Writer Willy Goes gives NT BUZZ a sneak peek into his new book ‘My Husband’s Mysterious Mistress’
RAMANDEEP KAUR | NT BUZZ
After his first volume of short stories in English ‘Cobo’s Sofa’, Willy Goes is back with a second volume titled ‘My Husband’s Mysterious Mistress’.
The soon-to-be released book is a collection of 15 stories comprising of intriguing titles like ‘The Blackmail’, Miserable Crizolgo’, ‘Blood is thicker’, ‘A Wanderer’s Lament’, ‘Flirty Kriezel’, ‘Reminiscence’, ‘Not My Tiatr’, ‘Pranksters’, Oh! Oh! Gracia, ‘Will Tia Ria come for Christmas?, and ‘Raymond Goes Abroad’.
“Most of my stories are Goa-centric and are either based on my experiences and observations of day-to-day life. Many of the stories are in first person,” he says.
The title story ‘My Husband’s Mysterious Mistress’ is inspired by his observations of how people have problems in their marriages, mainly because of a third person. “The story tells of a girl who is in love with a boy but is forced by her mother to marry someone else. While the marriage seems all good at first, one day she realises that her husband is in touch with somebody else,” reveals Goes. Although deeply hurt, the woman does not question her husband. “This often happens in real life too. I have come across instances personally where people don’t have the courage to speak to their spouses about their doubts. So this story is similar to that. However, the affair ends abruptly and then the marriage continues happily as before,” says Goes, adding that the reader will not be able to figure out who this mysterious mistress is until the very end of the tale.
Another story ‘The Valentine Day Ball’ talks about how sometimes college students like a girl but don’t have the confidence to approach her. ‘The Good and the Bad’ is about a boy in school who is always the target of a teacher’s scolding. “One day, the student who uptil now has considered the teacher to be strict and cruel, goes to her house and comes to realise that she too is human,” says Goes. ‘Win Win’ is about two visualisers in an advertising agency who have both entered a competition. “Here, the senior is trying to boss over the junior. However, finally the junior convinces the senior that only if they both work together ,can they win the competition,” says Goes.
In ‘The Blackmail’ Goes shares about what he has experienced personally when colour photography came to Goa in the early 1990s, while ‘Miserable Crizolgo’ is a story which takes place when mining stops in Goa abruptly. “This is a little humorous story. The person is upset not because mining has stopped but because he is not able to meet the wife of a driver with whom he is having an affair,” says Goes.
’A Wanderer’s Lament’ is about how two people fall in love, while ‘Not My Tiatr’ is a tale of how some tiatrists are possessive about their tiatrs and don’t want to publish these. “While many tiatrists are publishing their books now, there was a time when they were very possessive. They thought somebody else would stage them and so they never published them and good tiatrs went unnoticed,” says Goes, whose journey into writing started about 20 years ago when he attended a writer’s workshop by the award-winning writer, Victor Rangel-Ribeiro.
“To get into the workshop we were asked to send whatever we had written. However, I was not selected due to limited seats. But a day prior to the workshop, I got a call from Victor Rangel-Ribeiro himself saying that he liked what I had written and inviting me for the workshop,” recalls Goes.
This workshop, he adds, was very useful. In fact, at the end of the workshop, Ribeiro came to him personally and asked him to go home and start writing. And that’s exactly what he did. One year later, he came up with his first novel in Konkani, and ever since then he has not stopped writing.
Apart from writing stories, Goes also writes non-fiction and contributes for publications like Gulab, Goan Review, and others. He has also written some titars and previously reviewed tiatrs for an English daily.
Currently, an assistant professor, Department of Applied Art, Goa College of Art, Altinho, Panaji, Goes says that writing goes hand-in-hand with his work at the art college. “Somehow we cannot separate art from literature and literature from art. There are same principles and same elements so that is what keeps me going as a writer.”
Goes also reveals that he has a collection of another 40 to 50 stories, which he will be bringing in more volumes later.
Awards to his credit:
▶ State Art Awards for Graphic Design and Photography
▶ Konknni Bhasha Mandal Literary Award 2006
▶ Dalgado Konknni Akademi Awards for manuscripts of Konkani novels in 2010 and 2011
▶ TSKK’s Jack Sequeira Award 2012 for contribution to the Konkani language
▶ All India Konknni Writers’ Association Award, 2014 for Konkani novel ‘Kotrin’
▶ Gulab Writer of the Year Award 2016
Other books:
Altoddi ani Poltoddi (Konkani novel)
Pedru Tiva (Stories in Konkani for children)
Khand (Novelette – the first ever Konkani book to be released in audio format on the net)
Mon Sanvrona (volume of short stories in Konkani)
Kantto (Konkani novel)
Kotrin (Konkani novel)
Cobo’s Sofa and other short stories from Goa (collection of short stories in English)
Kapaz Jaki (Konkani novel based on classic tiatr ‘Kunbi Jaki’)