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When story-tellers gather

May 10, 2026

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Brand Baboi

Signboard outside Baboi's place at Agassaim. Goan sausages basking in the sun. Fredy weighs the sausages. Fredy holding on to his lifeline. - Brian Mendonca I did not intend to land up here. After all, I was told there were no Goan sausages to be had. In a conversation I had on the way here at Verna, I was asked 'Have you ordered your sausages?' I replied in the negative lamely. Because of the Exposition at Old Goa (today was the last day) the demand was high, was the explanation offered.* The person then asked from where I was coming. I found that odd. Intrigued by the question I decided to take a chance and see for myself if I could salvage some sausages. The matter was urgent as there were guests expected for dinner tomorrow. I knew there was a shop selling sausages in Agassaim but I did not know exactly where. Today, being Saturday, I decided to find out. Queenie had shared the Google location of Baboi and I followed the d...

'Sangati' by Bama

'Sangati' by Bama -Brian Mendonca Sangati (1994) by Bama Soosairaj (Born 1958) was originally written in Tamil. The English translation was made available a decade later. The title means 'events' in English. It prepares us for what is to follow. It is a telling of events as they happen - from the point of view of a Dalit Christian woman in Tamil Nadu, India. The novel is divided into 12 chapters divided into subsections. Here is a summary of the chapters with lines quoted from the text. Chapter 1: A Woman's Family (3-14) Pathima, a 13-year-old narrator, studying in Class 8, asserts agency over the narrative, 'When I was born . . . .' (3) The mother Sevathi, and grandmother are introduced. The grandmother, Vellaiyamma Kizhavi, is a...

Konkani Poetry

Yesterday I gave a PPT on the topic 'Glimpses of Contemporary Goan Poetry in English and Konkani' for students of a college. The request was made by a student of mine who I had taught around 20 years back in the college I am teaching in now. She still remembers, she said as she introduced me, me teaching Wordsworth's 'Tintern Abbey' in class. I tried to remember but the memories escaped me. There were a goodly number of students, around 40, who took time off from their hectic 'Fun Week' which seems to be the rage these days, to hear a poet read his lines. The deafening music outside the lecture hall soon mellowed into the cadence of poetry. For me this was a learning experience since I had never handled Goan poetry in Konkani and English on the same platform. But I realize that using Konkani, can have many benefits to leverage English in L2 classrooms. True enough, the students which were mostly from the Konkani department (The talk was jointly o...

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