THERE'S MORE TO GOA IN PRINT THAN YOU WOULD DREAM OF
By Frederick Noronha

PANJIM, July 23: There's more to Goa than you are aware of. Books on hundreds of subjects dealing with this small state tell stories which are not widely known, nor well noticed.

There are books on the Goa police, a chief minister's biography, cookbooks, stories of expatriates from distant Africa, education in the state.

There are books in English, Konkani, Marathi... and many more tongues you would expect. All dealing with Goa.

These books have been put up at an exhibition of titles published in this century, organised by the Institute Menezes Braganza. The exhibition ends on Saturday at 7 pm.

Goans have written in over a dozen languages, both Indian and European. Former Central Library curator Aleixo Manuel da Costa's Dicionario de Literatura Goesa (Dictionary of Goan Literature) lists the hundreds of books brought out by people from here between 1 7 0 2 and 1 9 5 0.

Among the publishers and bookshops taking part in the first-ever exhibition focussing exclusively on this state were the Other India Book Store of Mapusa, Apurbai of Volvoi and R.V.Pandit's works in prose.

OIBS has an exclusive "Goa Books" collection, which keeps most of the English-language books on Goa. These are available for sale via mail-order.

But the creative genius is not restricted to the printed text. Apurbai, run by Konkani writer Pundalik Naik, also has a cassette of songs too, called 'Dekhni Durai'.

Other booksellers also have put up their Goa books on sale, as is the photographically lavishly-illustrated recent book on the grand houses of Goa by architect Gerard Da Cunha.

Other new releases on sale include the history of the Goa police by a senior Goa-based police official till recently based here N. Dilip Kumar; and Luzinho Faleiro's biography.

Joyce Fernandes' cookbook is available in a new cover. Top cop Julio Ribeiro's memoirs are there. So is the Oxford picture dictionary in Konkani, a rather useful book but hardly easily available otherwise here.

There is also Dr Teresa Albuquerque's 'Goans of Kenya' and Patrick Ferdinand's play 'The Rape of Goa'.

Other exotic books on display include 'Amroli: The Occult Practices of the Ancient Aryans' by John Carmo Rodrigues, PhD. The author is an ex-student of the Escola Medico Cirugica de Goa, as the GMC was formerly called.

There are quite a few NBT books, from the Indian government's National Book Trust. NBT assistant Ratnakar C Nirbhavane says the "response has been good". Most of NBT's Konkani books are in the Devanagari script.

Its books, which NBT says are sold at a discount of 65%, is available from its Goa-based distributors, Golden Heart Emporium, and also two bookshops at Mapusa, OIBS and Gomantak Book Service which stock some titles.

"Books are priced as low as Rs 5 and as high as Rs 1 0 0 0 (for a hardbound, three-volume book on the literature of various Indian languages, including Konkani)," said Nirbhavane.

Many local publishers have also put up their stalls, offering books dealing with this small place.

Narayan Narvekar of Marcela says he has over 200 books in Marathi dealing with Goa or authored by people from here. "There are over a thousand publication, out of which maybe 200 are easily available in print," says he.

Marathi books are priced as low Rs 5, and all the way upto Rs 600. Sometimes Goa books get out of print. "Then people even go to the Marathi Academi, xerox the same and take photocopies," says Narvekar.

This is a typical problem in a place like Goa which has a small market: when books are first published, they are hardly noticed. And when someone wants a particular book, it is often hard to find. Books seldom get adequately reviewed locally.

Due of the language-gap, it is difficult to keep track of what is being published in one of the many languages Goans write in.

Narvekar points to the recent Marathi book by Raghunath Gauns, on the changing face of Goa's educational scene.

On exhibition are also a number of old books, published earlier this century, in various languages. Among the exhibitors are the Konkani Academy; the Archives, Archaeology and Gazetteer Departments; the Central Library and others.

Strangely, Portuguese books are conspicous by their near-absence. Neither is the language listed in advertisements issues, among those in which Goans have written.

Perhaps in an attempt to be politically-correct, the organisers have sought to ignore a tongue which played a very important role in the history of this region for the first half of this century and much before.