Scheherazade: Goan Gothic as Decolonial Storying

Abstract

This Gothic short story, set in Goa – a Portuguese colony until 1961 and then annexed by India – tells the tale of a beautiful storyteller’s long journey to find herself. She seeks out a Tarot card reader to give her insight, but her destiny will still prevail. She is seduced by a wealthy politician, only to be imprisoned in a palatial Portuguese mansion hidden in a remote jungle. Over time, her lover abandons her and the jungle house takes on mystical qualities. She feels she is losing her mind until she slowly recognises the voices of the creatures and the spirits around her. Within these relations the house of her imprisonment turns into a sanctuary, until she is eventually rescued and returned to the “normal” life of contemporary Goa. In the end, she accepts the past, which allows her to move forward into life. Like Scheherazade’s elaborate storytelling which was life-saving, this story presents stories within stories, to recover (post) colonized lives. A decolonial reading of this storying alludes to the tarot reader as an observer of the historical events; the corrupt politician as an archetypal colonizer (colonial and neocolonial); and the storyteller as the colonized – physically and psychologically. The story suggests that the way to move forward is to understand colonialism and its continuing impacts, as well as to recognize the appearances of neocolonialism in the present. In this regard, the story can also be read as the struggle for the central government of India, based in Delhi, to accept the 451-year Portuguese colonial history as an indelible part of Goa. Finally, storying in itself is a decolonial practice, a way for Goans to find self.