Stars Next Door: A Review
Iris C F Gomes
Stars Next Door by Cyprian (Skip) Fernandes is a compilation of the stories of East African Goans who shone as sportspersons and musicians. The
book, which is a tribute to the prowess of this section of the Goan diaspora,
carries contributions from other authors like Hartman de Souza. It is
interesting to learn how Goan talent was nurtured to the extent it was,
bringing in international recognition in some cases. The Goa, 1556 published
tome is admirable in its efforts to keep alive the memory of these impressive
men and women who achieved much with fewer facilities than we
have in these times.
The making of Seraphino Antao, a record-breaking ace
sprinter from Kenya, is quite a tale. From a barefoot sprinter, he rose to
become a double gold winner at the 1962 Commonwealth Games in Perth, Australia.
His retirement from athletics was a follow-up to a heart-breaking loss at the
1964 Tokyo Olympics. Albert Castanha was an all-round sportsman, excelling in
soccer, hockey, cricket, badminton and so on. He was also Seraphino Antao’s
closest competitor. Politics rears its ugly head in Norman Da Costa’s story of
Roland Collaco, the man whose skill as a goalkeeper took the Ugandan hockey
team to the 1972 Olympics in Munich, but he was prevented from participating
himself.
Hartman de Souza’s musings of his love affair with
football as a child growing up in Kenya are interwoven with stories of Feisal,
the best team in Mombasa in the late 1950s and the 1958 World Cup with Brazil’s
triumph. Through his writings, Hartman, the adroit wordsmith, nonchalantly
takes jabs at India’s corrupt governance, the seeping in of capitalist culture
in sports and racism.
The Goan cricket team in Uganda was a formidable one
that had dominance in the latter half of the forties and boasted of players
such as Michael Texeira and Celly Dias, as John Noronha recalls. Hilary
Fernandes, or the ‘wizard of dribble’, was an astute hockey player. His
accomplishments are recorded as being selected thrice for the Olympic Games and
having earned the most medals of all Goan hockey players.
Bertha Fernandes is one of the hockey players
mentioned in the book with the highest number of international appearances as a
Goan representing the Kenyan hockey team. Sisters Astrid and Mitelia Fernandes
make an impression, with each having won the Dr Ribeiro Goan School
track and field championships four years in a row and having excelled in hockey
as well. Mitelia continued to bring pride to her homeland by winning the
Premier of Ontario Award for Contribution in Sports to Canada twice, after she
had migrated to the country.
From the realm of sports, the book moves to musical stars. Edmund
Silveira acknowledges the recording of a jazz CD with well-known bassist
James Woode as the height of his career as a jazz pianist. The
multi-talented Jack Fernandes finds a place in the book. As a singer,
song writer, drummer, tiatrist, sprinter, football player and so on, he
seems to represent a one-man microcosm of abilities most associated with
Goan culture. Henry Braganza, who was also a sportsman in multiple
fields, was privileged to back US Country and Western singer Skeeter
Davis.
A picture paints a thousand words and Stars Next Door is dotted with them, bringing to life a bygone era of superlative
Goan sportsmanship and music. The book does not follow a single pattern of
writing, moving from reportage to narrative essays to interviews in the
question and answer format. Though the style may not consistently appeal to all
readers, Stars Next Door, with its feel of a magazine, does work as a refreshing change from the usual
monotony of a non-fiction novel.
To be an academic work, far more research and writing
would be required and most general readers steer clear of academic works, in my
opinion. Therefore, as it is, the book is readable because of the simple
language and would definitely appeal to avid sports and music fans, as well as
contemporary history buffs.
Stars Next Door serves its purpose in capturing moments in the history
of the Goan diaspora that might have died with the authors or the sportsmen and
musicians mentioned in it and could surely act as an inspirational volume to
generations of young Goans to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment