A 22 year old boy in
France with roots in Assolna and Agassaim has been promoting the
Konkani language at various conferences and has made it is his
mission to help preserve the Goan legacy for the world and future
generations.
Carino Gurjao was
in Goa last week where he gave a talk at the Goa University.
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“After my previous
speech in France, I wanted to do more about preserving Konkani. Thus,
giving a speech at the Goa University was a great way to target those
who might act for the preservation of my language,” said Carino.
The underlying
message of his speech was that language diversity is closely related
to cultural diversity, which is one of the most valuable human traits
there is. “I also emphasized the fact that language shapes the way
we see the world and contains a lot of information on our ancestors’
environment,” said Carino.
The final line of his
speech was, “Do you want your children to live in a
monochromatic world or do you want to embrace the world cultural
diversity and live in a rainbow of colours of cultures? This is what
is at stake with language endangerment. The choice to preserve these
languages is entirely ours, but we have to act fast as one language
dies every other week. Carino was invited to give the speech by
Professor Irene Silveira from Goa University. He and Silveira had met
during the feast of ‘Our Lady of the Rosary’ in France when she
was visiting the country to collect information about the Goan
Community of Paris for her PhD.
When asked if Goans
living in France meet up often, Carino explained how there is a huge
Goan association in Paris and how they gather for religious feasts,
the same that are celebrated in Goa and also for birthdays,
christenings, etc, etc. “These feasts are great opportunities to
keep the Goan culture alive, even if we are half the world apart from
our motherland. It’s great to have such a united community in
Paris. The people over there are great, and always eager to help one
another!” he exclaimed.
Carino’s mother,
Piedade Dias’ parents Casmiro and Pedrina Dias live in
Ambelim while his dad Gaspar Gurjao is from Agassaim, and Carino is
currently staying at their house there.
Even though he was
born in France and is still living there, my parents always bathed
him in Goan culture and Konkani is a major part of it. He
elaborated on how he learnt about Goan culture by the the food,
the song, the stories, but more importantly with their mother tongue,
Konkani. He also speaks about how Konkani means a lot to him and is
part of his cultural identity which he doesn’t want to lose.
However, if you pay
attention, you can see the loss of konkani everywhere in the Goan
community. “If I am so passionate about it, it’s because I
believe that there won’t be a Goan culture anymore if we don’t
treasure our language and if we don’t teach it to the next
generation,” added Carino.
His parents are
originally from Goa but emigrated to Paris to find a job but with
most of his relatives still in Goa, he visits whenever he can.
He studies
bioinformatics engineering in INSA Lyon (The
Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon
is
a Grande
Ecole d’ingénieurs,
ranked among the top universities of Science and Technology in
Europe) and his main research interests are cancer and tumour growth
for which he is currently working for Institut Curie (Institut Curie
is one of the leading medical, biological and biophysical research
centres in the world).
Incidentally, Carino
was the only student selected to have the opportunity to be one of
the speakers at the Tedx INSA Conference in France. Along with
him, there were 6 other speakers: a famous youtuber, a movie
producer, two scientists, an artist and a professor.
TEDx conferences are
a global set of conferences under the slogan “Ideas Worth
Spreading” and are internationally known. It consists of a suite of
short, carefully prepared talks, demonstrations and performances that
are idea focused, and cover a wide range of subjects to foster
learning, inspiration and wonder.
“After my speech in
France, I was surprised by the number of people who came to me even
though they weren’t from cultural minorities. That comforted me with
the idea that endangered language is not only an issue for cultural
minorities, but also the whole world,” said Carino.
He also explained how
before his Tedx speech that was watched worldwide on youtube, he
didn’t have the opportunity to act for language endangerment. He
believed it was an important issue, but thought that there was
nothing he could actually do about it.
Speaking about the
experience with Tedx he said that getting into such a high reaching
platform means a lot to him as his speech will reach many people, and
hopefully bring public awareness on language endangerment. After his
Goa University experience, he says that he is eager to speak about
the endangered language issue and would jump at the opportunity to
speak elsewhere in Goa or the rest of India.
