Ferry Crossing: Short Stories from Goa.

Nazareth, Peter

Ferry Crossing: Short Stories from Goa. Manohar Shetty, ed. New Delhi. Penguin India. 1998. xviii + 268 pages. Rs250. ISBN 0-14-027806-0.

"One of the main aims of this anthology is to correct the distorted picture of Goa among most people outside the state," says Manohar Shetty. A Portuguese colony for well over four centuries, Goa was liberated in 1961 "by a well-meaning but amorphous nation which had itself ceased to be a colony barely fourteen years earlier." He continues: "Added to this was the trivialization of Goa by the demands of tourism and the advertising industry, abetted by the popular media and cinema, which, over the years, created a caricatured perception of the state. It came to be seen as a place peopled by a feckless, bohemian race tippling away their lives in cosy tavernas, on balmy beaches and in the shadow of hoary mansions and whitewashed churches." To present a truer picture of Goa where the business of living "is as serious and humdrum as it is anywhere else in the country," Shetty has edited a volume of twenty-seven short stories by such authors as Chandrakent Keni, Pundalik Naik, Meena Kakodkar, Mahableshwar Sail, Vasant Bhagwant Sawant, and Leslie de Noronha. The stories are translated from Konkani, Marathi, and Portuguese or were written originally in English.

Shetty has solid credentials for identifying and destroying Goan stereotypes (see WLT 56:4, p. 757, and 69:4, p. 875). Not a Goan by birth, he is married to a Goan, was editor of the monthly Goa Today, and is a poet whose work focuses sharply on the overlooked. The stories (some being extracts from novels) present economic and sexual exploitation of workers, peasants, and the lower castes, cruelty toward animals, selfishness, and the like. We see people sincerely or hypocritically practice their religion, Hinduism or Catholicism (not Islam, though 5 percent of Goans are Muslim). There is human warmth, as in Laxmanrao Sardessai. In "The Hour's End" we meet a jealous person whose schemes for causing misery are defeated by someone using strategy. "The Africa Boat" is narrated by a freedom fighter imprisoned in Fort Aguada by the Portuguese. The guard, an African, is harsh, but changes when he falls in love with a Goan woman; he joyfully takes the prisoner to visit his wife and son. Seizing his opportunity, the prisoner escapes, but, realizing the guard will be punished by not being permitted to take his wife and son to Africa, turns back: "He had been running. I stood up. He hugged me. Overcome with emotion, we headed towards the Fort. That night, every line the waves made on the mouth of the Mandovi river looked to me like a smile."

The center of the volume is Goa, though some of the writers are from outside Goa. Victor Rangel-Ribeiro, formerly a music critic for the New York Times, has two stories from Tivolem, which won the Milkweed Prize for fiction and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in India. My own story, "The Confessor," originally published in East Africa, takes on a new meaning by Goa's no longer being on the fringe: "Like all Goans in East Africa, I am a Catholic. Just an accident of fate. If Goa did not have a natural harbour the Portuguese wanted, I might have been a Hindu. Or had the Arabs held out longer, a Muslim."

"This volume does not claim to put Goa on the literary map of India," says Shetty. "It is merely an effort to erase some of the misleading graffiti on Goa. It asks the reader to take a simple but refreshing ferry crossing into the heart of India's youngest state." Here I must protest. "Simple" would be the wrong word if work had been included by Lino Leitao or Violet Dias Lannoy; and I would argue that simplicity in "The Confessor" is deceptive, showing how stories made up in a bar can free the imagination to hold a dialogue with history, while Sardessai shows how history can be forgiven. Shetty is close to endorsing a colonial stereotype: that Goans lack the imagination to create complex art. He had helpers who "translated and sifted through reams of material from Konkani and Marathi," he says-which means that subtle literary judgments must have been necessary, borne out by the number of books and prizes listed in the biographical notes. Indeed, there is a tonal range in the book, from the straightforward to the nuanced. Different types of humor are found in "At the Shrine of Mary of the Angels" by Hubert Ribeiro and "Uncle Peregrine" by de Noronha, who observe the behavior of the desiccated Catholic elite with sophisticated irony and satire; "The Sacristan and the Miser" by Lambert Mascarenhas, which is about a trickster; and Rangel-Ribeiro's "Angel Wings," a straight-faced account of an eccentric who prepares for his funeral by sleeping in a coffin. "These Are My Children" by Damodar Mauzo, in contrast, is a moving account of an old woman trying to save the roots from progress, having lost her children to the economic consequences of a used-up colony.

Shetty has in fact provided a holographic map of Goa. The enticingly simple crossing leads to hidden treasures.

Peter Nazareth

University of Iowa