Prisons, people and art in Goa

Brian Mendonca delivering his paper.

                             Writing the Sentence: Prisons, People and Art in Goa

                                                      Dr. Brian Mendonça

                                                                Abstract

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This paper tries to look at the trope of the prison as connected to Goa and the Goan diaspora. What emerges is that whenever individuals have been incarcerated – for whatever reason – they have emerged stronger. Camoes wrote his Os Lusiadas (1572) in prison; Vamona Navelkar, did his etchings in a prison in Imala, Mozambique (1975), and Rohan Dhungat – now on parole in Goa – has written letters and poems in Colvale jail. He is also a prolific painter. 

In confinement, writing/art becomes a refuge and a means to hold on. It becomes a means to communicate with oneself and the world. Out there the media conducts its own trial of the prisoners. Writing rescues the prisoner while serving his/her sentence. Writing from this third space makes it possible to critique society itself. In this sense, through a burst of creativity, the prisoner tries to ‘reform; society through his writings, paintings and ruminations. Posting one’s thoughts on social media allows the public to see the person serving the sentence as a human being like them.

The paper will try to examine the attitudes of Goan society to those convicted. It also notes how spaces of incarceration reify to become something totally different to what was intended. Aguada on the river Mandovi was first a fort, then a prison, and now has been developed into a tourist spot. 

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XVIII Annual International Conference (Hybrid Mode) on Writing in Restricted Spaces: Writing for Freedom and Freedom of Writing, Rajasthan Association for Studies in English, Department of English, Rajasthan Vidyapeeth, Udaipur, 20-21 November 2021. Pic taken on 21/11/21, courtesy Ayeesha Antao.