BOOKTALK with Cyril D’Cunha

Did you know, asked Cyril D’Cunha, as we drove between lush green fields in Taleigao, this was all fields. All! We all looked at each other as Sheena sighed ‘Those were the days’.

Those were the days is a collection of writings of veteran journalist and sportsman Cyril D’ Cunha during his long, illustrious career.

Cyril D’Cunha is a memory keeper. With the book, it seems, he opened his journalist diary and let out all of his experiences. Of times where he travelled to Europe to cover important games and slept on train stations to cut costs, of meeting interesting people and keeping record of things that happened in Goa that perhaps this generation didn’t hear or know of.

He laments about the tourist to local population, speaks fondly of times under the Portuguese when everyone slept with their doors wide open and a time when crime was nonexistent. The thought sets something off in his head as he tells us about how he got pick pocketed a week ago as he took a bus ride. Not one to let go of anything easy, he raised a hue and cry and eventually, got his wallet back. But not before he says ‘I called the police to take the robber away and they come…both of them…on a motor bike and looked stunned as I asked them where the robber would sit!’ as everyone burst into laughter!

As he browsed through the books Bookworm published in a calm gait with a cup of tea in his hand, we readied the room upstairs and gathered the readers.

Cyril D’ Cunha has been teaching a post graduate journalism class at Dhempe College editing for years and in his teacher voice he explained to us the thought behind his cover page, the experience of publishing a book and how he already has an idea for his next book but won’t say anything yet!

He spoke of his favourite pieces of writing in the book and the amount of work it takes to renew an existing piece of writing in a compilation and how he’d rather have started from scratch if he didn’t passionately believe that people’s memory needed to be revived.

With a final wave of the umbrella, Cyril D’Cunha left us with a heedful of things to think about.

Bookworm’s BOOK TALK for the coming month visits the writings of Jeet Thayil as we read Narcopolis in anticipation of meeting and discussing it with the author.

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