Dr Olav Albuquerque, 50, advocate
I love women because they are the most beautiful species whom God created or pehaps evolved after millions of years of evolution, as Charles Darwin postulated. Were it not for for women, none of us would exist today.
I love women because my Mother was gentle and loving. She taught me to love. I love women because all my aunts, who were the younger sisters of my mother, brought me up, after my father’s untimely death. Their names are Idinha, Sylvina, Hilda and Vita, who all together played a stellar role of both mother and father in my life.
My late mother, my four aunts, my elder sister, were the ones who instilled in me values and an upbringing which has served me very well in life. After my mother, Nina, passed away in 2009, my aunts Sylvina, Hida and Idinha passed away in 2012, 2019 and 2020 respectively. They fed me, clothed me, educated me and taught me the lessons of life which have stood me in good stead till today.
Next, I love women because I had my first crush on my attractive class teachers in Campion School in Bombay as it was then known and later on my eighth standard English teacher way back in the 1970s in Don Bosco High School at Panjim. She gave me the highest marks in English and laid the foundation stone to my becoming a senior journalist-cum-lawyer. She put up with all my pranks and tomfoolery just to draw her attention to me. These childish crushes on these young adult women teachers served me in good stead because I studied well and never ranked below 2nd in class.
And when I entered Dhempe College of Arts and Science with a distinction in 1975, I missed entering the Goa Medical College in 1977 although my late uncle priest, Fr Antonio Albuquerque, had one seat reserved in the freedom fighters’ quota. That was a great letdown and setback to my ego. I had a girlfriend who was doing her First Year Arts. She was the daughter of a Goan judge. We only spoke to each other and I walked home with her twice. That was all. But when students began to tease her, she changed her college.
Thirty years later, when I was a practicing lawyer, I got an email in my inbox asking if I was so-and-so. I did reply to her and we began to chat sometimes. But later that too tapered off. She now resides at Benaulim in Salcette and I would love to meet her again.
To lift me, a smart young girl taught us Botany while I was doing my B.Sc in Dhempe College. I immediately got attached to her and got a First Class in my B.Sc. She and another teacher played a major role in my academic career. Today, I am a Ph.D in law and definitely must acknowledge the role these women played in my life.
Finally, I have often wondered whether God created man in his own image or it is the other way around. Perhaps God created woman first, and out of her rib, He made man. For woman can live without man. But I doubt any sane man could live without his wife. Why can God not be a woman ? After all, it is our mothers who bring us into this world. I definitely do love my lovely wife, Deborah.
So, if a man does not love a woman, well then, he is crazy !