Viva damão!

“Last Christmas, I gave you my heart…” goes the popular Wham! song. Come to think of it, don’t we all look forward to Christmas and yet, when it’s Christmas Day, look back, reminiscing?

I remember Christmastime in the early 60s…

November 1st—All Saints' Day, and the eve of All Souls’ Day (Dia de Finados)—morphs solemnity with somberness.

After the evening mass, as dusk sets in, the bells of Bom Jesus church begin to toll while the congregation silently…

It’s that month of year again—when I get to tell, “I told you so!” 

It’s when I remind my tribe that it’s the darkest month of the year—whether it rains ☔️ or not. ☁️ 

I’d hate it more than July,…

Every evening after sundown, I drive Noé, my special needs son, in my beat-up little red car 🚗 through the gutted lanes of my hometown, at a bulldozer's pace, going nowhere.

The more I drive, the more the streets seem…

In school, I hated Hindi and maths; history, civics, and religion were boring; English, insipid—because I’d already read all the stories in the text book before school reopened; English Grammar, even worse—guess it’s the blue-eyed cousin of maths; PT, disgusting;…

After Dad (born in Indore; brought up in Bombay) got married to my mother (a Damanense) in January 1954, he took Mum on long-stay forays into the Indian Union—his safe haven in the event of an invasion, which everyone…

In the aftermath of the Liberation, the first shipment to arrive by road was a truckload of bananas. 🍌

From mainland India, with love.

It must have been around 9 in the morning when my parents called me out on…