From Goa To Patagonia

the long version

This book is by Alfredo Bachmann de Mello, the Uruguay-based Goan-bon son of renowned doctor-scientist Dr. Froilano de Mello and his Swiss wife. Some years back, I ran into Alfredo Fred via cyberspace, and we had many an interesting exchange till (I think) we disagreed in our perspectives and lost touch. He had then also drawn my attention to a book he published, explaining who the real Columbus was. (Frankly, history not being one of my favourite subjects, I found that text a bit too complex to adequately follow. That book of his is called El Verdadero ColOn in Spanish, and in English it’s The Real Colon: Columbus is a misnomer.) Head of the Lisbon-based Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias history department Dr Teotonio R de Souza, while welcome the growing number of Goan memoirs and autobiographies, gives a preview of the book s content. He also refers to De Mello s father s possibly misunderstood role in representing colonial Goa in Lisbon. Of the book, de Souza writes: Despite some unpleasant memories, Alfredo de Mello does not display any hangover of colonial past. He revealed very early in life his conviction that all empires had their end This understanding of history and his joie de vivre pervade his memoirs, giving them a seriousness and without making them dull. In between some colourful descriptions of his deft control of a pony galloping downhill at Matheran while still a child a confrontation which ended badly for a cobra in his home compound at Altinho in Panjim a rub of the ring of the Archbishop-Patriarch that left him with bleeding nose and his first experience of the pleasures of Eden with a young British eve while a boarder at Bishop Cotton s in Bangalore, there is much we can learn about social life in the capital city of Goa as well as about the wild-life in rural Goa of those years