Book Launch with a Difference : Teresa’s Man and Other Stories from Goa

         Book Launch with a Difference :

                              Teresa’s Man and Other Stories from Goa

The book launch of Teresa’s Man and Other Stories from Goa written by Damodar Mauzo at Sunaparanta was a treat - a local home-launch riding on a wave of international recognition. In early October, the book was released at the Frankfurt Literary Festival, where Damodar Mauzo was invited to participate in the Frankfurt Book Fair (FBF) as part of a five-member Indian Writers’ delegation.

Goa’s most-loved man of letters, true to his repute, brought together a gamut of Konkani & English writers and readers under one platform - a feat in itself.  The speakers at the launch delved into the heart of the book at length. The audience got a good understanding of the various elements that went into the making of the book and the writer.

 I was delighted to be a part of the positive wave and ruminated on the phenomenon of ‘translation’ (a target of dialectics at literary festivals) which had yet again served the purpose of taking regional writings to a wide readership.  Damodar Mauzo joins the league of great writers like  RabindranathTagore (who was unknown outside his home till he was translated), Ananthamurthy, Orhan Pamuk, Haruki Murakami ..........in making local flavour a universal song of humanness.

 "When you want something the whole universe will conspire together to help you get it,” said Paulo Coelo.  Bhai’s(Damodar Mauzo) passion and perseverance has yielded fifteen books so far, which have been widely translated into English, French, Portuguese and other Indian languages.

Teresa’s Man and other stories is a potpourri of exact realism, poetic myth, sadness, perception and gaiety.  Bhai’s art is kind but unsentimental, mocking but uncynical, profoundly Goan but distinctively individual.  The substantial human nature embodied in the stories holds the reader enthralled.  An innate sense of irony coupled with a complete absence of pomposity and pretence is what makes Bhai a wonderful writer. He creates thoughtful fiction centred on serious moral concerns rooted in the Goan experience, but a universal human dimension makes it encompass the entire human condition.

A dichotomy of human emotion underlies the pieces Happy Birthday and Coinstav’s Cattle.  The former is an ironical portrayal of a range of emotions between parents and children.  It inherently exposes the destructive myth of normal and abnormal state of human beings and acceptance in human race.  Our children are our pride, love and joy - our showcase in society. But if due to an inherent lack, they are unable to perform to our expectations, our important sense of self makes us feel belittled and left out. A feeling of pure unconditional love is hence mixed with shame, lack, self consciousness and defeat; a dark and true element of human shallowness in relationships.

Bhai understands that the highest satisfaction may come from the reader’s growing recognition and understanding of the characters and their situations. The presentation of human beings or of human situations and the revelation of truth inherent in that human situation leads to a “gradual and slow illumination” of facts which is more satisfying than a manipulated perfectly worked out plot.  His stories in the book like The Cynic, She’s Dead, From the Mouth of Babes and  Sand Castles largely embody this aesthetics.

 So important is  character to fiction that one may approach the story by asking “Whose story is this ?”  Bhai’s domain of fiction is the world of credible human beings, amazingly diverse and varied. A writer presents his characters in two ways: by telling or by showing.  Bhai essentially tends to reveal his characters indirectly through thought, dialogue and action folded into the drama itself.  He very convincingly makes his characters speak “in character”. The Writer’s Tale and The Cynic are good examples of this craft.  Jayatha  and Baboy, are very forceful characters, which come to life dramatically through dialogue and action with others in the stories.

Bhai’s lifelikeness in his writings is credible and original. He uses symbols and imagery to add atmospheric verisimilitude to situations.

 “It is high noon. The sun, like a ruthless foe, is literally branding her body.  Below, the baked earth and above, the unrelenting orb of fire. The whole earth is engulfed in heat like a pie being baked in the oven.”

“The idol , the chovoth, the basket of sweets, firecrackers- all started fleeing away one by one!”

There are stories here in the book which may be termed as comedies of manner.  Bhai shows us what the characters are doing in such a way that we can understand why they are doing it. Out of the details of what they do and say, Bhai builds up the conflict and tensions. Misconceptions, Vighnaharta and Electoral Empowerment are stories which could be classified under this category.  Durga comes into her own and resolves the conflict in the end by exerting her will in Electoral Empowerment and Shanker in Vighnaharta  finds an  escape in a ritual thus bringing the comedy of manners  to an  ironical denouement.

Bhai takes simple narrative accounts in pieces From the Mouth of Babes and For Death Does Not Come, and creates plots with meaning and purpose.  The final product in both the stories culminates in profound wisdom and a pure strain of truthfulness.  Babu, the  babe (child as the image of God)  in the first story  leads his father Rajesh  to discover a simple, joyful truth in  sexuality and in the latter, the reader is elevated to a revelation both  powerful and profound -  that we are here  to play our roles to the hilt in both situations good and bad, till death does not come on its own to claim us.

The literary constructions have brevity and tautness, which lend unity and power to the writing. After the horrific experience of being caught on the road with a female passenger by the self appointed ruthless police on the day of the Bandh which had been called to protest against the discontinued usage of the mother tongue,  Dattaram, a bullet bike driver, gives vent to his feelings of anger and frustration.  Three powerful lines at the end of the story encompass the whole experience dramatically - “Dattaram’s eyes were bulging, he was speechless. Getting back on the bike, he started it. Finally finding his voice, he spat out: ‘This is our language! This is our culture!’ ”

 The first person narrative in The Cynic, The Writer’s Tale, Sand Castles and Vighnaharta adds credibility, immediacy and lifelikeness to the stories.  As readers, we come so close to the action that we begin to share the character’s perception of the world.  Bhai’s strategy of using the first person narrative here makes us abandon our own critical intelligence and escape into the character’s life. It is most effective in Sand Castles which ends on a poignant and illuminating note of the truth of life.  On the other hand, the third person narrative in the rest of the stories gives Bhai the freedom to act like an omniscient presence.  He skilfully enriches the plot as the third voice by navigating to spaces past and present in the characters’ lives.

The good yarn pleasure tales have a high quotient of readability.  Readers fascinated by the tales are unable to put it down until they are led to the climax and then the resolution of the piece.  If it is suspense which sustains The Writer’s Life, the title story is propelled by the play of emotions.  The interplay of subversive elements and pure innocence imparts readability to the first story and a flux of feelings do the same for Coinsanv’s Cattle.

A short story is, after all, not a transcription of life but a dramatization of it.  In the familiar and the real, a skilful writer weaves vivid and dramatic threads to transform the banal, clichéd and formulaic reality into a potent story.  Teresa’s Man then becomes a meaningful read, a ride through the unknown, yet known realms of human lives.