Ferry Crossing

Goa is usually pictured as a holiday postcard: beaches, sunshine and a carefree population with little else on its mind. Ferry Crossing sets out to replace that caricature with something truer. It gathers twenty-seven short stories from one of India's youngest states, written in Konkani, Marathi, Portuguese and English, and presents a place with deep roots in history and tradition, where everyday life is as serious and as ordinary as anywhere else.

The stories range widely in subject. Chandrakant Keni's 'Innocence' captures the naive tenderness of first love, while Pundalik Naik's 'The Turtle' deals with the humiliation of poverty. Victor Rangel-Ribeiro's 'Senhor Eusebio Builds His Dream House' is a comic study of rival egos among the rural elite. Elsewhere the collection turns to the sudden brutality that can lie inside ordinary lives, as in Naik's 'When an Ass Mounts a Cow' and Damodar Mauzo's 'Theresa's Man'.

Many of the pieces are fresh in voice, and several are marked by humour and a light touch. Told simply and clearly, they show a Goa far more human and complicated than the beach resort of the tourist brochures.