READING REGINALD: THE IMPORTANCE OF AFRICA

African gold, ivory, and other riches figure significantly in Reginald Fernandes’ literary imagination. Though Africa was a place of unending wealth, it was also simultaneously a place of danger and adventure within the Konkani romans. The recurrent and frequent references to Africa were not accidental. There was a particular reason why Africa figured so prominently in the Konkani romans. Taking Reginald’s novel Fidelis (1965) as a base, we can address the issue of the importance of Africa to writers of romans and dwell on the impact it had on the gender roles process.

The primary reason why Africa featured so prominently in the imagination of writers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was due to the large-scale migration of Goans, particularly to East Africa. As a result, stories about and from that continent had freely circulated in Goa. The fact of large-scale migration to East Africa is well attested by Silvia M. de Mendonça-Noronha in her essay, “The Economic Scene in Goa, 1926-1961” (1990). Mendonça-Noronha states that emigration “crucially affected the Goan economy throughout the last two centuries of the Portuguese rule and its impact was very distinctly felt in the period under discussion (1926-61). Most of the emigrants were Christians, especially the ones to East Africa. The basic cause of emigration was excessive pressure of the population on agriculture and the lack of other avenues of employment, thus giving few job opportunities to the local people. They left to find jobs for better prospects elsewhere” (p. 282).

Fidelis fits neatly into the abovementioned pattern of migration to East Africa. The plot opens in Bombay where the hero of the novel Joel D’Souza is nearly done packing his bags for his journey from Bombay to Goa the next day. Having completed his studies, Joel is eagerly looking forward to come back to Goa and to his grandmother. When Joel is about to go to sleep in the night, he hears someone knocking on his door. On opening the door, Joel finds a man trying to escape his attackers. It so turns out that this man is one named Gabriel Pontis, who landed in Bombay from Africa. Fearing for his life Gabriel hands over a small box to Joel, begging him to deliver it to his daughter who lives in Goa. Gabriel’s life is in danger as someone else covets his ancestral wealth that is buried in Gabriel’s ancestral house. The small box that Gabriel hands over to Joel is the key to this buried treasure, and the whole novel is a delightful cat-and-mouse chase to possess the contents of the little box. Thus, as in in real life, migration to East Africa, and the locations of Goa, Bombay, and Africa are knit together in the novel.

Being from Bardez himself, Reginald would have witnessed the migration and also would have heard the many stories about Africa from those who returned to Goa. In a place like Siolim, Reginald’s hometown, such stories about African wealth were aplenty. Shortly after the much publicized 101st birth anniversary celebrations, Reginald’s sister-in-law, Mathilda D’Souza, informed me that he was particularly curious about these stories emanating from Africa, and would indeed rework them in his novels. Thus, the stories of Africa circulating in and around Siolim were grist to the novelist’s writing-mill!

Another important way Africa and migration is connected with Reginald’s oeuvre is through the absence of father-figures in the life of the male protagonists in many of his novels. The male protagonist either has a widowed mother or an ageing grandmother. But on the other hand, the female protagonist always has a father. It can be suggested that migration was a cause for the absence of father-figures in Reginald’s novels. In a similar vein, the portrayal of the male protagonist in Fidelis is no exception. In this novel, Joel’s father is dead, too!

In the course of a discussion, after the 101st birth anniversary celebrations in Siolim, Joel D’Souza, the Assagao-based journalist who was one of the main persons in the organization of the celebrations, suggested that almost every house in Bardez had a person who had migrated to Africa. In particular, the head of the household would generally migrate to Africa. Though the absence of the father or father-figure is portrayed through the death of the patriarch in the novelist’s writing, one can see how the reality of Goa affected by economic constraints and migration had such a huge impact on the portrayal of gender roles in Romi Konkani literature that was not confined to the oeuvre of Reginald.

In the end, one can suggest that the economic reality and lack of job opportunities which led to migration to East Africa created a certain template of portrayal of male and female protagonists in Reginald’s novels. On the one hand, the male protagonist having no father or father-figure to protect him could be the real hero – a self made man – by dint of his own strength, sincerity, and a little bit of luck. While on the other hand, the female protagonist is always in constant need of male protection, though she exercises her own agency in the choice of her life partner. 

While the migration to Africa can be seen as shaping gender roles in Reginald’s novels, what we can also profitably do is to look at this corpus of literature to talk about the actual gender roles in Goa, impacted by this very migration.

My thanks to (the real life) Joel D’Souza and Mathilda D’Souza.

For more Reading Reginald, click here.

(First published in  O Heraldo, dt: 22 July, 2015)

READING REGINALD: FLIGHT FROM AFRICA

In my previous engagements with Reginald Fernandes’ works of fiction, I had mentioned that Africa occupied a very important place in the imagination of writers like Reginald. This was largely because of the nineteenth-century migration of many Goans to places in Africa like Kenya and Tanzania. Thus, to understand the importance of Africa for writers like Reginald, one would essentially need to think of the circulation of influences as a network where stories about Africa circulated through different means and modes and were then used by writers like Reginald to write their romans. How this circulation worked is something that needs to be charted in greater detail in the future through meticulous research.

Like many of the orientalist novels from the nineteenth-century, for writers like Reginald, Africa was simultaneously a place that was utterly unknown and a place of many mysteries, riches, and adventures. While it is true that writers like Reginald were drawing on such orientalist and colonial fantasies, it is still interesting to see how romi writers engaged with these stories, and indeed re-worked them for a Goan cultural milieu. Today, we rightly acknowledge people like Peter Nazareth (of the General is Up fame) as writers who wrote about Goanness in an African location, but we seldom think of romi Konkani writers as engaging with Goanness and Africa. In the same breath allow me to also note that the depiction of Africa within the romi Konkani writings may share a problematic relationship with colonial engagements with Africa.

Like Khoddop Ranni (1955), Africa occupies an important place in Bhirancull Barrabas (1962) though one cannot say that in this novel Africa is central to the plot. The novel depicts the love story of Raul and Clotilda. While Raul does not seem to hail from a lower social position, his family falling on bad days becomes the pretext for Clotilda’s father to refuse to bless their union. To make matters worse, the government office that Raul works in is headed by Clotilda’s father, and as such the question of whether Raul can match the ‘dignidad’ of Clotilda’s family arises. Thus, economic reasons rather than one’s location within a social hierarchy become the cause of much heartburn.

Unable to bear the insult to his high position, Clotilda’s father hatches a plan to falsely accuse Raul of theft. The plan being successful, Raul is first sent to the Aguada prison and when an attempt to escape from there fails, Raul is deported to a high-security prison in Mozambique. Sailing on the high seas, Raul finally manages to escape and ends up drifting on an island: The Nameless Island. Though this island is not endowed with any magical qualities, Raul comes across a large palatial building. Though The Nameless Island is deserted, Raul soon learns that only two persons live there: a woman named Rebecca and Dr. Barrabas.

Magic is introduced into the novel to bring about bad and good deeds. Like many of Reginald’s novels, Bhirancull Barrabas too has a love triangle. Since the other man who seeks the love of Clotilda cannot convince her, he resorts to magic to confound her. On The Nameless Island, Raul learns about the three secrets of Dr. Barrabas: that he has a potion that can bring the dead back to life, that he has a magic mirror that can project images about the person whom one wishes to see, and that Dr. Barrabas possesses a mechanical contraption that is shaped like a giant bat. The machine eventually helps Raul to escape from The Nameless Island.

While trying to survive the evil Dr. Barrabas, Raul also learns of a treasure of gold bars and three very valuable diamonds. Raul manages to bring back with him many bars of gold and the three precious diamonds. The problematic relationship that such a genre of Konkani writings may have with Africa, as alluded to earlier, comes to the fore when the story takes this turn. Though the treasure of gold and diamonds was acquired by Dr. Barrabas through not-so-honest means, yet Raul seems to spare no thought when taking some of it with him. Here the relationship seems to be a peculiar one, wherein one person from a colonized context (in a way) loots riches from another colonized context. But as far as Reginald is concerned it might be more to do in keeping with the idea that love and wealth is deserved after an arduous struggle, an idea that animates many of his novels. Though we do not come across any Africans, and the identity of either Dr. Barrabas or Rebecca is left vague at best, yet one cannot help but think of Africa as a place of simultaneous danger and riches. Raul finally manages to exonerate himself from the crime he did not commit and also succeeds in marrying Clotilda, whose beauty and character is matchless.

Reginald and other writers like him frequently mentioning Africa also allows us to link trajectories of Konkani literature to a larger African world. While making this point I am falling back on the argument of Isabel Hofmeyr who in the context of South African literature argues that Hindi should be seen as a language of South African literature as many texts in Hindi are available from the twentieth-century that speak of South Africa. Can we make a similar claim that the productions of romi Konkani can also be seen as part of the African literary landscape? Though, I cannot help but emphasize the critical distance that one would need to understand the problematic relationship.

Though many of the writers – including Reginald – did not have the benefit of post-colonial critiques of racism and orientalism in Africa, nonetheless their engagement does point to a certain complex network of the flow of stories from Goa to Africa and back. Perhaps, it points to the skewed understanding that Goans had (and still do) of Africa in general, and issues of race and racism in particular. By trying to understand this genre of literary imagination within romi Konkani literature we might arrive at a better understanding of Goa and Goanness.

For more Reading Reginald, click here.

(First published in  O Heraldo, dt: 4 February, 2015)

READING REGINALD: INSIDE AFRICA

The last time I had written about the Konkani novelist Reginald Fernandes, I had suggested that to understand such writings as romans (and even tiatrs) we would have to think anew and look more closely into these writings. Accordingly, I had hinted that the way Reginald Fernandes understood and conceptualized ‘dignidad’ could be one of the many ways to understand the corpus of writings written in the Roman script. In response to my article, many felt (through social media) that Fernandes’ books should be put back in circulation. Though such an initiative would be welcome, this was not the point I was trying to make. Rather, what I wanted to do was to initiate critical discussion on the possibilities that are available in Fernandes’ writings.

To further explore this possibility, this column would like to look at Fernandes’ Khoddop Rannim (1955) which has Valentino Vaz as its main protagonist. The novel opens with Valentino’s mother on her death-bed, who tells him the importance of being humble, for humility would allow Valentino to succeed in life. Valentino’s mother worked as a randpinn or cook, whose husband, a seaman, was dead when Valentino was a mere infant. Thus, facing impending poverty and with no family support base in Goa, Valentino packs his bags for Africa. There he finds employment with a great Goan trader of ivory called Robin Saukar. It is here that Robin Saukar’s daughter Thelma and Valentino fall in love with each other. Valentino initially was uncomfortable as he was a mere servant of her father’s and according to him Thelma was placed higher as far as ‘dignidad’ was concerned. However, it is Thelma who insists that they should not believe in such things.

The twist in the novel occurs when, to procure ivory Robin Saukar takes Valentino and another employee Martin Monteiro, in the African jungle. Because Monteiro wants to make Robin Saukar’s wealth his own as well as marry Thelma, he deliberately misguides Valentino into the dense and dangerous jungle. Here, the element of magic as a device for the progression of the plot comes into play, both for good and bad. Monteiro chances upon a witch-doctor who gives him some magical fruits that would turn the hearts and minds of Robin Saukar and Thelma in his favour, when in fact the preferred person was Valentino. On the other hand while Valentino survives his ordeal, he also meets certain persons who direct him to a particular kingdom which is situated inside a huge rock, shaped like a human head. The astonishing fact of this kingdom is that its queen has lived for more than 2000 years, for she has access to “Jivitachem Udok” or the elixir of youth.

As it turns out, this queen or Khoddop Rannim owned a very large diamond that is lodged in the temple that belongs to her family. It was, apparently, the largest in the world. And because Valentino refuses the advances of the queen, who madly falls in love with him, he is made a prisoner. Valentino now has to escape this make-believe world, if he wants to maintain any hope of being united with his beloved Thelma.

What should also be discussed at length about this novel is the way Africa and blacks are represented in Khoddop Rannim. Africa was a part of the Goan diaspora and as such it was part of the Goan imagination as well. Fernandes is not the first or only person to write stories set in Africa. Indeed, many of the romi writers following the 1950s (or, perhaps even earlier) did train their literary lens on Africa. The scenes that are set in the dense and dangerous jungle of Africa would obviously involve the depiction of peoples living in the forest. The language or the collective nouns that are used to refer to these peoples would definitely qualify to be racist by our standards. The point that I am trying to make is not that Fernandes is consciously being racist, but for readers today, to be aware and be sensitive to this issue while ‘Reading Reginald’ (and also other writers who set their stories in Africa).

Though love between social un-equals is part of the story, however it is not a preoccupation of the author in this novel. Although the images of the African jungle that are displayed to us draw on colonial accounts of adventure and exploration that were definitely circulating during his time, the African jungle also becomes a site of struggle for achieving ‘dignidad’. Whatever Valentino achieves or manages to make his own, he can only do it by fighting for it. Though magic may have helped Valentino’s pursuits, yet his human capabilities and strengths seems to have sailed him through rough waters in this novel. But magic does play a vital part in keeping the reader engrossed in the novel.

As a setting, if Africa is given deeper reflection in novels or stories written in Konkani then it also points out to the complexities and diversity of interactions and influences that Goa had with the larger world. One could also profitably look at how the Portuguese colonial world – just before formal decolonization – featured in Konkani literary space. The fact that Africa had formed the setting of so many stories written in Konkani in the Roman script, suggests deeper connections not just of travel and migration but also of the movement of stories and colonial fantasies.

By keeping in mind certain vital components that went into the making of a Reginald romans, we now have some basic markers to understand the thought behind his novels, apart from enjoying them the way we do with any good novel.

For more of 'Reading Reginald' see here.

(First published in  O Heraldo, dt: 20 August, 2014)