Resumo de A Kind of Absence - João da Veiga Coutinho

This book is likely to warm the hearts of some Goenkars of a dying generation, at least dying of nostalgia for the good old days of Pax Lusitana, when Goans could sleep carefree during day or night with no fear of burglaries (never mind if there was nothing much to be robbed in those days, or if there was no street lighting for the few daring robbers to avoid heading in the dark for the bottom of a village well). Those sharing author's angst of Absence could well join the triumphant cries of the early Christian martyrs in Rome: "Ave Caesar! Morituri tibi salutant!" (Hail Cesar! We, who are about to die, salute you!) Sorry, I may be forgetting author's distinguished clan with legitimate right to feel proud of this latter day literary testimony to its family lore. Many others of other generations, including the ones to come, may find this book inspiring. The politics of multiculturalism in USA, Canada, and Australia, to mention only some of the fertile grounds for all sorts of gimmicks of cultural recuperation of the ethnic minorities, may more than justify the initiative and efforts of the present author. «E não só», the Portuguese would say. For the Portuguese who were distressed with the wet blanket thrown by the Indian authorities upon their celebrations of Discoveries in India, this book should have come as a pleasant and timely arrival as it may be conclude from the interest of The Fundação Oriente of Lisbon to bring out hastily a Portuguese edition. The citations from Mário Sá Carneiro and Fernando Pessoa, sixty and odd references to Portugal and the Portuguese in this mini-book, besides numerous other contextual references, author's efforts to search out Camões in the godowns of the Archeological Survey in Old Goa, his visit to Algarve from where Henry the Navigator dared the oceans, and the "Revolution of Carnations" thrown in for a good measure, all make for a generous repayment of "childhood" debts in this quincentenary of the Portuguese Discoveries. João da Veiga Coutinho claims he is not writing history, but has stuffed what I would classify as his "psycho-history" with loaded comments on Goa's past and how some historians have handled it, or others have failed to meet author's best criteria. He has even reduced them all to three neat versions. If I did not have some idea about who the author was, I may have been left imagining someone with a touch of Nietzschean brilliance, a schizo-mix of varying doses of presumption and condescension, cynicism and derision, piety and rationalism, euphoria and melancholy, etc., but all in all, not substantially different or remote from the "advanced stage of disarray or decomposition" (pp. 46, 100) which he discovered in India "as a personal affront" (pp.48-49). To conclude, A kind of Absence is likely to reach beyond its author's intended meanings, as it happens with any human production. I may have read more into such unintended meanings. João da Veiga Coutinho may call it a «revelation of hearts», as he suggested (in a posting to Goa-net after my first reaction to the book appeared there) like the good old Simeon of the Bible after beholding the baby Jesus. Despite my expressions of criticism, I have no doubt that this little book can greatly assist the emigrant Goans (Christians) who do not have much more than sorpotel and mando to present to their sophisticated western hosts as their distinctive cultural wealth. But I doubt it will impress the worshippers of Ganapati in Goa, or the Goenkar who get along well with the ghantta boil or can conduct their lives with Perpet Sucor, Vailankani, and Sai Baba rubbing shoulders. There are also Goenkar like me in pilgrimage, but to my relief the author was kind to reveal at the very end of his book that " there is no single way of being Goan" (p.126)

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