On the life styles of Goan women during the Portuguese colonial rule, 1510-1961.

1) This book gives an overview of Goan Literature in Portuguese – for students and experienced scholars of Portuguese wanting an overview of this production 2) Consideration of works from colonial and post-colonial period – for above and students of colonial and post-colonial South Asia. 3) It gives an overview of Goan Literature in Portuguese – for teachers and students of survey courses on literary production in Portuguese.

Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity is one of the largest religious movements in the world today. It is a recent form of Christianity that emphasizes direct personal experience of God through baptism with the Holy Spirit. While the literature on Pentecostalism is constantly rising, they mostly focus on Western societies and are from a theological perspective. There is a dearth of well-researched studies that critically analyse the phenomenon of Pentecostal–Charismatic Christianity in India. Addressing this gap, Heaven’s Gates and Hell’s Flames focuses on groups at the periphery of the religious space in Goa, while locating them within Christianity globally. It broadens our understanding of Pentecostal–Charismatic Christianity in Goa as a rapidly expanding and overtly evangelistic movement within a pluralist, non-Christian society. Abreu assesses the impact of religion on society, analysing how the symbols, beliefs, rituals, and organizational structure of the neo-Pentecostal sects and the Catholic Charismatic Renewal influence religious identities, world views, and the everyday life activities of individual adherents. This the author does by drawing on extensive fieldwork, concepts, analyses, and interpretations provided by scholars of religion in sociology, anthropology, history, as well as theology.

Contributed articles.

An actor of traditional Hindu dramas meets an adolescent girl who turns out to be his half-sister. A man returns to Goa from Mozambique to father a child for a family whose unmarried daughters has produced no heirs. Another man feels out of place in his family home after returning from Portugal to get a university education, as a woman waits faithfully for him to return. A forbidden romance blooms between a Christian girl and a Hindu boy. Through these stories, written with a mix of poignant nostalgia and sharp criticism, Vimala Devi recreates the colonial Goa of her childhood. First published in 1963, two years after the Portuguese colony became part of India, Monsoon is a cycle of twelve stories that vary in tone. By turns satirical, desolate, tender, humorous, and dramatic, they come together through a subtle interplay of echoes, parallels and cross-references to form a composite picture of a world gone by. They delve into divisions of caste, religion, language, and material privilege, setting them off against a common historical experience and deeply felt attachment to the land. Including a critical and contextualizing introduction by Jason Keith Fernandes, this rendition of Monsoon allows contemporary readers a rare peep into a colonial society that was significantly different from the British Indian mainstream.