Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Shimla Now and Then
I came across a rather startling blog entry by a young Goan while surfing the web for information on the early Goan church other day (http://lilliandcosta.wordpress.com/2009/05/04/goa-was-better-off-in-the-hands-of-the-portuguese/). The title of the post was Goa was better off in the hands of the Portuguese. Now, I don’t think anyone I met in Shimla would go as far as to say such a thing as Shimla was better off in the hands of the British, yet I did encounter many parishioners (both Catholic and Protestant) who believed (rightly or wrongly) that the guidance of the church and the young benefitted in the past from a greater contact with European clergy. Of course any such opinions are by nature speculative and subjective, yet they are also revealing of the way that many Shimlites (especially Christian Shimlites) find themselves at the centre of a tension between what was, is and shall be.
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Nostalgia is a powerful and real force that can distort memory. From my educational background in a Catholic convent I find people nowadays lamenting about the loss of the Irish nun/brothers educators. Does post colonial India have space for them or are they merely ghosts from the past?
ReplyDeleteGood point Inkblot, I heard this often in Shimla as well. I think that the educational world has moved on and is bound to change with time. But, perhaps something of the traditions that were established then can carry through - the good stuff at least.
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