Justice at the Grassroots: A Tribute to Antonio Francisco Fernandes, Leader of Goa's Tribal Communities. By Cyril Aleixo Fernandes. The Gavddas (also known as the Kunbis) were the first known settlers in this Land of the Golden Harvest which today goes by the name of Goa. Later settlers took advantage of this peaceful community, usurped their land and refashioned their deities. Today, centuries later, they find themselves on the fringe of Goa's development, largely excluded from policy-making, and bearing the ill effects of unplanned and unwanted 'development'.

From Goan "joints" at Dhobitalao (originally a washerman's lake), to the quadrangles of Byculla, Mazagon, Grant Road or Colaba, and beyond. Football at Cooperage and Goan food at Ballard Estate all exported the Goan way of life to that city, which today has a population of 20 million. A new book on the subject seeks to capture the essence of it all, as it played out in the 20th century. Titled 'Bomboicar: Stories of Bombay Goans, 1920-1980', the book is edited and compiled by journalist Reena Martins, originally from Velim but raised in Poona and currently working in Mumbai. It is available for sale at Golden Heart (Margao), Broadway (Panjim) and via mail order from goa1556@gmail.com

It is hard to define life as each one of us has a different interpretation. However, when you meet young writer Frederika Menezes you get the feeling that there is one who can actually define life for you. A cerebral palsy patient Frederika suffers from physical disability, but there is no room for complaint in her life and on the contrary, is happy for all life has given her. I've been lucky all along and I acknowledge that, says Frederik. These days Frederika has more than one reason to be excited about life. Today, two of her books are being released Unforgotten, a young adult novel, and Stories in Rhyme, a book of verse for children. For Frederika her strength comes from family and friends whom she cherishes. She is constantlyin touch with friends over emails and social media. She believes that technology has made life easy for her. Technology is helpful for everyone, not only me. I type with two fingers and I am quite fast compared to people who type with both hands, quips Frederika, who started typing with typewriters.

Unforgotten is a novella about love lost and found; a first person narrative, where sustained reflection blends with action to trace the hero's journey through its many twists and turns. It carries the flavor of an age-old allegory about the artist grappling with his demons, internal and external, as he pines for his muse. Frederika Menezes has carefully painted a realistic setting for Ian, her central character, and has set in motion forces that drive him; from India to England, from home to office and to the mental hospital, to the writing desk, to the guitar, to the pain of loss of love, to the discovery of inspiration. Yet, the allegorical quality of the story is what lingers when the last page is turned. And yes, Goa finds place here too, a dream-like world which holds what is most vital, and never quite forgotten. --Isabel de Santa Rita Vas .Theatre promoter, youth mentor and former professor at Dhempe College. An engaging love story. Salil Chaturvedi. Poet and author now she has nothing but the storm to create a past with but then she had her love and her friends, and though they turned away, long before now, she can recall them in her mind, hear their voices and feel momentarily alive in the company that will always be with her but never a part of her life as once it was. Was she right? Ian took time to realize the intensity of his lost love, his first love. But when he did, Ian left no stone unturned to retrieve it. The tribulations that Ian goes through fortifies our belief that emotions and sentiments are the same, whether in Europe or in Asia; in Kent or in Goa.

The State Central Library, Goa, occupies a place of pride among the oldest public libraries of India. It was started during the Portuguese regime, in 1832, and was known as Publica Livraria. In 1836, the name of the library was changed to Bibliotheca Publica de Nova Goa. After Liberation, various changes were introduced and the library services were expanded. The Biblioteca Nacional de Goa was renamed as the Central Library, and in 2012 its name was changed to the Krishnadas Shama State Central Library. Today, it has plush new premises at Pato, at the entrance to the Goan state capital. This book by a one-time head of the institution is a detailed attempted to trace its history and chart out the challenges that lie ahead. Includes a 16 page photo-essay on libraries in Goa today, by Gabriella D'Cruz. BOOK EXCERPT: Books and libraries in Goa: tomorrow's challenges By Maria Pia de Menezes Rodrigues Rapid and very exciting developments in information and communication technologies in the 21st century make it necessary that public libraries have to change the way in which information is collected, displayed and accessed. They need to play an important role in eliminating the digital divide, created due to the gap between the information rich and information poor.

A wide-ranging account of the place Goa occupied both in India and the world beyond, before the advent of the British Raj. It was the capital of an European maritime empire that teetered on the brink of collapse in the tumultuous seventeenth century, only to become a thriving cultural, religious and diplomatic hub in the 18th century, building close relations with the foremost continental empires of the day -- Mogul, Maratha and Mysore. The globalisation of trade in the 18th century restored its former Atlantic ties via Brazil and the development of the African slave trade, while also opening doors to the Orient, via China and the opium markets. Within a century, however, it was but a modest outpost of the bustling Bombay.

Globe-trotting Grandma returns to the quiet of Joe's sit-out. "The view is worth the climb!," her Joe said when they chose the topmost apartment. This is where they talked and shared silences, where their children came to relax, where on annual visits their grandchildren marked off their heights on the wall -- "How small we were then!" This is where she invites you to taste famous Goan delicacies and to meet some of the wonderful people she has known, among them, postman Pandu, the prayerful Shantadevi, Dona Armida of 'dona eis requeim' fame, dear Domingos the versatile cook, the renowned Art Sir, the resourceful Tia Caru, and Victoria Rani's loyal subject Dukhi Devi. "We've reached, we've reached!" we shouted, Tony and I. "Not there yet," said Mama. We were nearing the end of our twenty-four-hour train journey from Dadar to Margao. The two of us were travelling with Mama. Our three elder siblings would follow with Papa, when their college holidays began. We had had changes of trains at Pune and then Londa, with long stops at Castlerock and Collem stations, for customs inspection at the British India and Portuguese Goa frontiers.

Brig (Retd) Ian da Costa, VSM pens his memoirs. From the story of the migrant Goan community in Nagpur, to his experiences in the Indian Army. This is a ring-side view of India's changing times in the first five decades after Independence, though the eyes of a military man. Ian da Costa's story begins in Nagpur of the 1940s. In that Central Indian city, a community of Goans worked hard and smart to build their future. Those were times of ferment and tumultuous change. We encounter the military transitioning from a colonial British-run institution to one serving Independent India. From life in the Indian Military Academy, to serving in Jammu and Kashmir in the 1960s while attached to the 14th Kumaon Regiment, Brig da Costa's story takes us along unexpected paths to the tough forward lines of the borders over two wars, to the Poonch-Jhalas base, Surankote, Naushera, the Battle of O.P. Hill, the Hajipur Sector, Madras, the raising of the Naga Regiment, the 1971 War in Bangladesh, and more.

Challenging our current understanding of Goan society and history. RAGHURAMAN S. TRICHUR is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology, California State University, Sacramento. His teaching and research focus includes comparative political economy, state and class formation, critical analysis of cultural change, tourism, development and violence in South Asia. Goan Society / Political Economy / Development Goa,1556December 2013 Pp 208. Pb. ISBN 978-93-80739-50-2 Raghuraman S. Trichur is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology, California State University, Sacramento. His teaching and research focus includes comparative political economy, state and class formation, critical analysis of cultural change, tourism, development and violence in South Asia. rtrichur@saclink.csus.edu THIS BOOK sets out to challenge our current understanding of Goan society and its history. Rather than filling in our knowledge with details of Goa along the lines of well-established conventions, Refiguring Goa pushes the study of the region in a new direction. It asks fresh questions, challenges long-held orthodoxies, and encourages us to refigure our understanding of issues that affect Goa today. Following a critical reading of Goan historiography from colonial times to the postcolonial present, Trichur develops an alternative framework by examining the development and the process of class formation in Goa. He traces the growth of the indigenous mercantile elite and the peasantry who, he argues, have been the chief architects of the postcolonial Goan economy.

Whether for business or personal use, the cyber world in ubiquitous, and will be only more pervasive in the future. It simplifies the jargon from the complex world of spam, computer viruses, trojans, spyware, corporate espionage, hacks, cyberwar, cyber protests, social networking privacy, and complicated security technologies. Pragmatic advice on staying safe online. A must read for all social networkers.-Anand Mahindra, Chairman & Managing Director Mahindra & Mahindra. We are witnessing a hastened transition from physical to virtual world, however unfortunately the degree to which we are able to understand and react to the risks due to the cyber world are extremely inadequate. This is posing a significant challenge to the public in general and sentinels in particular.

The General Is Up is a "novel set in modern Africa" by Peter Nazareth. Its story seems, at first glance, to be a fictionalised version of the expulsion of Asians from Idi Amin's Uganda in the 1970s. But its writer sees it as being something more than this. The author was associate professor in Iowa University's Department of English and the Afro-American Studies Programme, at the time of writing the novel, published by the Calcutta (Kolkata)-based Writer's Workshop in 1984. Nazareth is a writer of Goan origin, and the novel is set, in large part, among the expat community of Goans, which has had a large number of out-migrants scattered across the globe, including, in the recent past, in Uganda, East Africa.

Students from Sweden of a post-master's inter-disciplinary course in urbanism encounter Goa. They ask the question: Could urbanisation propose other ways of interpreting the prevailing spirit between nature and culture? They come up with an insightful take on contemporary Goan society.

Goa was once famous for its salt. This book studies salt-farming communities as they exist today in three villages (Agarvaddo in Pernem, Batim in Tiswadi and Arpora in Bardez.

PANJIM, June 27, 2013: A young expat Goan has done something about his sharp concern about drinking-and-driving, by making his maiden novel tell a story based on that theme. Nigel Fernandes, who has been in New Zealand but is currently back at Socorro, has just authored 'Consequences', a 214-page thriller that deals with this serious theme which afflicts many parts of India today. Significantly, the 37-year-old writer has dedicated the book to his "nephew Jared Tristan D'Souza, killed by a reckless motorist" when four months short of two years old. The quick-paced thriller itself, which he took eight months to write, has a vigilante conspiracy being hatched, and is set in Bombay. Mysterious 'accidents' happen to those who are on a list of accused, who claimed victims on the roads of the city, but when the law does not seem capable to bring to book.

Goa is breathtakingly beautiful in August. Every tree, bush, sapling and rice field stands in its amazing green glory. The rivers, ponds and the Arabian Sea simply brim with awesome beauty. Paula sat in her grandmother's teak rocking chair in her balcao, or porch. She was in her forties. Yet her fair, square face was beautiful despite the few wrinkles it accommodated. She watched the huge bulldozer raze through the grand palatial house of the Mirandas. Her heart sank and her mind was a whirlpool. The bulldozer mercilessly rampaged over the house which once commanded the attention of the entire village called Benfica. Charmingly narrated, A Matter of Time is a memoir, full of simple episodes that might have been experienced by any child who grew up in a Goan village in the 1980s. Yet, at another level, it gives a picture of the stark reality of how much the topography of most Goan villages has changed over the last few decades... how the lifestyle has changed from simple rural living to a 'modern' one.