Essays penned by alumni of the Mapusa-based St Mary’s Convent, a prominent six decade old institution from North Goa.
The network that contributed to this book emerged from a virtual community built in cyberspace, and an electronic mailing-list called ChilliesNet.
Twenty-nine essays dealing with various aspects of school life, focussing mainly on the Goa of the 1970s. From the conditions of the times (“wood floors, leaing roofs”) to the success stories of alumni who grew from sneaking a read of Archie comics during class-hours to becoming professors at the University themselves.
Other themes include school day sports, romance and love, favourite teachers, finding their way from nearby villages to Mapusa, nostalgia of growing-up years, the charms and challenges of boarding life, networking alumni, multiple roles (“pupil, teacher… grandmom”) at a prominent local institution, meeting up after years and decades… in Toronto, and more.
Eight pages of photographs picked from carefully-preserved albums give us a hint of what life was in Goa of another day. Anyone who lived through the Mapusa of the yesteryears would be able to identify this these images and words.
From the cover: What was it like to study in a convent with wooden floors and a leaking roof? What does it mean to nostalgically walk down the past and remember our schooldays, even as the next generation takes our place? What does puppy love mean to a convent girl? And what did boarding life translate into, ina Goa of the seventies?
