry” do not have their Konkani equivalents. Of course, this does not make Konkani a rude language! Check out the wealth of words to describe fish, different forms of rice, and so on.

On the script row, Lima feels: “There are many reasons as I see it. One is, Roman script writers do not get due recognition. The second is that financial assistance is only made available to the Devanagari section by the government. And the third is that Roman script writers face discrimination at government interviews, as they are required to write in the Devanagari script.”

He’s pragmatic when he says knowledge of English the international language is essential, even while “Konkani is our lifeblood”.

Incidentally Lima belongs to a generation that never had to — or got the opportunity to — study Konkani. He learnt English, Hindi, French and Portuguese. An alumni of Monte de Guirim in Bardez, he recalls times when it was the biggest school in North Goa, with 400 boarders at its height. He was there from 1953 to 1963, and recalls times when “boys from all surrounding villages used to come up like ants” climbing up that hillock.

I guess purists would attempt to write off this slim book as too basic. But, then, we have long complained about the lack of accessible language learning tools in Konkani, isn’t it?

%T Spoken Konkani
%S A Self-Learning Guide
%A Edward de Lima
%I Vikram Publications, 515 Lima Vaddo, Porvorim Ph 832.2413573
%C Porvorim, Goa
%D 2006
%O paperback, references, bibliography, index
%G ISBN not available
%P pp 63
%K Konkani, language, Goa, Roman script

Murder of a DJ … do we need to wait for a gruesome murder to know something is going wrong?

Riza needed to copy the Ten Commandments, so I went to the Net. With
limited literacy skills, the eight-year-old struggled to copy down a
chidlren’s version. “Okay, ‘adultery’ means you should not get married
twice,” I tried knowing how hopeless my attempt was, and hoping that
she’d believe it for now.

And, as I went along, as a game of sorts, I just kept mentally ticking
off how many commandments I was observing myself. Not that it really
mattered, because one doesn’t believe in doing things just because of
a rule. Fear of punishment (divine wrath, or whatever) is not good
enough a reason for good behaviour.

Ruth was in a few minutes early. So, I requested a few minutes delay,
knowing well that eight-year-olds are wont to sometimes take
procastination as a religion.

“Can I see the newspaper?” she asked. Oh good, the male chauvinist in
me thought sub-consciously. In our times, girls in Goa *never* read
papers (and the boys started with the sports page first).

Then, the teenager who helps Riza with lessons, told of the shock that
had hit their friends circle at college. Two of the five boys accused
in the murder of 18-year-old DJ from Vasco, Mandar Surlakar, were from
Bardez. They were people-like-us, the boys from next door. All in
their early twenties or thereabouts, they came from local schools or
colleges, and hung around the hep spots. Everyone knew them.

So what could have led them to commit murder?

She was grieving loss of her sister six months ago

Sad tale of a Goan-origin victim of the recent Mumbai blasts. The Indian Express is carrying a series of blast victims, and Nandini Naik was just 27. It writes:

Ramesh describes Nandini as the “daughter with a bouncing ponytail who always dressed pretty.” The first class commerce graduate from MMK College was the first in their Goan-Konkani family to crunch numbers efficiently. And that’s why he got excited when she wanted to pursue an MBA in finance.

Sad indeed. One also wonders what are the social forces that makes people into “terrorists”. Less has been said on that front.

On a monsoon weekend, in Talaulim’s Santanna

A white Maruti made its appearance outside, and the missus mentioned the arrival of visitors. Even as Vijay and Meena with their kids stepped in, I quickly and abruptly asked him to come along. Vijay thought there was something on my mind; in fact, there wasn’t. On a monsoon weekend, taking a ride to some distant village can be quite a bit of fun.

Aren, who just waits for a ride, supported my view with a persistent “Let’s go, let’s go.”

To get to the Church of Santanna in Tiswadi, if your headed there from Bardez, at Panjim you can take the Merces road that takes you right through the village. After crossing some spillover urban sprawl from Panjim, you get past the military camp at Bambolim.

Language, script, controversy…

As any media-watcher would know, the Fourth Estate has played a key role in stoking various sides of the language/script controversy in Goa, right since the mid-eighties. Sometimes, this was done because of ideological reasons, at other times because it helped to boost circulation, or because of the editor’s/proprietor’s understanding of what was “right”.

Rajan Narayan, editor of the Goan Observer (who played a key role in shaping the understanding of and demands on the Konkani side of the language front in the mid-1980s) argues the following in the Goan Observer of Aug 12-18, 2006.

* Granting equal status to Marathi would destroy the status not only of Devanagari Konkani but (of) Romi Konkani itself.

* Granting Marathi official language status would “revive the ghost of merger and threaten the unique and distinct identity of Goa”.

* The silver lining to the language controversy is that the Devanagari Konkani group seems to have finally woken up to the fact that they
cannot ignore the legitimate grievances of the Romi Konkaniwadis any longer.

* Narayan approvingly cites the argument that if Romi Konkani is given official language status, it would become politically impossible to prevent Marathi from securing equal official language status.

* This, it is argued, may spark off similar demands from “Mallus and Kannadigas and perhaps the Oriyas who now have significant numbers living in Goa”.

Would you agree? If yes, why, and if not, why not?

The media, they say, doesn’t tell you *what* to think. It tells you what to think *about*. But the above comes across as an attempt to frame the language debate in Goa along certain lines.

It would be interesting to see how Goanetters view the above arguments.

Comics, Goa, Sharad…

Sharad Sharma — more about him at this article on Comminit.com — has been holding workshops on grassroots cartooning at colleges in Goa. Check some of the photographic reports at this page on Flickr.

Statistics on education in Goa… schoolwise, village/town wise

Check this out: site related to education in Goa: directory of educational statistics in Goa

Linking up to Riza

Riza, studying in the third standard at Lourdes Convent in Saligao, doesn’t have much patience (yet) to read, leave alone write or type. But she does like to ‘dictate’ to me some of her blog entries.

Kindly visit http://rizagoa.blogspot.com and leave your comments behind.

She is specially thrilled when children from other areas leave some comments on what she writes (as would anyone else, I guess). She was thrilled when Colin (8yrs) wrote in from Australia, in response to a post about a circus she had visited in Mapusa.

While I egg her on with questions and suggested topics, I try to retain her language… and sometimes the cute “errors” and thought-patterns that creep in from an almost eight-year-old’s perspective. She’s my guineapig to try out ways to encourage kids into writing!

When transparency comes to town: officials gear up to face RTI

From Frederick Noronha / GoaRTI Report

IIPA, the Indian Institute of Public Administration (Goa chapter), held a lively session on the Right to Information Act, which drew a full-hall at the Institute Menezes Braganza, on August 7, 2006 Monday evening.

Unfortunately, officials seemed to make up the major part of the audience. This could be taken as an indication that the citizens are yet to realise the potency of this new law in bringing in transparency to a society that faces the burden of corruption and opacity in its functioning.

Guest speaker was Balleshwar Rai, IAS, Chairman Public Grievances Commission New Delhi and the former Chief Secretary of Goa. Goa’s incumbent Chief Secretary and IIPA Chairman Western Regional Branch JP Singh chaired lecture.

It was followed by a long — sometimes heated — but interesting discussion.

Travelling the Asian trail

Young Female, Travelling Alone
Anne-Marie M Pop
2005
iUniverse, Inc (New York, Lincoln, Shanghai)
http://www.iuniverse.com
Pp 149 US$12.95

REVIEWED BY Frederick Noronha

Minutes after the postman rang the cycle-bell and dropped this book at the door, I was devouring it. As anticipated, it dealt with India. And, my next guess was right too: a significant section focussed on Goa, the former Portuguese colony on the Indian west coast that this reviewer call home

Let’s shift focus to where it should go: the book and its author. Writer Anne-Marie M Pop is a Montreal-based computer engineer. In 2001, she took on a two-year job in Sweden, and then quit for a seven-month “backpacking journey through Asia”.

This is a reflection — let’s not say ‘record’ — of her times in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia and India.

It takes her through Cambodian border scams and brothels, Buddhist  meditation centres in Thailand, scenic islands, the Mekong and the rain forests. She also lands up in the sex-drugs-and-full-moon-party trail still surviving a generation after the hippies first sought solace and escapism in Asia.

Anne-Marie’s book is an easy and entertaining read. It’s armchair-tourism  from the safety of your own home, with the tantalising promise of bringing in close, but not too close, the perils that Asia.

Anne-Marie M Pop faces many dangers. More so, as the “young female, travelling alone”. She’s critical of how Asian men treat women. And as an Asian male, this reviewer would acknowledge that she has a point. But is it Asian males alone? Oftentimes, oppression has a more subtle face on it. In Asia, it doesn’t. Not following culturally-apt behaviour could also be risky; and this holds true for any part of the globe, even if the risks play themselves out in differing ways.
Her chapters are usually just two pages long. One comprises just four paras! While this may seem unusual, it makes for easy, relaxed reading.

‘Young Female Travelling Alone’ gives the reader both insights and an interesting travelogue into a number of diverse parts of Asia. But does it go deep enough? Does it repeat stereotypes that we are already brainwashed about? We’d leave that to the reader to judge.

What this writer has to say about Goa and the rest of India struck a chord. She was writing about a place that’s barely eight  kilometres from home. The last book of the kind is Dr Cleo Odzer’s “Goa Freaks”.

[It’s a sad story of how a young Jewish lady  got caught up with drugs, and almost died of it. [She cleant up, did her PhD on sex tourism in Patpong, and worked for a rehabilitation group in the US. But, earlier this decade, she returned to Goa, only to die her in an incident which still brings in many curious questions from people who knew her.]

Anne-Marie M.Pop’s description was realistic and down to earth. No wonder, as a reviewer, one was both surprised and disappointed to read the ‘fiction/general’ tag on the back cover of the book. It’s so life-like, I thought it was true!

Or, is it?

Some education links… in Goa

Some education-related links found via Dmoz.org: Goa Engineering College, Farmagudi, Goa Institute of Management, Ribandar, Government Polytechnic, Bicholim, Government Polytechnic, Panaji, Institute of Hotel Management, Catering and Applied Nutrition, and V M Salgaocar College of Law

Another Goan at the top…

Eddie Fernandes’ GoanVoiceUK is announcing that a 38-year-old Goan is to take over an IT company that employs 31,000 persons.

Eddie quotes this release from the PRNewsWire, which says: “Cognizant Announces Management Succession Plan.”

From PRNewsWire:

Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation announced that the current Chief Operating Officer Francisco D’Souza will become President and CEO from 1 Jan 2007 … Mr. D’Souza, who will continue to be based in the U.S., has 17 years experience in the IT industry in operational, management and advisory roles and was part of the team that founded.

And, from GoanVoiceUK

Francisco D’Souza was born in Nairobi in 1968, the son of Sushila and Placido D’Souza (born in 1933, ex-Anjuna, Goa ex India’s Consul General in New York and High Commissioner in Port of Spain, Hong Kong and Nairobi). His sisters are Jacinta, Lucia and Maria. Francisco attended University of East Asia, Macau and Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. He is married to Ines, a Brazilian. For more info about him and the family see GVUK 2006-14

And here’s what Wikipedia has to say about Cognizant Technology Solutions:

Cognizant started out in 1994, as Dun & Bradstreet Satyam Software – the in-house technology development center for the Dun & Bradstreet Corporation (D&B) and its operating units. Initially a joint venture between Dun & Bradstreet (76%) and Satyam Computer Services Ltd. (24%), it soon became a 100% subsidiary of D&B Corp. In 1996, the company became a division of the Cognizant Corporation, after the split-up of Dun & Bradstreet Corporation. In June 1998, Cognizant Corporation was again spun-off into many independent companies, and Cognizant Technology Solutions was formed as a division of IMS Health, the world’s leading provider of information solutions to the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. The same year, the company completed its initial public offering and was listed on the NASDAQ. In November 2002, IMS Health divested its majority interest in Cognizant through a tax-free split-off. Operations: The New Jersey headquartered Cognizant Technology Solutions has most of its employees based in the city of Chennai, Tamil Nadu, where they have eight offices at present. The employees at Cognizant number 31000+, and this figure is on the increase, as Cognizant is fast becoming one of the largest job providers in India. [citation needed]. Cognizant has aligned its businesses vertically and has clients in Banking & Financial Services, Healthcare, Manufacturing & Logistics, Information, Media & Entertainment, Telecom, Insurance, Life Sciences, Retail, Hospitality and New Tech. Cognizant revenue for the year 2005 was at $886 million mark and has guided to end year 2006 with $1.37 billion. It may be considered as being in the same league as Infosys, Wipro, Tata Consultancy Services which are the other, major Indian Information Technology (IT) services companies.

Which “Goan institution” has eight fingers?

Here’s the blog of Eight Finger Eddie.

Who?

The original Freak. A scenester since before there was a scene, blazing the hippie trail between Goa and Kathmandu, ever since 1963. Eddie is now 80 and a Goa institution. Every year he performs a chapter of his life to a rapt audience at the ruin behind Goa Gil’s house in Anjuna. Now Eddie’s life story is available on the web. If you’ve heard of Freak Street and Juhu Beach, of Baba Ram Dass and Goa Gil you’ll want to read the inside story of Freaks in India since the sixties.

Reached there while doing a review of Young Female, Travelling Alone by Anne-Marie M Pop.