Augusto Pinto

Raktachandan: A Balm for the Mind

Raktachandan: A Balm for the Mind

By Augusto Pinto

Issue no 26

Raktachandan by Sanjiv Verenkar is the latest Konkani book to win the Sahitya Akademi award. It is the eighth collection of poetry of this veteran journalist and writer of books on contemporary Goan history. The title Raktachandan refers to the tree species pterocarpus santalinus (red sandalwood in English) that has many medicinal qualities. Among other uses, in the days before modern balms and ointments invaded our pharmacies it was used as a pain-killer for a variety of aches, wounds and swellings.

Aart by Jayanti Naik

Aart by Jayanti Naik

By Augusto Pinto

Issue no. 13

Her latest collection of short stories in Konkani is Aart which means ‘afflicted’ or ‘distressed’. This is Jayanti Naik’s third collection of short stories after Garjan (1989); and her 2004 Sahitya Award winning collection Athang. It contains 17 short stories written between 2005 and 2018. Incidentally some of these like ‘Uma’, ‘Naman’, ‘Itsapurti’, ‘Khyast’ and ‘Jait’ are available elsewhere to the reader in English translation in The Salt of the Earth, (Goa1556, 2017).

Song Sung Blue by Savia Viegas

Song Sung Blue by Savia Viegas

By Augusto Pinto

Issue no. 12

Catharsis is a Greek word which means cleansing, but in the context of the arts is regarded as the purifying or purging of depressing emotions like pity and fear by creating art that is tragic. This is what Viegas’s writing and painting attempts to achieve in Song Sung Blue, the life-story of a Goan Catholic woman named Divina