Writing has never been a walk in the park. In fact, it’s highly

unlikely that even writing about walking in a park has ever been a walk in the park. However, when we look at the schematics of Goa on the whole, matters get more difficult still. We live in a land that is slowly becoming all the more clinically sensitised and politically correct. Gone are the days when people could nickname someone they knew in the neighbourhood something which was borderline rude and get away with it. Today’s neighbours will turn in a flash and find a way to take to social media to ostracise said writer.

Taking into account recent developments as a news point in itself, an excerpt from a previous Herald report pointed out that ‘Sudhirsukt’, a collection of Vishnu Surya Wagh’s Konkani poems, went unseen when it was published in 2013. However, recent efforts by Wagh’s supporters to get the book selected for the annual poetry award by the GKA brought the book into the limelight after it sparked anger among Goa’s elite caste, the Gaud Saraswat Brahmin (GSB), due to purported derogatory references.

In fact, as a reaction to this, in an unprecedented move, the government cancelled all 32 undeclared awards over the last two years by Goa Konkani Academy (GKA), following the recent controversy over the award to ‘Sudirsukt’, and has furthermore decided to formulate a committee to be constituted by organisations such as Goa Konkani Academy (GKA), Gomantak Marathi Academy (GMA) and Directorate of Art and Culture, which will centralise all the literary awards. Later, as the book came to limelight, one of the members of the short-listing committee, Sanjeev Verenkar, used social media to openly accuse the book as being communal. Similarly, a group of women also filed a police complaint against the author along with the publisher as they claimed the book contained offensive comments about women.

Daniel F de Souza, an author and freelance journalist with six volumes to his credit, feels that this course of action was not justifiable. He says, “Freedom of expression is essential to a creative writer. These individuals are the reformers of society, because they draw inspiration from things and occurrences around them. If there is something wrong with the status quo, they are the ones to highlight it in a social manner. In the case in question, Wagh has written and spoken about a prevalent issue which still exists in society today. I think that the move of withdrawing the awards is a wrong one, and if Wagh was in a position to defend himself in his typically eloquent style, no one would have done something like this.”

To look into another example of this situation, let us rewind our clocks to only a couple of years ago, when an ex-mayor of Margao, writer Valmiki Faleiro, released his book, titled ‘Soaring Spirit: 450 Years of Margao’s Espirito Santo Church’. The volume documents the entire history of Margao, the houses around the Holy Spirit Church, the history behind Christianity coming to Margao and the resident Hindu population of the city. The book tells the tale of how the then village of ‘Mathgram’ with a small mud stage used to play host to many programmes and dances, before eventually becoming the Margao that we know today. However, not everyone took kindly to some of the stories that were penned in the volume, and took to social media to slate the author, which again fuels the fire of the debate of whether or not authors have license to put down their thoughts as they see fit.

Speaking on his entire experience with the book, and sharing what he feels about the ability to express oneself through the written word in Goa, Valmiki shares, “I have no grouse whatsoever when it comes to accepting that Goa has a fair share of freedom of expression. However, as a writer with a popular Goan newspaper in the 1970s, I did make one observation, which I find still holds true: Goa being very small, things touch people one way or the other, and certain things get accentuated. Like the adage goes, ‘if Pernem catches a cold, Canacona sneezes’, and therefore, because almost everyone is acquainted with each other, things may be raised in social situations. With regard to the things that some people objected to in the book, in hindsight they may have had reasons to feel the way they did, because some people are more sensitive to certain things than others. I have no reservations to say that I have made certain mistakes in the past. However, I will also point out that I will not let that curb my creative freedom of expression in the future.”

The writing and publishing industry is doubtlessly hard, and being in it will introduce you to hurdles that include breaking into a world where the enthusiasm surrounding writing is on the wane. Whether putting the few writers left to the sword is a good idea, right now at least, seems a question that remains unanswerable.