Munmun Ghosh’s second novel, ‘Unhooked’, focuses on the growing pressure on single women to get married. A mature novel, according to the author herself, it also deals delicately with man-woman sexual relationship. Can there be sex without love, is the central issue which the novel addresses. Set in the middle class milieu of the educated, independent single women, it is a touching story of the hypocrisy of the conflicting demands on young professionals. Munmun Ghosh’s first novel was ‘Hushed Voices’. Reproduced here is an excerpt from the widely acclaimed novel.

FROM THURSDAY last week, the capital city Panaji and large parts of North Goa went without even a drop of water. The water supply wing of the Public Works Department had cautioned that water supply would be restricted due to the replacement of a section of the corroded pipeline supplying water from Opa to Tiswadi at Carambolim. When the PWD published a public notice warning that water supply would be restricted, what it really meant is that it will not be supplying any water at all to the concerned areas. Restriction is a euphemism for total stoppage of water supply. According to the timetable of the PWD, water supply was to be restored on Thursday. But even as on Sunday, there was no sign of the water supply being restored. Nor was there any communication from the PWD for the delay in restoring water supply.

Let me tell you about Quinta, By Savia Viegas, Penguin Books, PP 254, Rs 299.

When the Curtains Rise… By Andre Rafael Fernandes, Tiatr Academy of Goa and Goa, 1556, Pp 201, Rs 195.

Beautiful Thing, By Sonia Faleiro, Hamish Hamilton, pp 214, Rs 450.

I’VE OFTEN wondered why Buddhism didn’t take root in the fertile spiritual soil of India, seeing how Ashoka, the great Mauryan emperor who embraced Buddhism after witnessing the senseless slaughter during the Kalinga war, had tried to propagate the faith throughout his kingdom.

ON FEBRUARY 14, India’s queen of Fado, Sonia Shirsat, will present Mundo Fado II, a concert of traditional and contemporary Fado at 7.30 pm at Kala Academy. She will be accompanied by Portuguese musicians Flavio Texeira Cardoso on the Portuguese guitar and Pedro Miguel Soares on classical guitar, who have been specially flown down from Lisbon by Fundação Oriente for this concert, as well as Mayuresh Vasta, MArwino Antonio Da Costa and Milind Chari.

THE problem is one is not used to seeing Konkani films! It’s a mind set which ought to change and change quickly for this is a language which needs a lot of making up (it has been so badly treated by history!)…personally, as a bhaile I think the more Konkani films I see, the more my miserable knowledge of Konkani will improve.

The Crimson Throne by SUDHIR KAKAR is a historical novel based on the accounts of two European travellers Niccolao Manucci and Francois Bernier of the last days of the reign of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. Of special interest to Goans is the fact that Niccolao Manucci spent a year in Goa before he became part of the Emperor’s Court. Reproduced below is Manucci’s account of his arrival in Goa.

ARE FIRST novels set in Goa destined to be romantic? Let me see now. Sorrowing Lies My Land by Lambert Mascarenhas, 95, first published in 1955, carries a romantic aura of freedom from colonial rule. Tivolem by Victor Rangel-Ribeiro, 84, published in 1998, has a love story blossoming in a place called Tivolem, a fictitious place in Goa situated in Porvorim.