ith a dull throb as the red
mineral made its way to the mouth of the Zuari and the
hungry ore carriers berthed there. For they were -- and
are -- one and the same. Government functionary and
river vessel -- both vehicles of the powers that seek
to control 'aparanta'. Does it work? Should it?

It does in fact work. Teotonio de Souza, before he
departed from the Xavier Centre of Historical Research,
had chatted with me on a few occasions. He had been,
then, as critical of the Church as he was of the
gradual change he saw in Goa's politics and
middle-class political consciousness. He had told me,
up there in the haze of one Porvorim afternoon, how he
had been amused to read that "Goans are largely a
T-shirt wearing population".

That comment came from one Arun Sinha, who was then,
and as far as I know continues to be, editor of The
Navhind Times. Teotonio seemed at first mildly
intrigued by this person's interpretation of the
Goanness of Goans. But then the historian also revealed
a resigned bitterness about what else he perceived in
the journalist's prose. "One wonders," he wrote later,
"if to be wholly Indian one has to chew 'paan' and spit
it all around, or replace T-shirts or G-shorts with
kurta-pajama or safari suit."

It is part of a misguided mission which propagates
itself apparently tirelessly and without mercy -- that
there are caricatures which continue to be attributed
to Goans. Very often, they are invented by bureaucrats
and self-styled "professionals" who want to teach Goans
to be less easy-going or less un-Indian. I suspect that
one Manohar Parrikar, the current Big Wheel in the
circus that is Goa's government of the day, is just as
keen to socially re-engineer the Goan masses. Nor is he
the first, nor most zealous of those who have wished to
do so.

The trouble for the correspondent in Goa -- zealous or
cantankerous or otherwise -- is that one never seems to
escape the impression that, in a certain way,
de-colonisation has not yet been digested. It is not
that the departure of the Portuguese is regretted
(there are exceptions, of course) but the question of
why, Portuguese colonisation remains so strenuously
berated. How is one to internalise this truth, seek to
convey to our readers the paradoxes that abound in our
reading of this beautiful, bewitching 'aparanta'? How
can one negotiate for oneself the editorial space to do so?

I do not mean this to be a disheartening preface for
the haple