Talk:Goa

I'd just like to acknowledge the help of Domnic Fernandes in making accessible a number of these old Konkani quotes. Domnic is contactable at jyodom at hotmail.com --59.95.16.251 07:47, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

• Sorry, posted the above comment (acknowledging Domnic) before I was logged in. --FN --Fredericknoronha 07:49, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Unsourced

• Jea konnem Goim pollelam, tannem Lisboa pollonvchi goroz nam. (He who has seen Goa need not see Lisboa.)
• Goenkarank udarponn fokot ek utor nhoi – ti amchi ek porampora. (Hospitality is not just a word for Goans – it's a tradition.)
• "Goa, the land of pigs, priests and crosses" -- Mary Bruce, Kenyan artist & farmer. (Not any longer... pigs are no longer the scavenger of choice.)
• "He who has seen Goa needs not to see Lisbon" --Portuguese proverb
• "Throw a stone behind your back in Goa, and you would either hit a musician or a drunk"
• You can take the Goan out of Goa, but you cannot take Goa out of the Goan. Michael Ali, Karachi Pakistan.
• I'd met a lot of European hippies in Goa; I wanted to be an Indian hippie in Europe. — Pop artiste Remo Fernandes commenting on his first trip to Europe. RemoFernandes.com
• C'mon Goa-family! (Goa is a magical place but also a local musical genre near to "trance" music, with many adepts over all the world) - Electronic artist Pineal before every concert. DjPineal.org
• Konkani is the language of Goa, and the culture that's based on it is Goan culture. -- Politician, lawyer, and Konkani writer Uday Bhembre in Sunaparant, a Goa newspaper.
• Colonialism is a crime against humanity and yet there are no ill-feelings anywhere in Goa against the Portuguese people. --Former Member of Parliement, Eduardo Faleiro, currently (2006) Commissioner for Non-Resident Goan Affairs.
• The Roman Catholic community is a major minority in Goa. Though their numbers here have fallen from 38 percent of the population in 1960 to 26.6 percent in 2001, they are still a vibrant and influential presence. Contrary to popular notions of the susegado -- laid-back -- Goan, they are an industrious, politically active, enterprising community, with a long history of migration to East Africa, Portugal, Canada, the UK and the Middle East. Together with Goa's low birth rate (the lowest in the country), this departure for better opportunities abroad has led to their numbers dwindling back home. But Goa would not be Goa without their combative, effusive spirit, their robust tiatr (from the Portuguese tiatro, for theatre) and their enigmatic and chequered political leadership. -- Goa-based poet Manohar Shetty, in Tehelka, September 9, 2006.
• This town was very large, with goodly edifices and handsome streets and squares, surrounded by walls and towers. There is a very good fortress in it, and in the environs many gardens and orchards of fine trees and fruits, and many pools of good water. --Duarte Barbosa describing Goa, centuries ago.
• Goans are a tolerant, informal people, team-oriented and people-oriented and supportive of one another's work. They are both individually and socially responsve. -- Fr Romualdo R De Souza, founder, Goa Institute of Management and former Director of Xavier Labour Relations Institute, Jamshedpur. Also founder-director of Xavier Institute of Management Bhubaneswar.
• Goa has achieved a remarkable level of social cohesion since its liberation in 1961. It is relatively free of the communal and caste tensions which have vitiated (the) investment climate elsewhere.... A sense of relaxation which every visitor feels in Goa is a product of its life-style, which is in consonance with mother nature, and a sense of fulfillment which the people of Goa exhibit in their day-to-day life. V.A.Pai Panandiker, economist, earlier director of Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.
• Most of us are aware of 450 years of European dominance and the institutional, religious and legal imperatives resulting from it. Some of us are aware of a change-over in the last thirty years from a predominantly Christian to a symbiotic Hindu-Christian society, where the Hindu element has supplanted the Christian in numerical terms. Very few of us are conscious about the impact that the overlay of a globalised-homogenised dominant culture has and continues to have upton the manifestation of an indigenous culture. -- Cho Padamsee, former principal, Goa College of Architecture.
• Before the 16th century, Goa was a languid Elysium, a remote province on the periphery of large kingdoms, ensconced in the wooded foothills of the Western Ghats. In the 16th century, it was suddenly elevated to the status of being the eastern metropolis of the Portuguese empire, extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It then became the seat of a Christian imperialism whose influence, in the east, encompassed the area between the Cape of Good Hope and the Sea of Japan. -- Jose Pereira, Professor Emeritus of Theology, Fordham University, New York.
• [Goa's] metropolitan dignity was embodied in structures of an appropriate grandeur during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Then, as the Portuguese empire decayed, Goa sank into political insignificance, becoming again a soporofic paradise, but retaining a sense of the former grandeur in its edifices, now enveloped by the land's idyllic landscape. -- Jose Pereira, Professor Emeritus of Theology, Fordham University, New York.