2.10 Vivek Menezes on the diversity of the Goa Arts and Literature Festival

India has a rich and diverse literary culture. Yet, why do writings from many regions like Goa and North-East remain unknown? 

Join Clyde in conversation with writer Vivek Menezes, the co-curator of the Goa Arts and Literature festival, as they discuss how the festival brought together literature from all corners of India. They ponder upon many other questions along the way, : What is a writer’s lifestyle like? How did tourism became a burden in Goa even though it was thought to fail initially?  

Tune in to find out, and get top three restaurant recommendations for Goa from a seasoned travel writer!

Produced by Aishwarya Javalgekar
Sound edit by Kshitij Jadhav

Brought to you by Bound, a company that helps you grow through stories. Follow us @boundindia on all social platforms for updates on this podcast or take a look at their other podcasts.

Hosted by Clyde D’Souza. He is a creative director who has worked in TV, print, and digital. His book Susegad: The Goan Art Of Contentment captures Goa through conversations, memories, stories, recipes and much more. He lives between Mumbai and Goa and lives the Susegad lifestyle every day! Follow him on Instagram @clydedsouzaauthor.

Transcript

00:06

Welcome to say God stories from Goa, where I claimed the Sousa take you deep into go beyond the beaches and help you live and love the SUSE God lifestyle no matter where you are

 00:28

a widely published writer, photographer and perhaps India's best festival curator, he is the co founder of the acclaimed go out arts and literature festival, pendulum 175, and editor of peacock magazine. My guest today is Vivek naces, GWAS, most prominent festival curator and writer extraordinaire. Welcome to cigar stories from guava vacant thank you for being here. Thank you, Clyde, and congratulations on the wonderful work you've been doing for a while I've been admiring it. Thank you, Vic. I mean, I'm a longtime fan and admirer of yours. So the feeling is more than mutual. And I think you've done way, way, way much more than me. And like I said, I always look up to people like you and GWA who honestly lead the way for us. I'm lucky to be in go applied. The main thing is I do feel very blessed and privileged to be able to live here. Many of us who are go or know or love Go are not able to be here. And I'm aware of that every single day that I have the opportunity to be here. So naturally, I definitely like to contribute as much as possible to the place we all care that indeed you are blessed. Now the first thing that I like to do is because this is the podcast format, and it's audio only I like to give the listeners a sense of you know where my guest is from. So I understand that you're a pendulum resident. But can you just tell our listeners a little bit about your immediate surroundings? What is it like around you right now. Clyde, I'm sitting in, in a little writer's studio, which I've maintained for a little over a decade in Belgium, it's got a lot of my books. It's got, you know, it's quite untidy, it has a lot of papers, which I work from all the time. It has some talismanic artworks, but one of the lovely things about it is that I can look out of my windows, and I can see both the river front as well as you know, towards the interior, the old parts of the city as the new in another direction. So those are things that really situate me geographically, but also culturally, and I'm always aware of these things when I write and also just the way I live, it's very important for me to have that kind of orientation to the historical cultural geography of where, Wow, beautiful, it really sounds like everything that a writer, especially one from Goa should have it. It sounds beautiful, and blessed. And blessed. For sure. Lovely. Okay, now one of the things we make that stands out for me ever since I've been reading you and it's been a long time is that I think that you're a master storyteller. I mean, any column of yours that I read, whether it's about pastures, the NATA or mangoes, anything, I'm just whisked away to the history, the subject, all of it just comes alive jumping out of my own screen. And obviously, you just have a way with words. So I just want to know a little bit into your mindset. What's your writing process? How do you start with when when you start writing on a subject? Well, that's super kind of nuclide, I have to say that I don't think of myself as a master storyteller at all. And since I work in literature, I mean, I had to organize a Literature Festival, I do a lot of book reviews, I'm continually coming in contact with, you know, the wonderful writers who are emerging in the younger generations, but also in the past, both from Goa, as well as all over India and the rest of the world. And really my my capacities, I'm well aware of my of the limitations of my capacities. But thank you so much for reading me the way that you have, I think that probably we can explain the reason that you have reacted so warmly and generously to my writing is that you share, you know, an interest with in the things that I share I'm interested in and, and there's no doubt that I have a lot of passion. I really believe in a lot of the things that I write about not certainly I'm a journalist. So sometimes I take on assignments, where, you know, I'm writing more reporterly about something but very often I have the privilege of writing about things I really care about, about things that I spent time studying, thinking about reading about for lifetime. And also, you know, I was blessed by grandparents and uncles and aunts who also come from this culture. I wouldn't say it's necessarily true of every place in the world, but possibly it is. But certainly India wherever you are located most places some really really interesting things and going on which are not known to the rest of the world and, and the things that I'm interested in most of the things that are impacted my life cosmopolitanism, what we call globalization

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Shouldn't the kind of flowing together of cultures that creates these complex identities that we that then get to inhabit? I'm super interested in those things. And we're certainly one of the more interesting places in the world, when it comes to a kind of many layered conflictual cultural identity that has evolved in, you know, with probably 1000 years of relative peace time, for instance. So these are huge, huge advantages. So go Go is a great place. I mean, generally, I think that as writers, I mean, we are enjoined to do so many things as writers write what you know, you know, all those kinds of things. But I do think that for me, being cognizant of historical current being cognizant of patterns that play out again and again, and then being able to be in a place where I can literally access these things, and be part of it without an unknown museum context is very rich experience. So I definitely like to communicate my enthusiasm for those things. And I think that's possibly what you're reacting to. And I'm very happy to hear that. Yeah, for sure. Do you remember the first time in your childhood perhaps. So what was the first book or words that kind of jumped out to you and said, Okay, wow, this is like magical. And I need to do something with that. You remember that first time? I kind of do. It's pretty evident. So I grew up. I'm older than you are probably significantly, Clyde. I grew up I was born in 1968. Okay, so I grew up my memories, my very strong memories really begin in 7273 74, when my family left and go for a brief period of time, and it was a very, you know, it lit a candle in me for go on a connection to go home, which has never extinguished. But back then we didn't have television, right. And we had written you know, there was certainly no social media, there were no multiple screens. And when you live in a place like Goa as a child,

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particularly a child like me, where everyone, for instance, went to sleep in the afternoon, and I was feeling like the only person awakened the entire village. This was something

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you know, you've done all those around you. And after being bitten and stung by several different kinds of animals, I turned to the, the written word for my companions. And I would say that it's quite, I would say, without too much exaggeration, at the age of somewhere six, or seven or eight, six and seven, I started going to all of my neighbors in the village of selling out, or you know, selling our own villages or global so people are coming back from Africa or whatever. And I just raided the village from left to right reading everything that I could get my hands on. So that was definitely it was already apparent, like many, many people who I meet who are much older than me years later, like, Oh, you came to my house and took all the books.

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Ready to return it return it now after 50 years.

07:53

Turn them in most cases, but I do remember for my seventh birthday, my mother made the effort. She was also very young at this time, but they made the effort. I think she drove with me to massage possibly Marcin purchased me seven books for my seventh birthday. And one of those was my family and other animals by Gerald Durrell. Okay. And a moment I read that book, which I've read umpteen times since then, and made all my son's also read in the moment I read that book, I started styling myself as a writer without actually writing anything for some three decades.

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I started styling myself as a writer, the kind of person who writes Okay, and so it took some time to grow into that, but, but certainly my path was set kind of back then. Right. Yeah, I mean, I have a similar memory, but I think it was my eighth but then I had gifted me the cliched classic Enid Blyton. And I think I spent most of my birthday party just reading which was odd. And everybody was like, What are you doing? And I was just mesmerized by the words. Right? So that's nice. And do you remember the first time you wrote maybe as a teenager or as a growing adult? Um, so my mother, I, you know, there are all these things here. But my grandfather Armando Mendez was a writer. We had books by him in the house. My other grandfather was also an educator, but my mother used to write for different publications, including the Times of India. And she was the first one of the first editors of the inside outside also, where she and Mallika Sarabhai, two young women were trying them kind of making them trying to make a media empire didn't work, but they did try back then. Or media brand for themselves, but so my mother encouraged me and somewhere when I was around, I would say eight or nine years old, after after attempting two or three times I got my first byline on the children's page in feminine, so I was so delighted to see it. I remember however, that byline was supposed to come with a hamper of goods which was never delivered. So when was the editor came to the Go arts and literature festival. I was surprised to find those feelings asked

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deep inside me, virtually demanded a hamper from her.

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Did you get it? No, I never got a hamper. But the still on Femina, you know, want to be a happy, but yeah, it was that was back then. And then there was a long, long kind of drought. I eventually started writing for publication again but it was in my 20s I can't think I don't think there's anything in between. Okay, all right. That's nice. So now Google has obviously known as a tourist destination and it has also given the world some great amazing artists writers. You yourself are the co founder of gua arts and literature festival currently, I believe in its 11th edition, if I'm not mistaken. Yes. 11 editions over 13 years, I think. Yes, yes. With the break of the pandemic, I guess. Yes. Right now it has featured various prominent personalities everyone from Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee to musician Remo Fernandez, how did you arrive at at creating curating an arts and literature festival? What, what led to it? One of the nice things about our festival and I think it, it reflects in a way that it's received and perceived and go, it's quite organic. What happened is that this was after literature festivals had just begun in India. And I think it took a year or two for even or two or three years, even for Jaipur to have a kind of larger impact. But sometime about then it became clear, I'm a member of a group. I'm very lucky to be a member of a very vibrant group group called the guar Writers Group, which is which was started roughly 20 years ago, and it was inspired by number of people but especially Victor Rangel Roberto, who was in his late 90s, and still writing strong, wonderful writer, and Victor Rangel Rivera was a member of a writers group in New York City, which had helped him actually he made his novelistic debut in his 70s. It's quite an amazing story with a wonderful group of people. And so Victor Angele, repeller had been part of this outstanding Writers Group, and he encountered a lot of people in Goa, who seem to have literary ambitions, a lot of people and some people who are starting to already get published and byline is more than more than literary stuff, what's various kinds of bio lines in the national media, I was one of them right. So, at that time, we formed a group called the guar Writers Group and the CO Writers Group immediately became a warm convivial way place for us to kind of support each other because as you know, Clyde, the writers life has been traditionally solitary, yes, contains many challenges. And in a place like Goa, which was unrecognizably different 15 years, just 15 years ago, when it comes to the cultural sphere unrecognizably different. We a lot of us were feeling a little bit isolated, and this fellowship kind of of the group meant a great deal to us. So in that group, we were lucky enough to have you know, it's a go up being go up being a kind of a Universalist idea, there are people from all different backgrounds in the group, one of the people in the group is the great company writer Damodar Moussa Yes. And he was seeing emerging this new kind of a new dynamic that was taking place, coming out of a number of things, post liberalisation coming after Delhi was kind of cement about 15 years ago, Delhi really cemented itself as kind of like the imperial capital of Indian culture, right Delhi is all the publishing houses are there that dominate I mean, even when I was growing up, Bombay was a strong counterweight, and even Calcutta was there, the actually the importance and weight of Delhi has, you know, in a kind of criminal way has massively expanded because because of the way the state works in a way so, so all of this there is a kind of a Delhi consensus or the legal system as will happen any place, I'm not naming it. I'm not saying it's worse, because it's in Delhi, because people are actually the people who form this consensus from all over the country. They just look into it. Yes, but But the fact is that they is kind of troubling. The consensus and the power center, which makes decisions, and very often the projection of Indian culture, what is good and bad, the hierarchy of tastes, is set by a bunch of people with very narrow interest in Delhi, actually, right. And so the amount of times when I were discussing how not only were the great writers of the Konkan, which included Dharma Dharma also, but also others, many others, the writers from our part of the world, West Coast in general, but also other parts of India, were not only being ignored by this new emerging common consensus, but it was clear that they will continue to be ignored, perhaps worse in the coming years, which I think actually have been proven, right? Because a very small group of people have decision makers actually decides what is good and what is bad, what's popular and what's not popular. I mean, they, to a large extent, tastes dictated by a very small coterie of people in India. Yeah, who's interested

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Not often aesthetic, right? They can be any number of other they have all kinds of other cabinet reasons behind it. Yeah. Which is all well and good, but and they should do those things. But the point is in a vast, diverse country of India with so many different places and different experiences, it's extremely dangerous to let this one small cabal, if you like, yeah, dictate the aesthetic response in the country. So the modem also and I decided, despite not having resources, we were lucky enough to find the International Center, which is a small independent organization and go it's not really doesn't have large budgets, it does have a location. With that as a partner and a lady named Anthony Sahaj was the first director and very open to this. In fact, she wanted a Lit Fest and her desire for Lit Fest coincided with Damo Damaso and my desire to create a platform which would ignore this kind of consensus that was being rammed down our throat and revolve more to what we thought was good, and what we thought it would be paying attention to, right. And the writers who we thought, you know, being ignored by this kind of this consensus, and so the idea of the festival is deeply organic in the same set in thinking about it. We also met a Eunice D'souza made her an event which which I have organized 15 years ago, called upon Anta Yunus D'Souza, the great poet from from Bombay came to go first time and did her first ever believe it or not our first ever reading,

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public reading was in her 70s. Also, this took place, I think, in 2007. And, and she ran out this poem called Ways of belonging, which had a profound impact on all of us, because, you know, we're seeing this kind of news, edifice of Indian culture being built. And we're seeing that we're being ignored, and we will never be valued in this. Because unless we do things that we don't want to do, right, you know,

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capitulate in ways that we do not want to come. And seeing this project, one called Ways of belonging, that one really struck us all, you know, and I remember having a conversation that very evening with a bunch of people who were there, remember nourishment? And this was there were few others? Certainly the mother Mouser was there. We like this idea of ways of belonging, why don't we do a ways of belonging festival in Goa. And eventually, with the International Center, when we came to the idea of a Literature Festival, it was very much with this idea, which is that we are being missed served this served by the kind of corporate publishing agenda, kind of idea of culture that is being that is being rolled out around India at high speed by a small people, right, a small group of operators, and we're going to do something that that has its center of gravity in this world view, you know, and the point is that Go is small, but it is it is coherent, yes. And and from God, there is an extent living world view, which poses some very interesting questions, and it adds great richness to the ways of belonging that we might have to India or to the world right now. Right? Right. There are different ways of being Indian really. One does not have to be Indian in a particular way that any would be majoritarian may be wanting to jam down our throat, whether it be from the left or the right, or from any other words. That was the logic of our festival. And from the moment even though we started with no resources, and everyone in the first year, almost everyone said no to us, because they were like, This is ridiculous. You're offering of nothing. Who's going to come to this event? Well, but few people did come. A few people did come the the Great, thanks to the mother mousers own stature, as a great writer. And aside, the Academy Award winner, when you are an antibiotic came from Karnataka and we had very good conversations about inside and outside and what what those kinds of categories mean, Karnataka had just taken a turn towards making Canada you know, mandatory and a whole bunch of different arenas due to you or an anthem OTS recommendation. So we had those fantastic conversations on inside outside over here, and a few other people came. And so when we started, we had this idea we would invite people from Pakistan, where Goa has very old connections to Karachi, particularly we wanted to invite writers from Karachi, rebuild an old social connection. We wanted to bring people from the northeast, right they are also quote unquote on the periphery, number of fantastic writers, artists and musicians all working in English 15 years ago, who were almost totally unknown or ignored in India and some other things, the kinds of genres even that are considered to be marginal by the so called mainstream so genres like translations, graphic novels, poetry in English, you know, these are genres, which are real centers of excellence and go in India actually, but are not celebrated. You know, these are add ons to to the main event at at Agra.

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And, you know, the mainstream kind of event. So, right moment we did that even though we started with a tiny amount of people, the moment we brought these ingredients together, in Goa, it was pure magic, like everyone loved it. And everyone understood it like so. It's quite interesting in the first year, we've invited these riders on the northeast, I think only one came. The next year, we invited four or five and then that's really when the magic happened. Yeah, the third year, when we wanted to invite people from the northeast, again, they are co organizers. If you'd like people who work on it, they asked the question why people from the Northeast again, right? So explained, it had to be explained in that third edition to some of the stakeholders why we're doing this question has never come back again. Right? Now, when we hold a festival, people expect a third in a non tokenistic way, a third of the festival, or close to that to have these kinds of, you know, voices who are considered to be who are tokenistic.

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But our festival is not like that. And it's deeply moving, because cultural history has been made. Those writers have become an artist and musician and become best friends of God. God loves them. The Amazon Moussa has become his own writing has become a quite a big deal and Assam and the Northeast, I mean, the moment he became the man with the award winner, he got like five invitations to NASA, he's been back two or three times at least, this kind of, you know, it seems counterintuitive, but these kinds of things are real. And it they have really happened. And so that that has been the journey the festival has been we realized that there was a kind of magic that can be achieved in war in a unpretentious way with very few resources. And, and since then, really, it's just gone, the whole scene has gone from strength to strength, to the point now you have a number of national players who are coming in to go to old events like this, with very big budgets, you know, sometimes millions of dollars.

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So GWAS kind of place in the in India has transformed itself. And I take great satisfaction out of a lot of that, because it really the situation was quite different 15 to 16 years ago, you know, it's amazing, and it's it's a wonderful creation that you know, that has that has happened over so many years. Thanks for working together. And don't get me wrong, of course, yes, yes. No, absolutely not. So now just tell our listeners, like when does it happen? How many days? And what are the plans for maybe this year, so I don't know about a gaff to place in January, we have the international partner, but one thing is for so it took place in January this year, probably take place in January next year. Right. But there's no doubt they will be you know, in the in the sphere of culture, there's an endless series of high quality events taking place in Goa. And that is year round. And sometimes it's actually, you know, the it's an embarrassment of riches quite often, there are three, four or five events in a day that I would like to go to. Due to a number of different different factors. We've also had kind of a sometimes troubling demographic surge during the pandemic, where a huge number of people in their 20s and 30s and 40s have moved younger people than ever before have moved from other parts of India as a move from other parts of India and they're doing things here. So, you know, there's a whole bunch of for me, I'm gonna go a writers group has a number of big name members, you know, either now on their way, which which we didn't expect people who move to go, but I will say that it's better to be where we are today than where we were 15 or 16 years ago. Okay, now you're also a travel writer, very good one. I want to ask you what is perhaps a million dollar question. For example. Now for the brochure, tourists go as the beach and booze for the European tourists. It's perhaps the suntan and bikinis. Our fellow writer and historian Sanjeev Sal discipled said he once said that tourism in Goa is by default and not design. Now, what's your take? What is we make ministers take on what tourism in Goa should be? So tourism in Goa has occurred as my friend Sanjeev put it kind of it's, it's occurred despite the government, rather than because of the government. Yeah, so I actually have had an unusual ringside seat to all of this because when I was five or six years old, I think I was six, my father moved to go to work on the first five star hotel that was in Goa that the photo on the project he actually helped to, he was in charge of actually helping to build it, that building and so I saw it as a hillside or red hillside, which then became the first five star hotel and the first tourists started to come to go. At that time. It's important to remember and you possibly don't know this slide. Tourism was considered to be a bad bet in war. When the Indian hotels Corporation, which is a large group tried to raise funds, but I think there was some kind of bond offering or something like that they were under subscribe. Even rich people in India wouldn't put a lakh into a bank tours.

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and would work and the hotel was set up the fort Aguada and, and the next five star hotels, which was the Oberoi hotel at Bogomolov. They were both built to be shut during for four months of the year during the entire monsoon season, and they were shut during the fall for those, right. So tourism was considered to be a very iffy bet. For number cultural reasons. The idea was Indians and Indians don't go to the beach, they never go to the beach. Why would they go to the beach? Right? First of all? The second part of it was Why would Europeans come all the way to India to go to the beach, because this was the only perception of law which still remains to the Masquerade. Exactly. It's the beach. It's, it's that kind of idea. So the fact that was tourism has exploded, and it exploded, particularly after the new millennium, the new millennium Magua emerged as a highly desirable destination globally. The fact that it emerged, it emerged against people's like predictions. So it happened in a haphazard way. And then, because of venality, and the way that the system is set up, I would say that a kind of MIS governance applied, particularly devastating fashion in the last 20 years has kind of driven GWAS tourism situation into something that has become a burden on the state and the kind of devastating negative, destructive factor rather than something that is generating positive employment and a positive economy. So so the number of guns who are benefiting from tourism is fairly large, but the section of the economy that that tourism occupies, is actually not even the largest and more like pharmaceuticals brings more to go, and bigger, better the economy, then even tourism. So the way tourism has happened is that secondly, the way the tourism has evolved in Goa in the last eight to 10 years, has been a kind of a lunacy, right. And this was actually promoted by a series of I would there is no party, which has not been entirely culpable for it, I would call it it's kind of a complicity of the entire economic and political elites of Goa has made the decision at some point that they would go for numbers rather than for quality, right? And, and they have just unleashed the kind of devastation now, at the turn of the millennium, you had less than a million visitors to go and 23 years later, it is 8 million people coming into the state population. It's crazy, possibly 1.25 to two point million, and you get 8 million people at the at the at the end of the year, you can go nowhere and go you can't you can't drive thru and the population of the states like you know, three times what it normally is, yeah, and there are no controls on garbage. There are no controls on behavior, prostitution and and drugs have exploded with the complicity of, you know, every aspect of the everyone pretty much yeah, you know, and so so you're seeing a kind of where I live, which is Miramar, Miramar is afflicted by tourism, like there is no benefit very few benefits or anyone actually, who lives anywhere near Miramar, right. It is it is a few people who benefit but it's totally predatory. It's totally destructive. And there are no benefits percolating that anyone can see. So we've gotten tourism very wrong in Goa. It's a cautionary tale, like how a place like go up with all of its advantages with such an educated and and, you know, active actually population can nonetheless be ground into submission and be run over. Yeah, run over and it is it is a terrible, terrible thing. I write a lot about tourism, I look at tourism all over the country, it is true that very few places in India have gotten tourism even remotely right.

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I put it down to governance actually miss governance because it is true that many of these same tourists will behave better in other parts of the world. They go in go in India in general, they tend to believe that they can do whatever they want and get away with anything goes. And unfortunately we have a a completely irresponsible shameless actually, leadership, which which is complicit in that. I mean, they you know, it was particularly ugly and egregious during the pandemic, where I would say that government the promotes our government, catastrophically mismanaged tourism so that we had a devastating second wave. Other parts of India did too, but go are then also mismanaged this healthcare situation. Yeah. And it should be noted that the sitting governor at the time who is still a sitting governor, the governor of Megillah pointed

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This finger directly and said that there is corruption at every level and go on the sovereign government is, is, you know, just like unbelievably corrupt and incompetent and and you know he's still a governor it's not like a normal. Yeah. So so we are talking about where we are and geyser is a I would say it's at the tipping point of like a often epic, epic historical turn to the in a negative downward trend and it is almost entirely due to criminal mismanagement. Wow. Yeah, so no mincing your words there?

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Well, I don't see the point. Yeah, you have to tell it like it is and this is what it is. We aren't 23 There's nothing that has said that every gun does not know. I mean,

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it's not an all lot of almost everything that I've said, has been even brought into the court as well. So it's not like I'm hiding as I'm saying anything. Fortunately, we've gotten to the point where it's become impolite to tell the truth, these things are become unsayable. And you know, but this is how this is how we legitimize total failure in our societies. So now other parts in the world that you think that tourism is done in a better fashion? And do you think we can maybe take a, you know, some learnings from there? Well, you know, the thing is, what are what are the problems? So one is environmental impact, right? So the process of, of judging environmental impact and ruling on it and protecting our environment is totally broken and war, right. It's totally broken in India. Recently, there was a scene that was that's taking place, right. I think it's in good drought, where they're scraping off all the vegetation and putting, yeah, sticker. Yeah, yeah. That's very much what's happening more. Or first of all, we don't just build a highway. We don't just make a highway from one inch to like in Tamil Nadu, even the coastal road, a major road. It's two lanes, nobody needs more than that. In Goa, we're building fast Tron tarmacs, you know, 4474 sevens to land, from north to south in the state of destroying agricultural land. And then on top of it, we were devastating hundreds of meters on either side of those as well. I mean, kind of, not just negligence. It's a madness, right? Trees are being gone over the state for no reason in a time of climate change. Go has been devastatingly hit by by coastal flooding. And we are rampantly building on the coast, like particularly the North Indian kind of construction in the Northwest coastline has to be seen to be believed you have to see it from the river from the ocean, you know, it is really, really true. So we're at a very difficult, I don't know, I think that other parts of the world that have gotten, you have to control, you have to control environmental impact. You have to control numbers, you have to be absolutely rigid about rule of law. Right? My biggest issue is rule of law. I mean, if the rule of law is continually subverted in Go, which it is, by by the leaders themselves, then what do you expect to you know, we really do have a free for all. And that's what you're seeing in what today is an absolute free for all? Yeah, true. Now, as someone who grew up you grew up in San Diego, you mentioned right now I know that you're seeing kind of like this destruction of villages, also that's happening. But you want to get a little bit nostalgic and tell me maybe maybe what were what are your, you know, favorite villages that still are untouched and pristine, that you'd maybe like to talk about. And I'm definitely not going to do that. I've been blamed enough by people for people to go for any number of reasons. But, but there are lots of parts of law where guns maintained it and I am very, I really admire the man in the word or if you like, or the woman in the Bardo because they have held on in their culture and their identity and all kinds of stresses the culture still alive, right? I mean, it's tumors of the of its demise have been, I mean, I've been told for, for I'm not 55 years old, so I've been told for at least 50 years was finished. But you know, much of what I love about boy is very much alive and very much there. So that's that I will say that pendulum itself the city of fandom is an absolutely beguiling little city, which has so much darker connects to the world. It's also a profound civilizational statement. Like if you're proud if you're proud to be Indian, you should really come and take a look what's what, what the Indians of the 19th century achieved in creating a world city in their own

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view. Right. So the Panama Panama was built by going for guns. But But cosmopolitan go on sophisticated ones who who knew their place in the world you know, they consider themselves to be full

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citizens of the world. This is a phenomenon that does not occur in India for another 100 years. And one would argue the kind of megalomaniacal architecture and urban planning that's going on one would argue that most, most Indians don't feel full citizens even now. But but the fact that the bones were built Pantip date in the, in the 19 set. Yes. And and this is a is an, you know, glorious exuberant civilizational statement. That reveals a lot to me all the time, I find it very inspirational. Lovely. Yeah. Now, you're also you're also the editor of the peacock magazine, right, which is the official magazine of the International Film Festival of gua, which is also known as the fee. Can you just tell us a little bit about what the magazine is about and what can one expect. So a lot of what I've been doing quite as I live in the abandoned waterfront, and I'm very attached to the buildings and the actually stunning heritage waterfront of Banjul, which has a number of these very important old buildings, which are now available for cultural purposes. So, all of that started, actually, I think it was in 2003 or 2004, when the International Film Festival was relocated to go, and that was partly due to the efforts of Manohar Parrikar. And when the National Film Festival came to go, initially, there was a kind of a very interesting beginning, where you had professional managers, and you had cinephile managers. And you had, I would say, a kind of strong representation from Goa in the administration and making of the festival that very quickly ended. So sometime quite quickly after that, it became it was seized, if you like the

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fact the impact from Goa including the government of Goa window to almost nothing. And it became kind of the fiefdom of two agencies, government agencies are a deli, right. And they made all the decisions themselves. So then you had a kind of a protest, a kind of a grotesque scenario played out in which you had, you had this festival taking place in India and people coming from all over. So what happened is that if he became unpopular and somewhat controversial in Goa, because it was being entirely organized every aspect of it by these organizations in Delhi, so

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besides the film's, which is one part of it, everything that happened on the ground, also all the production, all the publications, everything about it was, it was it was ostensibly set in Goa, and presenting a festival that had a go on element, an element of goo in it, but it was being written in embarrassingly bad fashion by people out of Delhi. So I criticize this again and again. And then one of the several years in a row, the one of the young IAS officer. So in this time, the professional administration of Fe was replaced by government infrastructure, okay, and which is headed by an IAS officer, I'm one of those IAS officers by the name of Camilla Bianca contacted me and to his credit said, I've read all your criticisms for the last two or three years. What do you think we can do better under the constraints that we have in which all of the controllers held by Delhi? So what what I offered was I said one of the flaws about this festival it has no institutional memory. If you want to know what happened five years ago, or six years ago, you don't know you have to go look in the papers. There's no institutional memory. Secondly, the problem is that all of this content about boy even about how to experience more that you're giving to your delegates. It's been written by someone who does, who's sitting in Delhi, who's probably never who apparently I've never visited before. It's an embarrassment. So he said, Okay, we already have a newspaper, which was called that it's called the FE daily, which is a high, very well produced, expensive bulletin, but we can do another one. We have some budget, and why don't you get together to demonstrate capacity out of war? Why don't you get together some of the young talent. So we have some very young writers and journalists and photographers and artists, and we started doing a publication that was kind of a second publication and if you had the if you bulletin, and then you had the peacock newspaper, it's like a colorful, vibrant periodical spilling over the ideas and what happened very quickly is in the first year itself, people were picking up the peacock and taken away no one picked up the feet bulletin. So we had I collected all of these tents and put them in a small room at almost the entire room and says that there's no waste but taking place.

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The following year, they inculcate they put the FE bulletin into our paper, so four papers is perfect. But that year as a as a tactic, I got Amrita Patil, the wonderful right artist to paint our cover images. So people started pulling the bulletin out of our publication and,

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and discarding it. So I collected all of those as well. So on the third year, people disappeared and there's only the peacock and I must say the Peacock has gone from strength to strength. It's absolutely beloved by festival goers. Yeah. And many, many, many young people have filed through it. It's like

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Got in the journalism school with a few of us veterans and lovely it's become a it's become a kind of an institution. Now we even have a cultural portal. So you know, if he has not necessarily gotten better and better as a festival, I would argue it's become much much worse but the Peacock has gone through. Definitely from strength. So more power to peacock. Yeah, it does, indeed beautiful. It's a winning formula Clyde. talent from Goa is great. If you give it a little bit of guidance and shaping and put it in the right context, it will always shine. I really fundamentally believe that and that the peacock is that the blogs and literature festivals that most of my house is have to do with that. Lovely. Okay, now we'll move on to my last segment. It's called the ouzo round. It's the rapid fire round is just you know, simple, quick questions and one word answers okay. Yeah, so yeah, now you've been on the jury of Conde Nast Traveler is top 50 restaurants judging the best restaurants and go as we know for good and bad is becoming India's culinary capital. So I'd like to know from you, what do you consider GWAS top three restaurants? Love question. First of all, my consensus I wrote about it as the best restaurant in India this year. I think that anyone who thinks they know about modern food in India has to try Cavatina and Chef Avinash Martin. Yeah, absolutely wonderful. So that I would rank it at the height of at the top of the culinary kind of fine dining culinary in India, that's very much at the top. I would say that another thing that I think is absolutely extraordinary and far fewer people have done it and 10 should is having is arranging you have to do to the group it's look under with one or two people, but if you have a group of people or a small family, you can arrange a Lusso Indian kind of grand Lusso Indian lunch at the Casa museo figurado in locally which is which is NA in itself it doesn't building you have to see if you want to notice if we like you know India well it's one of the it's an intact kind of brandy mentioned from the 18th century which is yes absolutely exquisite with all of the collections still in place. And and the family members will make you you know, absolutely stunning. Me Lusso Indian meal of a kind you can also Lusso Indian bone food exists on a spectrum right?

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At one end of the spectrum is like the very Europe or the other of the Europeanized refined blue sauce Lusso but stillborn Lusso and it's and that is this, and you eat it in what is probably my favorite room and go, you know, the dining room is absolutely delightful experience. So I would rank both of those very high. I also am very, very, very fond of this may be an unusual choice. But for the record. There's a young man in Bolin supply and seemingly unlimited talent named bulan Shukla, who, who does many things including architecture and flamenco guitar, but

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he's obsessed with fermentation, and umami. And he's created an entirely unique menu of both cocktails and foods in his absolutely wonderful little restaurant in Milan, in old Belgium, and I would read that one of the really great culinary experiences. What's the restaurant called? For the record? Oh, it's called for the record okay. It shares space with his other one of his other passions which is making the great acoustic I mean, analog record players you know, so you can you listen to old music you have this amazing food, lovely, this drink amazing drinks, everything is you know, bespoke almost, it's very, very unique. Nice. Okay, what's your favorite golden phrase or term? I love cathode ray, budgie. I use it all the time. Yeah, cut the ribbon. That's a nice one. Okay, now do Do you sing and if you do, then what is your favorite golden song? I do sing. I'm actually a trained Carnatic music was oh, Carnatic vocalist I studied with the brothers of Bala Saraswathi. That is Tanger Vishwanathan and tanjo Ramanathan at Wesleyan in the United States, which is one of actually believe it or not hotbed of Carnatic music in the United States or anywhere, but it's in the United States. But I like what I really like I love the gun song. It's a Mundo call. Adios. Coachella. And recently at the Liberty and Light Festival, I decided to start treating it as the and I'm going to in the future as well treated like as an alternative bone national anthem. So we got Sonia sheets to teach everyone in the audience an audience of 100 people how to sing it and then we practice beautiful it and then we went and sang it in the grand stairwell of the old GMC building where we all were absolutely

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A spellbinding kind of Goosebumps moment. So there is a wonderful song, I love to sing it now. So what does it mean for our listeners? It's a song about longing. It's about saying goodbye to seafarers. But, you know, for a profoundly diasporic transnational community, like the bones it has a lot of it has a lot of longing and saw that in it. Right. Right. Nice. Lovely. And finally, what brings us to say, God, I know again, a very cliched question, but what truly brings you peace or contentment.

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I like practicing our culture. Now a big part of it is not like I'm religious or anything like that. But I really like being around when the fact that when the culture is being practiced in all its dimensions, I just like being a fly on the wall in those moments. So currently, right now, I'm actually I'm going to the very ancient kind of ceremony of the tails in all go, which is a good Friday thing that's almost unique. In two places in the world that's taking place in the SE cathedral. It's like very medieval. There's a lot of fervor there. And it's not something that I'm deeply religious about, but I'm very attached to it the idea that my ancestors created these buildings, to see them following it. Yeah. And people are still alive. Right. So I continually were there for people and a lot of time declaiming all that lost. But I love what's still alive, right? What we have is still formidable. I love it. Yes. And it's better to try and experience that as much as we can. All right now from creating festivals, art exhibitions, writing columns, what are you working on next? What can we expect from you, books wise, or festival wise? I'm thinking hard. Like, I'm thinking hard, because I'm coming into, you know, if you like the the final professional innings, I'm 55 years old. So I have a couple of years, you know, if if all things go, well, I shouldn't have another decade or two of Working Actor at the level that I am now. So what what do I want to accomplish in those things? What what is the kind of what's more the culture that we have inherited, that I have so enjoyed being part of, I cannot tell you how much I've enjoyed being part of this culture, I would not trade it for anything else in the world, I feel like so, so lucky to me and nice. So being in that culture, I'm just very, very interested and concerned about how my efforts over the next 20 years, or the next decade, at least, God willing, will be able to, you know, make it a little more resilient and robust, so that it can be future generations, my own sons and their children and your sons or your children or your cousins and all of us. And everyone really get to experience this very true living culture that that came up in conveniently, perhaps between between many major tectonic forces that are much bigger, the goal and somehow somehow emerged into a kind of efflorescent culture, which is important and has great beauty and meaning. So I want to see if that what if there's something any anything I can do for with the remaining years that I have to do, you know, just keep it keep it around? Lovely. I still think you are a master storyteller and you have a way with words.

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Honestly, thank you for inspiring me, at least personally, I really love reading you and seeing what you do every time. Thank you for creating magic, whether it's with your words, or curating and creating art festivals. And thank you so much for being on to seek out stories from Google podcasts. You've just taken it to the next level. And I hope to have you again soon. So Maga Su and thank you. Thank you Thank you playing

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hope you enjoyed this episode of say God stories from Goa. Don't forget to rate review and follow this podcast. This is Clyde saying bye for now. Follow me on instagram as glide de Souza author or buy my book Suzy got the go and out of contentment. For more go and stories, recipes and a whole lot more. This podcast is brought to you by bound a company that helps you grow through stories, enter them and bound India on all social platforms for updates on this podcast or take a look at their other podcasts Moga Su and see you soon