Don Bosco was a very holy man. During his lifetime he worked for the betterment of the youth. The name Don Bosco is known all around the globe especially in the matter of imparting education. The schools and educational centers run in the name of Don Bosco are doing great job for the promotion of education and discipline to the students. In Goa and in Mumbai the Don Bosco schools are very much in demand for the qualitative education and discipline it imparts and thus makes the youth better and disciplined members of the society. For example, the Don Bosco Schools at Matunga in Mumbai and at Panjim in Goa are two marvelous schools shining in every field.
The students of Panjim Don Bosco School are admired for their discipline as it was once for students of St. Joseph’s High School Arpora, Bardez, Goa when the great Goan priest Fr. Mendonca was its principal. The students of this school were recognized by their sheer discipline only more than anything else. Arpora School was the best in Goa in every field of the sports and its students were top in every discipline of the sports. Even if any injustice was done to its student rightly or wrongly, its principal Fr. Medonca never disputed the decision of the organizers nor protested but gracefully accepted with the statement “accept the defeat with sporting spirit “. He once said, by protesting and opposing the decision, we as priests are creating rebellious youth who later on will turn out to be rebels thereby endangering the peace in society. The duty of the Catholic and Christian Schools is not to fight, not to rebel and not to bring about splits but to accept the defeat gracefully.
Once I went to Bombay taking my young son to Fr. Mascio at Don Bosco Matunga. Before blessing my son, my wife told Fr. Mascio “Fr., please pray over him because he is doing lot of mischief”. For this Fr. Mascio replied saying “When he was young, Don Bosco was also mischievous”. Don Bosco was mischievous no doubt but surely not rebellious creating disorder in the smooth functioning of the society. Don Bosco never disturbed peace anywhere and never disturbed discipline. Don Bosco never aligned with rebellious people and never helped ‘splittist’ movement. For this reason, students and people involved in the promotion of Don Bosco’s name are known to perform good discipline.
When Don Bosco’s students and people associated with Don Bosco act as rebels, then the image of Don Bosco affects negatively. Those priests and teachers imparting education and discipline in the name of Don Bosco in their institutions must advise their students and soccer teams not to act as rebels which will give much distorted image of Holy name of Don Bosco. It is not enough for priests to preach from the pulpits in the Churches and teach from the platforms in the Schools about morality and education, these priests in line with the tradition of Don Bosco must also tell their students to be obedient even if it is detrimental to their cause. Christianity does not tell us to rebel. Rebellion is against the principle of Christianity.
The holy image of Don Bosco is getting soiled when its students and people promoting sports and soccer in particular are involved in promoting non co-operation instead of cooperation, disunity instead of unity. We at this critical hour need elements supporting unity amongs us in true Christian principle. This also leads to damaging the reputation of Don Bosco’s school. If no corrective steps are taken immediately, disciplined parents will stop sending their children to this school in the future.
A. Veronica Fertnandes,
Kuwait.
November 2, 2009
November 1, 2009
G.O.A. THANKSGIVING MASS IN KUWAIT.
G.O.A. THANKSGIVING MASS.
Goan Overseas Association (Goa Maroons)- Kuwait would like to invite members and their families, supporters, friends and well wishers to attend the annual thanksgiving mass offered by the Association at the Holy Family Cathedral, Kuwait City in honor of Blessed Jose Vaz on Friday, 6th November 2009 at 6:00pm,
Goan Overseas Association,
P.O.Box 21390 Safat,
Kuwait
http://www.goa-maroons-kwt..org/
Goan Overseas Association (Goa Maroons)- Kuwait would like to invite members and their families, supporters, friends and well wishers to attend the annual thanksgiving mass offered by the Association at the Holy Family Cathedral, Kuwait City in honor of Blessed Jose Vaz on Friday, 6th November 2009 at 6:00pm,
Goan Overseas Association,
P.O.Box 21390 Safat,
Kuwait
http://www.goa-maroons-kwt..org/
NOT GONE, BUT GOODBYE GOA. By Valmiki Faleiro.
Not Gone, but Goodbye Goa!
By Valmiki Faleiro
“Goa, going… gone…!” A recent expression that has turned so trite, it is now a cliché.
Goa ain’t “going” anywhere. It will stay where it is. It is the ancient “Aparanta,” the land
beyond the end. Goa won’t end. She is only getting reborn. In such shape that future
Goans will have no idea of her pristine face, heart, and soul.
The Goa of the generation of our grandparents is practically extinct. Together with her
fire-torches and ponnttis, bullock carts and vhoddims, many paddy fields and khazans,
and now, her forests and rivers. Goa evolved thus because our old values did likewise.
The Goa that our grandchildren will inherit is a shuddering thought.
Nothing comes free. Everything in life has its price. Like every coin, evolvement has two
sides. Post-1961, we got better education but no local jobs. Emigration and remittances,
a better lifestyle, but also migrants. Better healthcare gave us longevity, but resulted in a
negative birth rate. Down the line, we lost our ‘Goemkarponn,’ our soul.
Senior chronicler and raconteur, Mário Cabral e Sá, wrote in his “Wind of Fire” (Promilla
& Co., New Delhi, 1997, ISBN: 81-85002-19-3): “Nothing ever remains the same. Goa is
no exception. Since its liberation in December 1961, the rural landscape changed almost
dramatically ...
“Gone is the drudgery of long hauls to the village well … also the gatherings at the well
and the influence it had on folk life, gone are the poets who wrote by flickering divlis, and
gone are the street vendors and their cries, and the cries of the shepards steering their
herds along dirt tracks and hill slopes. Gone is the good old conviviality on which folk life
thrived and moulded itself. As a former Chief Minister of Goa said, “the whole of Goa is
now semi-urban”.”
A semi-urban slum, if you will, in a painful process of rebirth. Goa was once Mother
Nature’s blessed land, largely bereft of earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes, drought,
deluge and pestilence, storms, locust and hurricanes. That paradise has changed.
Four and half centuries ago, Goa’s Patron Saint Francis Xavier himself, if I err not, is
said to have prophesied, “Goa, ninguem levará, por si acabará” (Nobody will conquer
Goa, it will perish by itself.)
In Dec-1961, India’s first-ever woman editor, our own Leonor (“Lolita”) de Loyola Furtado
e Fernandes wrote: “Regimes fall, empires vanish, ideologies die; we must work for Goa
to live forever.”
In 1963, Pandit Nehru on his Goa visit had predicted, “Goa has a distinct personality … it
will be a pity to destroy that individuality. With the influx of time, a change may come, but
… it will be made by Goans themselves.”
Decades later, tiatrist M. Boyer sang, “Gōy bhitorlean pokoddlam, fokot suropaien urlam”
(Goa has hollowed from the inside, only her exterior beauty survives.)
Goans changed, from within.
The Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, had said: “We must be the change we wish
to see.”
We abandoned our “Goanness.” When a people lose their culture, can their land ever
remain the same? That is the chief loss I mourn. It is the chorus of my requiem for Goa.
The Goa of the 1950s and ‘60s we knew and loved is irreversibly lost.
When Portugal was ruled by Spain after the foolhardy disaster of al-Ksar-el-Kebir, her
national poet, Luis de Camoens, lamented: “All will see that so dear to me was my
country; I was content to die not in it but with it.”
I shall end with a quote from one among my all-time favourite authors, Ayn Rand, the
American conservative icon, in ‘Atlas Shrugged.’ Though written in 1957, it is relevant to
the Goa of today:
"When you see that trading is done not by consent but by compulsion, when you see
that in order to produce you need permission from men who produce nothing, when you
see money flowing to those who deal not in goods but in favors, when you see that men
get richer by graft than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them but protect
them against you, when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming self-
sacrifice, you know your society is doomed."
Goodbye Goa! (Series ends.)
(ENDS)
By Valmiki Faleiro
“Goa, going… gone…!” A recent expression that has turned so trite, it is now a cliché.
Goa ain’t “going” anywhere. It will stay where it is. It is the ancient “Aparanta,” the land
beyond the end. Goa won’t end. She is only getting reborn. In such shape that future
Goans will have no idea of her pristine face, heart, and soul.
The Goa of the generation of our grandparents is practically extinct. Together with her
fire-torches and ponnttis, bullock carts and vhoddims, many paddy fields and khazans,
and now, her forests and rivers. Goa evolved thus because our old values did likewise.
The Goa that our grandchildren will inherit is a shuddering thought.
Nothing comes free. Everything in life has its price. Like every coin, evolvement has two
sides. Post-1961, we got better education but no local jobs. Emigration and remittances,
a better lifestyle, but also migrants. Better healthcare gave us longevity, but resulted in a
negative birth rate. Down the line, we lost our ‘Goemkarponn,’ our soul.
Senior chronicler and raconteur, Mário Cabral e Sá, wrote in his “Wind of Fire” (Promilla
& Co., New Delhi, 1997, ISBN: 81-85002-19-3): “Nothing ever remains the same. Goa is
no exception. Since its liberation in December 1961, the rural landscape changed almost
dramatically ...
“Gone is the drudgery of long hauls to the village well … also the gatherings at the well
and the influence it had on folk life, gone are the poets who wrote by flickering divlis, and
gone are the street vendors and their cries, and the cries of the shepards steering their
herds along dirt tracks and hill slopes. Gone is the good old conviviality on which folk life
thrived and moulded itself. As a former Chief Minister of Goa said, “the whole of Goa is
now semi-urban”.”
A semi-urban slum, if you will, in a painful process of rebirth. Goa was once Mother
Nature’s blessed land, largely bereft of earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes, drought,
deluge and pestilence, storms, locust and hurricanes. That paradise has changed.
Four and half centuries ago, Goa’s Patron Saint Francis Xavier himself, if I err not, is
said to have prophesied, “Goa, ninguem levará, por si acabará” (Nobody will conquer
Goa, it will perish by itself.)
In Dec-1961, India’s first-ever woman editor, our own Leonor (“Lolita”) de Loyola Furtado
e Fernandes wrote: “Regimes fall, empires vanish, ideologies die; we must work for Goa
to live forever.”
In 1963, Pandit Nehru on his Goa visit had predicted, “Goa has a distinct personality … it
will be a pity to destroy that individuality. With the influx of time, a change may come, but
… it will be made by Goans themselves.”
Decades later, tiatrist M. Boyer sang, “Gōy bhitorlean pokoddlam, fokot suropaien urlam”
(Goa has hollowed from the inside, only her exterior beauty survives.)
Goans changed, from within.
The Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, had said: “We must be the change we wish
to see.”
We abandoned our “Goanness.” When a people lose their culture, can their land ever
remain the same? That is the chief loss I mourn. It is the chorus of my requiem for Goa.
The Goa of the 1950s and ‘60s we knew and loved is irreversibly lost.
When Portugal was ruled by Spain after the foolhardy disaster of al-Ksar-el-Kebir, her
national poet, Luis de Camoens, lamented: “All will see that so dear to me was my
country; I was content to die not in it but with it.”
I shall end with a quote from one among my all-time favourite authors, Ayn Rand, the
American conservative icon, in ‘Atlas Shrugged.’ Though written in 1957, it is relevant to
the Goa of today:
"When you see that trading is done not by consent but by compulsion, when you see
that in order to produce you need permission from men who produce nothing, when you
see money flowing to those who deal not in goods but in favors, when you see that men
get richer by graft than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them but protect
them against you, when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming self-
sacrifice, you know your society is doomed."
Goodbye Goa! (Series ends.)
(ENDS)
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