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Monsoon
An actor of traditional Hindu dramas meets an adolescent girl who turns out to be his half-sister. A man returns to Goa from Mozambique to father a child for a family whose unmarried daughters has produced no heirs. Another man feels out of place in his family home after returning from Portugal to get a university education, as a woman waits faithfully for him to return. A forbidden romance blooms between a Christian girl and a Hindu boy.
Through these stories, written with a mix of poignant nostalgia and sharp criticism, Vimala Devi recreates the colonial Goa of her childhood. First published in 1963, two years after the Portuguese colony became part of India, Monsoon is a cycle of twelve stories that vary in tone. By turns satirical, desolate, tender, humorous, and dramatic, they come together through a subtle interplay of echoes, parallels and cross-references to form a composite picture of a world gone by. They delve into divisions of caste, religion, language, and material privilege, setting them off against a common historical experience and deeply felt attachment to the land.
Including a critical and contextualizing introduction by Jason Keith Fernandes, this rendition of Monsoon allows contemporary readers a rare peep into a colonial society that was significantly different from the British Indian mainstream.
Through these stories, written with a mix of poignant nostalgia and sharp criticism, Vimala Devi recreates the colonial Goa of her childhood. First published in 1963, two years after the Portuguese colony became part of India, Monsoon is a cycle of twelve stories that vary in tone. By turns satirical, desolate, tender, humorous, and dramatic, they come together through a subtle interplay of echoes, parallels and cross-references to form a composite picture of a world gone by. They delve into divisions of caste, religion, language, and material privilege, setting them off against a common historical experience and deeply felt attachment to the land.
Including a critical and contextualizing introduction by Jason Keith Fernandes, this rendition of Monsoon allows contemporary readers a rare peep into a colonial society that was significantly different from the British Indian mainstream.
- GenresIndiaShort Stories
176 pages, Hardcover
Published March 5, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 22, 2020
"If everybody thought like you and the others who leave never to return, then Goa would be abandoned to the infants and the elderly...
You, the children of Goa...you refuse to make this place any better."
From MONSOON by Vimala Devi, translated from the Portuguese by Paul Melo e Castro, 1963 / 2019 From @seagullbooks
#ReadtheWorld21 📍Goa, India
#WomeninTranslation
I have been interested to learn more about Goa for quite awhile, the small state in India's western coast facing the Arabian Sea. Many thanks to Areeb @bankrupt_bookworm for recommending this title from Seagull months ago!
From the 16th century until 1961, Goa was a colony of Portugal. It remained a colony, a little notch out of India for several years after its own independence from the British. Portuguese-speaking, largely Catholic, the people of this colony had their own culture and identity, unique amongst others on the Subcontinent, and very different from other Lusophone peoples too.
Vimala Devi's collection of short stories captures this moment - published in Portuguese in 1963 as Monção, all the stories take place before independence. The 12 stories in the collection are "slices of life" - just a peek into the daily lives and occurrences of Goan people - both wealthy landowners thinking about heirs and legacy, the workers in the spice plantations, the young who leave Goa for other Portuguese lands - Lisbon, Brazil, Mozambique, some who return and others who feel nostalgia for their homeland.
My particular favorites were the opening stories that show a chance encounter at a Hindu festival; a man returning to Goa from Mozambique to marry a spinster for her money... and the interlocking stories that follow young Chandracanta as he's torn between his life in Portugal and his family in Goa.
Devi is a pen name for Teresa da Piedade de Baptista Almeida. Born in Portuguese Goa in 1932, she moved to Portugal in 1957. She also has translated both her own work and other literature into Esperanto and Catalan. She currently lives in Barcelona.
You, the children of Goa...you refuse to make this place any better."
From MONSOON by Vimala Devi, translated from the Portuguese by Paul Melo e Castro, 1963 / 2019 From @seagullbooks
#ReadtheWorld21 📍Goa, India
#WomeninTranslation
I have been interested to learn more about Goa for quite awhile, the small state in India's western coast facing the Arabian Sea. Many thanks to Areeb @bankrupt_bookworm for recommending this title from Seagull months ago!
From the 16th century until 1961, Goa was a colony of Portugal. It remained a colony, a little notch out of India for several years after its own independence from the British. Portuguese-speaking, largely Catholic, the people of this colony had their own culture and identity, unique amongst others on the Subcontinent, and very different from other Lusophone peoples too.
Vimala Devi's collection of short stories captures this moment - published in Portuguese in 1963 as Monção, all the stories take place before independence. The 12 stories in the collection are "slices of life" - just a peek into the daily lives and occurrences of Goan people - both wealthy landowners thinking about heirs and legacy, the workers in the spice plantations, the young who leave Goa for other Portuguese lands - Lisbon, Brazil, Mozambique, some who return and others who feel nostalgia for their homeland.
My particular favorites were the opening stories that show a chance encounter at a Hindu festival; a man returning to Goa from Mozambique to marry a spinster for her money... and the interlocking stories that follow young Chandracanta as he's torn between his life in Portugal and his family in Goa.
Devi is a pen name for Teresa da Piedade de Baptista Almeida. Born in Portuguese Goa in 1932, she moved to Portugal in 1957. She also has translated both her own work and other literature into Esperanto and Catalan. She currently lives in Barcelona.
October 30, 2020
Interesting stories offering a fascinating perspective. RTC.
July 16, 2022
My Goa read for my #ReadingIndia challenge, Monsoon proved to be a quick read at about 130 pages.
Monsoon is a collection of short stories by Vimala Devi. One thing that was unusual about this collection was that after you'd finished a story and moved on, you encountered familiar characters a few stories later (‘Hope’ immediately follows ‘Decline’ so that’s not too bad, but ‘Dhruva’ and ‘Fidelity’ and ‘Returning’ are all separated by other stories). So, this is not a short story collection from which you can read stories at random. I’d recommend following the order it appears in.
I found the stories a little dated in terms of setting (the book was published in 1963, two years after the Portuguese colony of Goa became a part of India) and language (‘Dravidian faces’ to describe Shudra fisherfolk, for instance. I can never understand what it means. Are Dravidians all supposed to be dark? Or are they supposed to sport specific features? Or is the Dravidian tag supposed to indicate caste identity?) But the oppressor-oppressed dynamic unfortunately seems largely unchanged even today.
For me, this was not as riveting as Indu Menon’s work or Mannu Bhandari’s, but it gave me a picture of a Goa I never knew (the religious and the caste diversity of Goa, the landlord/bhatcar and tenant farmer/mundcar dynamic) and for that reason, I did like it. Some stories were particularly poignant like ‘The Arms of Venus’, where the narrator has the privilege of lamenting the waste of beauty that they see in the death of a landless labourer, while the dead woman’s poor husband and their stingy landlord are united in lamenting the loss of a pair of arms that could labour in the fields.
I found the introduction by Jason Keith Fernandes very helpful. It contextualises these stories in the socio-political milieu of Goa, pointing out the author’s ‘occlusion of Goan Muslims’ and idealisation of ‘the Brahminised Hindu’ but also noting that she emphasised the ‘unconscionable inequalities that marked her world’.
All in all, this was interesting but not among my favourite reads of the year.
Monsoon is a collection of short stories by Vimala Devi. One thing that was unusual about this collection was that after you'd finished a story and moved on, you encountered familiar characters a few stories later (‘Hope’ immediately follows ‘Decline’ so that’s not too bad, but ‘Dhruva’ and ‘Fidelity’ and ‘Returning’ are all separated by other stories). So, this is not a short story collection from which you can read stories at random. I’d recommend following the order it appears in.
I found the stories a little dated in terms of setting (the book was published in 1963, two years after the Portuguese colony of Goa became a part of India) and language (‘Dravidian faces’ to describe Shudra fisherfolk, for instance. I can never understand what it means. Are Dravidians all supposed to be dark? Or are they supposed to sport specific features? Or is the Dravidian tag supposed to indicate caste identity?) But the oppressor-oppressed dynamic unfortunately seems largely unchanged even today.
For me, this was not as riveting as Indu Menon’s work or Mannu Bhandari’s, but it gave me a picture of a Goa I never knew (the religious and the caste diversity of Goa, the landlord/bhatcar and tenant farmer/mundcar dynamic) and for that reason, I did like it. Some stories were particularly poignant like ‘The Arms of Venus’, where the narrator has the privilege of lamenting the waste of beauty that they see in the death of a landless labourer, while the dead woman’s poor husband and their stingy landlord are united in lamenting the loss of a pair of arms that could labour in the fields.
I found the introduction by Jason Keith Fernandes very helpful. It contextualises these stories in the socio-political milieu of Goa, pointing out the author’s ‘occlusion of Goan Muslims’ and idealisation of ‘the Brahminised Hindu’ but also noting that she emphasised the ‘unconscionable inequalities that marked her world’.
All in all, this was interesting but not among my favourite reads of the year.
April 4, 2021
Monsoon here is a collection of 16 short stories, all based in the Portuguese Goa (before independence). Here, we get to live a day or two in the lives of people of Orlim, a fictional village.
We witness a tale of burgeoning love between a Hindu and a Christian, a tale of a girl's arranged marriage, a tale of a house husband and tales of many more people. The stories here end as randomly as they start and yet they don't seem incomplete! Would I have liked to know more about each character? I guess not. I find a certain satisfaction in just glimpsing into other people's lives through books. And this is why I adore such collections of short stories, they drip of simple elegance♥️
We witness a tale of burgeoning love between a Hindu and a Christian, a tale of a girl's arranged marriage, a tale of a house husband and tales of many more people. The stories here end as randomly as they start and yet they don't seem incomplete! Would I have liked to know more about each character? I guess not. I find a certain satisfaction in just glimpsing into other people's lives through books. And this is why I adore such collections of short stories, they drip of simple elegance♥️
November 14, 2020
Given the "short story" approach, the book is quite far reaching in the themes it is able to cover. The author is also quite adept at saying more, in fewer words. Many cultural nuances of Goan local life are covered here - attitude towards Portuguese colonizers, religion, caste and economic opportunity. It was interesting to learn about because Goa is one of the few states in India with consistent colonial rule for over 600+ years. Indians needed a passport to enter and leave the state until the 1900s. Even culturally, the state is over 50% Catholic, which is uncommon elsewhere in India. All in all, through its stories and characters, offers us a deep insight into a culture of India that very few of us are privy to- and hence was a joy to get through :).
July 18, 2021
Monsoon by Vimla Devi is a book with short story .Book have stories from Goa and can be helpful for people who wanna know more about old Goan culture. The author have described alot about Goa and goan culture. the book talks alot about gaon cultural norms, local life, attitude of Portuguese colonizers. author have talked about Goan religions, caste ,Creed and people. what i like about the book is I got to know that people from India needed apasspost to enter Goa in past because Goa was one of the states in India with colonial rule for over decates. Even half of the population of Goa is Catholic. At last the stories in the book and characters really gives us deep knowledge about about the culture of Goa and hence book was full of joy to read because of the deep thoughts of the author.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 10, 2023
Simple set of "drawing room conversation" stories mixed with provocative agenda of casteism and language superiority. I can't say whether it was intentional or genuine writing style of the author because I haven't read her works but I could see those traces of social themes quite clear. I have no issues with these themes but there was something in the writing which made me feel as if the author is forcing those on the reader.
However, writing is quite decent and there are funny cultural moments as well which I enjoyed reading about.
I would suggest fellow readers to read the stories first and then the interpretation/preface by the translator later.
However, writing is quite decent and there are funny cultural moments as well which I enjoyed reading about.
I would suggest fellow readers to read the stories first and then the interpretation/preface by the translator later.
July 4, 2021
It is a curious book which took me back to a time (1950's Portuguese Goa) which I had no perspective of (and hence the 4 stars). The stories varied from being very interesting to somewhat lame but always shed some light on the culture and mindset of the times when it was written.
The only thing I would warn the reader against is the (long) foreword by Jason Fernandes. I feel that it failed to capture the essence of the stories.
The only thing I would warn the reader against is the (long) foreword by Jason Fernandes. I feel that it failed to capture the essence of the stories.
March 21, 2022
Monsoon is a collection of twelve short stories varying in themes set in the times when Goa was a Portuguese Colony of India.
What I admired in all the stories was the detailing of the characters and the simplicity of the stories.
Overall I think it was a fascinating glimpse into a pre-independence colonial society that is very different from the British Raj that was then the major ruling influence in India.
What I admired in all the stories was the detailing of the characters and the simplicity of the stories.
Overall I think it was a fascinating glimpse into a pre-independence colonial society that is very different from the British Raj that was then the major ruling influence in India.
April 11, 2023
ok. well this wasn't as bad as the other books i've had to read for this class. it was just a bunch of short stories about india and some were interesting and some were funny but overall it was just kinda upsetting and nihilistic. i hate this class.
September 17, 2020
Short stories. I loved being transported to another time and place. Vivid characters. Made me sad each time the story ended-I wanted to stay and see what happened next.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews