Vimala Devi ? new book Monso. La Vanguardia (Spain).

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Vimala Devi is also the author of the masterly compilation, A Literatura
Indo-Portuguesa  2 vol.  JIU, Lisbon, 1971.

Source: La Vanguardia. 30 Dec 2002 at:
http://www.lavanguardia.es/web/20021230/133309014.html 
BY: ROSE MARIA PIÑOL
 
The article is in Spanish. A machine translation of variable quality is
below:
======================

The problems derived from the shock of the cultures Hindu and western and a
feudal economic structure are the subject of stories of the Indo-Portuguese
author settled  in Barcelona.


BARCELONA  Thirty years after settling in Barcelona, the Indo-Portuguese
writer Vimala Devi finished publishing her first book of narrative in
Catalan, her language of adoption, in which already she has published
several poetry books. The work that she now it publishes is ?Monsó?, a set
of stories on Goa, shortly before which this state of India became
independent from Portugal, in 1961.

Vimala Devi, daughter of a lawyer and a batcar (rural landowner), Catholic
and proEuropean, lived the atmosphere of colonial Goa until 1959, when she
decided to emigrate to Lisbon. She was 25 years old, and in the Portuguese
capital she worked as civil servant of Property and she  knew the writer
and translator Manuel de Seabra,who she married. From 1973, the couple 
resided in Barcelona and made of Catalunya their land of adoption.

Shock of cultures 
Most of stories of Monsó  were published in Portuguese in 1963, in Lisbon,
and later partially they were translated to the Swedish and Esperanto (a
language that both writers know thoroughly). Now, besides translatimg to
Catalan the those stories, Vimala Devi has added to the set three new
narrations. The work has been published by the publishing house of Vilanova
i the Geltrú Cep i the Nansa.

Trasfondo common to all the stories  que can be ***reflxed mng like a
novel, since some even share personajes  are the problems derived from the
shock of cultures and religions, as well as the abuses produced within the
framework of a society sustained in a rural economy still with feudales
resabios. The author portrays the social estates of Goa and the historical
phase angle that the existence of  manducares  (a species of almost
medieval servants of gleba which they had to give the product of his work)
and  batcares  meant (rural proprietors with right to services and
gratuitous goods of its farmers). The difficult crossing between chaste and
social classes are also reflected in the work.

 El problem of that society is that she was neither Hindu nor Portuguese,
but a mixture created through four centuries and means of explica
colonization of Portugal Vimala . To the Portuguese Goa interested to them
as important center of commerce and treated to its inhabitants like not
conquered allies and like. They inculcaron its culture to them and they
caused the mixed marriages, that is to say, they made a policy of
colonization that in other places of India did not occur. Countries like
Holland, that later colonized the nation, always maintained a separation
with colonizados .

This mixture of cultures and religions is dealt with the great sensitivity
by the author, who turns fiction real cases that she conocio ': impossible
loving relations, to the being the chaste lovers of different; the social
conventions that forced the woman to marry because soltería was bad Vista,
which caused marriages of convenience and indebtedness of the parents to
pay the mandatory dowries; the social conflicts in the rural properties...
Although the general tone of the book is intimist, also perceives in him a
denunciation.  Los protagonists of stories are the pressed ones, because
they were without voice.  manducares  was an emblematic case. My
grandmother was a great proprietor and I from small had opportunity to
observe those farmers, how they lived and how they dressed. And he felt to
me bad. For that reason volume divided in favor of the pluses
desfavorecidos. 
 
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