GOA’S TEACHERS, TAKE A BOW!

IT is really an honour for Goa in general and to the teaching community in particular, that Chandralekha Mestri, a teacher at Satyawati Soiru Angle Higher Secondary School, Mashem-Loliem, Canacona, has bagged this year’s National Teacher’s Award for 2024. The previous awardees in 2022 were MM Miranda, Principal, Government High School Morpirla, Quepem, and in 2023 AM Parkhe of Disha School for the Special Children. This back-to-back national awards is a moral booster to all our teachers who are nourishing budding minds.
The lady awardees travel kilometres every day to reach the schools, some of which are in deplorable conditions and have few students. Yet, theirs and their colleagues’ mission is to teach the students who stay in and commute from remote areas. The teachers sacrifice their comfort, family lives and even worked during the pandemic so as motivate and help young minds to grow and seek better opportunities.
Hope that the teachers from the privileged schools get inspired by these teachers. If our armed forces are protecting our borders, the teachers are safeguarding our children by educating them, we are weaning them away from bad habits, inoculating discipline and helping them build their future.
­—Sridhar D’Iyer, Caranzalem, Panaji

“Most of my films are created during the editing stage”
–says Indian documentarian Anand Patwardhan

ANAND Patwardhan, celebrated Indian documentarian screened his film, “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” (The World is Family, 2023) at the Museum of Goa, Pilerne, on September 11, 2024. The film documents the lives of his parents and relatives who were involved in India’s freedom movement and acquainted with Mahatma Gandhi and other Indian leaders. For the award winning documentary filmmaker his latest film did not start out as a film in his imagination, but as a video documentation of his parents life and times and family gatherings.
Speaking at the screening of his film he said, “With ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’, it started out with me recording my parents and families’ lives since the 1990s for personal use, I first discovered that there was a film waiting to be made, that overlapped my experience of family with my relatives’ fight for freedom and unity, during this period.” The film was screened as part of the MOG Sunday talks at Pilerne. The 96-minute documentary won the Best Documentary Award at The New York Indian Film Festival, 2024. The Museum of Goa screening was followed by a lively interaction with the audience. A compelling blend of political and personal narratives, the film documents Anand’s parents, Wasudev Hari Patwardhan and Nirmala Dialdas Patwardhan, in their senior years sharing their life stories, showcasing their tight familial bond and navigating growing health issues, with archival data depicting families’ involvement in India’s freedom struggle also woven into the narrative.
Mumbai-based Anand’s previous documentary films like “Ram Ke Naam,” “War and Peace,” among others, have won critical acclaim. In his interaction with the audience he explained that although he had previously understood there was more to his parents’ histories, it was only when he started interviewing his relatives after his parents’ demises to fill in the gaps in the stories they shared, and while going through the footage during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, that the film’s storyline began to fall into place. “Before conceptualising ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’, I had only a broad idea of my families’ involvement in the freedom struggle. Through piecing information together from interviews I had with my relatives, I learnt that my father’s brothers, Rau and Achyut Patwardhan, were Gandhian socialists and underground revolutionaries, respectively, who contributed to the freedom struggle.”
He further shared, “My maternal grandfather, Bhai Pratap Dialdas, who was based in Karachi, regularly hosted India’s leaders in the independence movement. All these concepts eventually fell into place to create the film.” The film’s dual focus on establishing the common ground between his close bonds with his parents and his families’ previously not well-known fight against British colonialism to unite India as a family, is what led him to name the film “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” — the world is family.

IN HISTORIC CITY BATH WATCHING AMERICA’S FUTURE UNFOLD!
ON this short visit to Bath, a wellbeing spa city known for and named after its Roman times built baths, it was an occasion for me on September 10, 2024. I watched that late night live first debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, the White House contenders in the ensuing November Presidential elections in the United States.
It was hilarious to hear Donald Trump make wild, baseless allegations that migrants were eating dogs and cats at Springfield in Ohio, which even made Vice-President Kamala Harris look at him in disbelief before laughing.
Am trying to find a friend down there who could ascertain and confirm whether it’s true or a political lie. So far, the mayor, city officials and the Police Department of Springfield have swiftly rejected the claims made by Trump. It was a relief for millions watching that these baseless allegations were fact checked live by the ABC television channel debate moderators who quickly corrected the record.
Anyway, it would be eventful to see the United States of America have its first Lady President occupying the Oval Office. It was ironic to watch the future of America unfolding in a 90-minute TV debate in an historic city like Bath that dates to the first century AD!
—Aires Rodrigues, London