In the Preface to this book, the Indo-Portuguese historian Teotónio
R. de Souza wishes and hopes that the trickle of memoirs and autobiographies by Goans in recent times may soon turn into a tide. It’s indicative of a feeling of pride on the part of the Goan authors who are beginning to see their deep feelings for their homeland being realized. The same historian had stated in his autobiographical Goa to Me : “I do believe in historical objectivity. It is a sum total of the subjective reconstructions of individual historians.” One could add that this reconstructive capacity need not be restricted to trained historians. The recorded utterances of joys and sorrows, hopes and frustrations, or even despair, of every Goan, whether in Goa, or wherever “Goabilization” (a neologism of the Preface writer) may have taken its children and children’s children, constitute a worthy and prized source material to understand Goa in its all-encompassing reality. Recalling the late Goan poet Manohar Sardessai, who told him once in an inspiring rhyme: “Tuka suknni zai? Panzrem kadd, zaddam lai ” (If you wish to have birds, remove the cage and plant trees). This piece of poetic wisdom expressed the creativity and empowerment that Goa has experienced and continues to experience through the upheavals that have “released” its children from time to time from the cage of cultural exclusivism into a wider world of multiculturalism as was envisaged and desired by Rabindranth Tagore for his country in the midst of a painful reality in his book The Home and the World . “Goabilization” expresses the kind of globalization experienced by Goans since past many centuries as a result of what the Goan novelist Pundalik Naik has called “upheaval” in the English version of his novel Acchev His “upheaval” referred specifically to the havoc wrought by the mining industry, environmentally and socially, in the surroundings of his village of Savoi-Verem in the “new conquests” of Goa since the 50s of the last century. But upheavals were neither unique nor a novelty in the long history of Goa, neither did they affect only the poor or the masses of the Goan population. The memoirs of Alfredo de Mello unfold before us a scenario that touched even the most privileged of the Goan society to which he belonged. The fact that Alfredo de Mello and his siblings were sent for their school and college education to British India is indicative of his father’s good assessment of the realities on the ground and the bleak future under Salazar’s Colonial Act. It would take him little longer to realize that no amount of his prestige as an internationally renowned medical researcher or his socio- political efforts to please the administration could save him from reaching the end of the road and from seeking flight into exile. We need to understand such outbursts of nationalists who were impatient to reach their goals and had little or no receptivity to alternate visions of freedom that could extend beyond their narrow borders of nationalism. However, contrary to the assessment of some impatient and intolerant "freedom-fighters" of Goa, as we commemorate half-centenary of the death of that Goan stalwart doctor and medical researcher, it is time to analyse more carefully and dispassionately his contribution and do him justice, even as a political representative in Portugal. Many details in the present memoirs of his eldest son, including the texts of his “maiden speech” (in its uncensored version) and more particularly, his sharp and unambiguous “farewell” speech of March 15, 1949 (not the last one yet) reveal Dr. Froilano de Melo’s ability and courage to call spade a spade, even in the face of the Portuguese dictator’s political stubborness. In paragraph after paragraph that opened with “ não logrei ” (I failed) Dr. Froilano vented his frustration in the Portuguese parliament about having to return to Goa “empty handed”. He may have failed to soften the political wall of Carmona-Salazar combine, but he let them hear loud and clear that Goans were not interested in cherishing the old bonds with Portugal as its second class citizens under the Acto Colonial of 1930. On 6th November 1949, a week before ending officially his term as MP, Dr. Froilano de Melo had sent a confidential letter to Salazar through the Portuguese consulate in Bombay. Its text is now published for the first time, and it reveals once again the courage of the man, who did not let his tact and diplomacy dilute or fail to convey the hard political truth and its economic consequences for the Goans. No surprising if he paid for it with a self-exile soon after ending his term as MP. Should there be still doubts about the Indian patriotism (woven into a healthy universalism proclaimed by gurudev) of Dr. Froilano de Melo, a reading of his O Cântico da Vida na Poesia Tagoreana should suffice to dispel them. It is an opportunity also to remind ourselves that Tagore’s humanism and internationalism had not earned him much sympathy of die-hard Indian nationalists, and had even caused many frictions between him and Mahatma Gandhi. The neologism of “Goablization” points to a route to empowerment of Goans through exile and seeks to convey my belief that no self-exiled Goan is necessarily a permanent loss to Goa. It is rather a long term investment, even when it takes some generations for some descendant to yearn for recovery of his or her roots or to promote a cause in the land of ancestors. Alfredo de Mello may have reached and settled in distant Patagonia, but even after half a century of exile he could draw from the “deep well of childhood memories”. That is the siren call of one’s culture. Incidentally, the first part of these memoirs conveys to us that Alfredo de Mello’s Goanness is embedded in the historic and pre-historic past of the Indian subcontinent. It goes even beyond it, linking in the original version of this book Gondwana and Patagonia, and the recent past, with the cosmic Big Bang! In comparison, “Goablization” is a milder version. Despite some unpleasant memories, Alfredo de Mello does not display any hangover of colonial past. He revealed very early in life his conviction that all empires had their end! This understanding of history and his joie de vivre pervade his memoirs, giving them a seriousness and without making them dull. In between some colourful descriptions of his deft control of a pony galloping downhill at Matheran while still a child; a confrontation which ended badly for a cobra in his home compound at Altinho in Panjim; a rub of the ring of the Archbishop-Patriarch D. José da Cista Nunes left him with bleeding nose; and his first experience of the pleasures of Eden with a young British Eve while a boarder at Bishop Cotton’s in Bangalore, there is much we can learn about social life in the capital city of Goa as well as about the wild-life in rural Goa of those years. Had not his father opted for shielding his children from colonial discriminations by choosing to educate them first within home compound and later to send them across Goa’s borders to elite boarding schools, these memoirs could have become a Goan equivalent of Tagore’s Glimpses of Bengal. Nonetheless, Alfredo de Mello makes an excellent and useful contribution to the jigsaw puzzle of Goa’s history. Not every detail or conclusion of his narrative may correspond to the reality as experienced by others. We are presented with his “subjectively” lived experience with all the limitations any individual experience entails. It is no fault of his if he saw no beggars in Goa. He could even be right, contrasting the situation in Goa with