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    The Man-eaters of Malgoonda and the Last Days of Louella Lobo Prabhu
    The Man-eaters of Malgoonda and the Last Days of Louella Lobo Prabhu
    The Man-eaters of Malgoonda and the Last Days of Louella Lobo Prabhu
    Ebook105 pages1 hour

    The Man-eaters of Malgoonda and the Last Days of Louella Lobo Prabhu

    By Richard Crasta

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    An affectionate yet Uncensored and UnWhitewashed picture of Mangalore and its diverse characters, and of the thoughts and experiences of one of its rare sons who decided to defy social control and resign from an elite and powerful civil service position to become a writer.

    The Mangalorean Catholic community, described in this book, is one of those small ethnic groups that barely succeed in surviving globalization and being swallowed up by majority cultures.

    Richard Crasta, the author of the bestselling novel The Revised Kama Sutra, knew Louella Lobo Prabhu, a Mangalorean celebrity, over a period of more than thirty years, and met her five days before her death. Crasta writes an intimate and affectionate essay about her and her society.

    The book also contains the voices and interviews of Mangalorean characters such as Dennis Britto, Malcolm Noronha, Father Claude, an unnamed and spirited Bunt woman, Reuben Nazareth, and others.

    This book is also available in print.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherInvisible Man Press
    Release dateNov 26, 2013
    ISBN9781497757127
    The Man-eaters of Malgoonda and the Last Days of Louella Lobo Prabhu
    Author

    Richard Crasta

    Richard Crasta is the India-born, long-time New York-resident author of "The Revised Kama Sutra: A Novel" and 12 other books, with at least 12 more conceived or in progress. "The Revised Kama Sutra," a novel about a young man growing up and making sense of the world and of sex, was described by Kurt Vonnegut as "very funny," and has been published in ten countries and in seven languages.Richard's books include fiction, nonfiction, essays, autobiography, humor, and satire with a political edge: anti-censorship, non-pc, pro-laughter, pro-food, pro-beer, and against fanaticism of any kind. His books have been described as "going where no Indian writer has gone before," and attempt to present an unedited, uncensored voice (James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, and Philip Roth are among the novelists who have inspired him.).Richard was born and grew up in India, joined the Indian Administrative Service, then moved to America to become a writer, and has traveled widely. Though technically still a New York resident, he spends most of his time in Asia working on his books in progress and part-time as a freelance book editor.

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      Book preview

      The Man-eaters of Malgoonda and the Last Days of Louella Lobo Prabhu - Richard Crasta

      The Man-eaters of Malgoonda & The Last Days of Louella Lobo Prabhu

      RICHARD CRASTA

      Copyright © 2014, 2019 Richard Crasta

      All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

      The characters and events in this book, when characterized as fiction or satire, are fictional and imaginary, and any reference to real persons, events, or countries is purely coincidental. In other essays and reflections, creative liberties have been used as are a regular feature of this author’s writings. Names may have been changed to protect the identities of real persons.

      Author’s website: http://www.richardcrasta.com

      This e-book is published in the United States of America, and is not for sale in India. However, the paperback version may be purchased from createspace.com, a U.S. company. Richard Crasta, a New Yorker and world citizen, was born and grew up in India (mostly in Mangalore) and is the author of fifteen books of fiction and nonfiction, including paperbacks and e-books. His novel, The Revised Kama Sutra, has been published in ten countries and in seven languages.

      Dedication

      To the late Louella Lobo Prabhu

      Justice Michael Saldanha

      and Victor Pais

      Table of Contents

      Dedication

      Interrogation from a Bunt Relative

      Dennis Britto, Live

      Miscellaneous Interviews and Mini-Sketches

      Ethnic Shame, Konkani, and Invisible Men

      She (And It) Put a Spell On Me

      The Man-Eaters of Malgoonda

      Wooing the Virgin Mary While Smoking in the Attic

      Other Books by Richard Crasta

      Praise for Richard Crasta’s Books

      Interrogation from a Bunt Relative

      BARBARA WALTERS, Hard Talk, step aside. When I was going around Mangalore interviewing random locals to get background material and authentic voices for my novel, I ran into a young woman (a relative of mine, a product of a love marriage between a Bunt and a Catholic), Shubha*, who had such natural charm that, instead of me interviewing her, she interviewed me—or rather, interrogated me—with a skill that seemed to lack the slightest bit of artifice or art, because it was so natural, so organic a part of her personality.

      Had I answered her directly and truthfully, and had I not found the situation of the reversed interview so funny, I would have ended up giving her the story of my life, including my deepest secrets, in exactly one hour. She must be descended from the lawyer who asked the witness, in a courtroom, Answer yes or no: Have you stopped beating your wife? If the CIA is desperate to get information from the Al Qaeda prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, she’s their million dollar girl.

      Some of her questions:

      You are honest?

      In what order do you love your mother, sister, and wife?

      You are a devout Catholic?

      Isn't it worse to be a Catholic and commit adultery?

      [My considered answer, now: No, it’s actually better to be a Catholic and commit adultery. The more forbidden the fruit, the more delicious it is.]

      I think your mother-in-law must be really fond of you because you are her only son-in-law? [She was right on target: Gosh, how did she know?]

      And finally, You and Meera are close friends, yes?

      Yes, I reply.

      Then, why didn't you marry her?

      [Answer: Because, maybe, she might have wanted to marry someone else, say, Richard Gere? Also, maybe, because she was my close friend because she didn’t want me that way? And, ahem, because, maybe, I wanted to marry someone else, maybe Angelina Jolie? Because, maybe, the very thought of marrying anyone at all terrified me then, now, and forever? Because, maybe, regardless of what we believe, who we get married to is really decided by Destiny and by factors we don’t fully understand that control us?]

      Finally, she began passing on to me some of her own gems:

      —I love my brother and father the most.  But I am afraid of my brother.  Because he treats me like a little child.

      —AThe police in India are terrible: they even murder people.  Two girls and boys were found dead in the Ullal Travelers Bungalow. The police killed them, but nothing happened to them.  They [the police] just wanted to have fun with the girls." [Wow, fun followed by bullets? That must be some fun!]

      —If a man commits murder under provocation without pre-planning, it is not murder.

      I reply: Then what if a man commits adultery under provocation and without planning?

      She shoots back: But not twelve times! [I don’t know what the twelve times refers to — was there some such case in Mangalore, where some man either murdered or committed adultery twelve times? Agreed, twelve has a nice biblical ring to it, but so long as you’re going to do it twelve times, why not twenty, or two hundred?]

      And then I add: Once with each of twelve women will do, I suppose?

      Loftily brushing off my flippant comments, she continued her demi-monologue:

      •    My father, when he sees Dr. B.M. Hedge only, he gets cured.

      •   XXX Shetty. Her husband married a second wife, bought the second wife a house with the first wife's money. The first wife is so nice she gives the second wife a lift to the hospital.

      •   Law is for the poor, justice is for the rich. [And bigamy and polygamy too—that’s also for the rich, ain’t it? I think so.]

      •   Someone said to me, ‘If they [St. Aloysius School] don't give my child admission, I'll have the M.P. [Member of Parliament] phone them.’ Chi! Using influence for First Standard!

      Only a Mangalorean or a South Indian, perhaps, can understand how funny that last remark is. Chi! or Shi! is a term of disgust, like Yech!

      [It’s gotten worse. Now they have to use influence to get into Kindergarten and Pre-KG. And even ten Chi! will not deter anyone.]

      [*Note: Shubha is not her real name. Even though I do know a Bunt woman named Shubha, that’s not the woman I am talking about.]

      Dennis Britto, Live

      AND NOW, TWENTY-FOUR tumultuous years later, I was on my way to see Dennis, a little nervous yet excited about the beans he might spill.

      At the bus stand, where yellow-plastic-enclosed copies of Rati Shastra (the poor Indian's Sensuous Man — but this is a post-1970 development) are still sold side-by-side with oranges and jasmine flowers, I took an autorickshaw past Kirti Mahal, St. Mary's Convent, and St. Joseph's Bakery to the path through dense tropical foliage — you had to walk now, assuming you could pick up your pulverized bones and step out of the auto-rickshaw — and soon, you’d be in front of the bamboo-obstacle that was the gate to Dennis's house.

      This was pretty much the route I had traversed as a child when I came down from Bombay to visit my uncles; for my uncles lived in a sliver of inhabited vegetation by a paddy field just beyond Dennis's house.  I remember that, surrounded by rice paddies and coconut trees, one was apt to forget that one lived in a city populated by 99,999 other human souls.

      Things hadn't changed all that much since my childhood. Dennis's house, an old, tiled affair with a veranda and a porch, enveloped in a leafy cocoon of tropical darkness, recalled that very time.  As did the cobwebbed yellow walls, on

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