Frederick Noronha
Someone looked at the author’s mini bio, and was surprised to learn that Cheryl Rao has “written over 50 books for children”. These include adventures, strange stories, ‘tween’ tales, and picture books.
If you haven’t heard of Cheryl Rao that could be because she’s based outside of the land of her origins, Goa, and getting writing for children noticed here can be a tough task. ‘Playing it by Ear’ is one of her newest titles, aimed at the 11+ age group, and set among the world of Diasporic Goans. That is what one assumes, going by the names of the characters and their lifestyles.
The story starts with the telling line: “Doreen sat quietly in the corner of the cement bench of the balcão of The Croft. She knew she couldn’t be seen from inside the house, even if Mai or Papa looked out of the windows on either side of the front door.”
Doreen, a pre-teen girl, comes from a family of limited means. Her 10th birthday is on its way, and she longs to be able to afford piano tuition. But can’t.
So she goes to Tess’s home, and watches as her friends learns the piano. This helps her to learn, without placing the burden on her family. She is more talented and faster than Tess to pick up.
Doreen comes from a large family. Her elder sister Anne has taken up a job in a school at Poona. Moira, the eldest, got married five years ago and hasn’t come back from Bombay since. Danny is a year older. Vince was 15. They relate to her in differing ways, at home and outside.
At night, Doreen is dreaming of the presents she’ll receive for her birthday. Suddenly, and late, the bell rings, and she rushes to open the door. Three persons she doesn’t recognise are standing in the balcão. They are Moira (her sister) and her tiny niece and nephew.
Their life at home suddenly changes, as the children have to be accommodated in existing bedrooms. We learn more about the young girl’s days, her disappointments, and so on. But then, life is a mix of the glad and the sad, the good and the bad, and this is pretty much what a girl of her age could have experienced while growing up in the recent past.
Lots of events keep happening across these pages. Annie doesn’t get on too well with Doreen, and this is obvious. In the rainy season, something tragic happens…
The story is set in areas near Goa, but outside, to where the Goan community migrated. It could be just any other city, but for some reason, I took the action to be located in Hubli.
For that reason, it might be easy for a teenager (or even someone older) to identify with the events narrated. Such as: failing to get the birthday presents one hoped for. Making do with what’s available (in times when India knew more severe scarcity).
There’s also the experience of a baby being born in the family, and the tense parents waiting at the hospital for the delivery. The baby is born with a ‘caul’ on its head; what does that mean? How do the children grapple with the concept? Does it bring luck?
Along the way, we encounter various ideas and tidbits of information. What does growing up mean for a girl? Read on…
Finding jobs, coping with illness, homework, falling in love and more… all this comes with growing up. There’s need for helping with the growing work at home, and Doreen faces the risk of discontinuing her education. What does it mean when she has to stay at home to help? How does this get resolved, if it does?
There’s conflict and rivalry between siblings, which tells a story of its own. Every family, especially those with many children, would have encountered some of this. And, a conflict could start over as something as simple as a broach. But having many siblings of different age-groups does make for lively growing up years. Something which will perhaps be wistfully remembered, as the years pass on.
There’s the struggle with learning Konkani, the ancestral language of the family, but one which obviously is being lost out over the years spent outside Goa.
We come across the Railway Institute, its monsoon-end balls, raffles and more. Then, there’s the issue of groceries and shopping from the market nearby. Unlike life within the Goan village, those who shifted to the urban life found it easier to earn and shop, that’s true.
In this way, the story meanders along, but is nicely written and narrated. The plot is carefully crafted, and even the ending is surprising. Running into the opposite gender, coping with the pressures of growing up, and the unexpected way the book ends, all lend to the charm of this 140-page girls’ story. We encounter Poona (now Pune) rather up close.
When it comes to writing on Goa for children in English, there is a limited amount of work available, but this too is scattered across many hard-to-locate spaces. Konkani (Devanagari especially, sometimes because of its government support and at other times because it is the script taught in schools) has a lot more. Romi Konkani has a limited amount, but again this might be hard to find.
Only very rarely, an essay or short story gets the recognition it deserves, and might get published in a text book. This happened with ex-Professor Lucio Rodrigues’ short essay titled ‘A Baker from Goa’, which is included in the CBSE 10 syllabus.
This is now widely available and discussed even on YouTube videos online, for students preparing for that exam. But Goan writing in English gets highlighted only in a random and careless manner, almost depending on luck and chance to get noticed.
Cheryl Rao’s work was something this columnist was working on, so encountered it. Maybe people of our generation, who grew up in Goa, should be reading more children’s books, regardless of our age now, to make up for all those we missed because of their acute short supply in the Goa of the 1970s.
Anita Pinto’s short stories set in Goa (‘Espi Mai’ originally in English, translated into Konkani, Marathi and Portuguese) have also been noticed. Datta Damodar Naik’s short stories also give a unusual take to understanding life in Goa. There are others too, like Rochelle Pereira’s colouring book (including stories with morals) which deserve better visibility; but this is not always easy to attain.
Likewise, you can find a few Goa-related stories on Pratham Books, waiting to be translated into multiple stories. The rare children’s book set in Goa will also show up on Amazon. Or the self-published work, in a bookshop, before it quickly goes out of print or untraceable.
Goa owes its writers more.