GoaNetters and the KSL.

(29 Dec ’12)

            Frederick Noronha, publisher-owner of 1556, should have been the marketing head of some fast-moving consumer product. Even if he’s never met you, he directs highly persuasive emails whenever there’s an event he believes might interest you. This time, on Thursday 27^th Dec, he arranged the annual meeting of GoaNetters at KSL (Krishnadas Shyama Library behind the Panaji Kadamba Bus Stand). The GoaNetters are a group of Goans who network around the world: there were members from Toronto and Doha, and some invitees from the US of A who happened to be staying/studying in Goa for a couple of months. A few were from Mumbai, one from Dehradun, the rest from different villages and Panaji, Margao, Mapusa and Vasco. I was told the usual meetings ended in Dutch-meals. This time, the treat was more than the chai-biscuits offered by the KSL. We were taken around all six floors, introduced to authors dead for over five-hundred years, shown their handwriting, made to read what they’d written in the Latin script, but using Marathi vocabulary, on now-brittle pages. Bound in thick leather. One book weighed half as much as I do. He carried and caressed it with such tenderness that many clicked the moment on their mobile phones.

            The ancient documents are preserved in special tissue paper imported from Germany. The sample shown to us was the first day, first page of the Gomantak! Some of the documents are carefully wrapped in red felt cloth, gently tied and kept in glass cubicles. The rare book section has a ‘vault’ on one side where the rarest of them all are kept. We really held our breaths in there, lest our humidity damage any. In the fumigation room, we saw how lovingly the ‘diseased’ inhabitants of the shelves are rescued from decay-causing micro-organisms. They can do pretty little if a homo-sapiens decided to cause destruction.

            Fiction, history, sciences of different kinds, old books, older books, even older stuff sat on the floors lower, on the 3^rd floor, children romped over toys and games. Below, the periodicals section was crowded even on a working day, with people eagerly flipping and browsing through many hundreds of magazines. The KSL is open on Sundays, and gets many weekend ‘guests’.

            I recommend some hospitality industry staff observe the workers here. They are polite and knowledgeable. I was helped to find a book, and guided to drinking water so fast, so courteously, I couldn’t believe this was a Goan institution with only Goans in it. We can do it, I thought. Wah.

            Architect Gerard D’Cunha answered a question that was festering in my mind for many days: why had he air-conditioned the entire library when the plan appeared to be open and environment friendly. Sometimes, he explained, one has to go by the client’s wishes, the government in this case. That didn’t convince me. But his second point did: fresh air wouldn’t be without smell, as in the close neighbourhood there’s a big garbage dump and a sewage stream. The putrefying matter advertises itself far and wide. And the KSL is right next to it. Also, open windows means more dust coming in, more cleaning to be done, more staff to be employed. So, technology and comfort won.

            In the group were writers/journalists, doctors (well, at least one), soldiers, soldiers’ wives, a sailor, film-makers, students, and retirees.

            By the statue at the entrance (a huge face made of discarded automobile tyres) we asked Mr Carlos questions. The conference and lecture halls are modern and available to the public for use. You can get an idea of the cost of renting from this: the exhibition hall on the ground floor costs seven thousand rupees for a week. Cheap. The research cubicles on one of the floors, with chair, table, lock and key, computer with internet, costs a thousand bucks a month. Cheap. No wonder the trickle of enquiries is getting bigger by the day.

            The thinking folk were glad the ground floor hadn’t been made into a shopping complex. I wished it had. One could have done many things in that building, if the facilities had been there. Ticketed music programs, for instance. And the money could have gone to the library. They could have sold souvenirs, too. Museums do that.

            So this Frederick Noronha who coaxed me to visit KSL today: thanks. If libraries are fountains of education, data (we don’t use the word ‘facts’ any more) and thinking, they are, in today’s world, a value-addition to Google. For though you can take your lap-top to the loo when you need to dig up information, you can’t substitute the feel of a real live ‘page’ flipping, can you? And KSL can get for you books/magazines that you want to read but can’t afford. Go check it out.  

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Recent Reads

(27 May '12)

            One thing good about living in a village with poor transport and internet connectivity is that one gets to cook, eat, sleep and read.

            After years of slogging at job and domestic chores, I’ve gone back to the first love: books. Until I was in college, I’d read anything, even the paper in which groceries were wrapped. Now I’m more selective. This spree of reading began with the Thinkfest in November. I bought Tarun Tejpal's Valley of Masks and wished I’d written it. All those who worship swamis, gurus, masters, priests must read it to get an idea of how people follow leaders, and more importantly, how organisations entice and mould followers. How philosophies that are morally logical and good for mankind can use methods quite the contrary that no one down the ladder will ever know. And how escape from such 'ashrams' ,if one could call them that, is so difficult.

            As I’m slow in reading in Marathi, I took a long, leisurely time in finishing “Postmortem' by Dr Ravi Bapat. This books brings out the dirt that's happened in our medical education and to what depth our healthcare system has fallen. I was pleased to note that he and co-author Suniti Jain have also pointed out the exceptions to the rule, doctors who sweat blood and are upright and honest in all that they do. Perhaps they form thirty percent of the total members practicing in India, but they are the ones to be highlighting and made heroes of. The book covered only the allopathic stream. The other Marathi book I read was Maansaanchi Khair Nahin by Prakash Ramchandra Kshirsagar.. The book is a collection of small, light essays. I find vernacular writing flowery and repetitive at times. However, Prakash has managed to keep his essays brief and easily readable. What I found interesting was that his book gave me an insight into Bharat (as opposed to the English speaking India) and small town life in and around Goa. In the first essay, he describes the recipient of a 'pink slip'. It was hard to believe the reason he's given for it: a small error on the part of an employee. That and another essay, Anamikay ne vachavle, lets us know that the writer Prakash has a soft corner for the lowly and downtrodden. The pedestrian is not wrong, the driver of a car is, when mud is splashed over the former. In my view both would be responsible,.... or sometimes, the situation, not the person. His description of bus travel where soft skills are absent in the staff is worth translating. Truly, in the hinterlands, rudeness rules. The essay on the rain had good imagery. Another one on a local who wants to speak English was also insightful. Prakash wields a fluent pen  for sure.

            The English translation of 'Rasachandrika”, the bible of Saraswat cooking, is excellent. The recipes are fool proof.

            Once More Upon a Time is the biography of Pascoal J Menezes, written by Ivan Arthur brought home the fact that Goans value history, but its documentation must be of some quality. This  book had stories strung together, written in indifferent prose; Sudhir Deokar's illustrations were good, though.

            Frederick Noronha of 1556 is doing a good job of helping lesser known Goan writers to get published. “The Tulsi”, written by Dr Pundalik Gaitonde's wife, Edila, is an anthology that can't be called literature, but which tells us a lot about how people lived in Goa in the mid 1900s and the attitudes of the Hindus and Catholics towards each other, their traditions and the rulers.

            The best read of all was The Emperor of All Maladies. This biography of cancer, by Siddhartha Mukherjee is a book  I will prize for its scientific content, history, elegant use of language and grip. Its words and paragraphs have lingered in my mind over the months. The loss of a close relative to cancer recently brought every word in it alive. Siddharth wrote this book whilst still practising as an oncologist. How did he find the time to do the research and type it out? How did he imagine and express the flow of time and events? I’ve always believed that some human minds are superior to others. Siddharth has proved that.

            There are so many books on my to-read list. More about them later, after I’ve digested them.

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