Sorrowing Lies my Land: A Classic Goan Tale

About the Author

Lambert Mascarenhas (1914-2021) was a journalist by profession, who served on the staff of newspapers and magazines in Bombay (now Mumbai) for almost twenty years. Of these, he spent eight at the Bombay Sentinel, which was edited by the great B.J. Horniman, of the Bombay Chronicle Group of Newspapers. Mascarenhas was commissioned by the weekly March to go to Goa in May 1949 to write on the true conditions in the then Portuguese colony. For his three dispatches, he was arrested by the Goa Government and later sentenced to three years of imprisonment. After the Liberation of Goa (1961), he became the first editor of the first English daily in Goa, The Navhind Times, established in 1963. After a three-year stint there, he founded the monthly magazine, Goa Today. Mascarenhas published his first book The First City, a satire on life in Bombay (published by Padma Publications, Bombay) in 1940. However, it was his Sorrowing Lies My Land, published by Hind Kitabs, Bombay, in 1955, that received rave reviews from the media all over India. It was reprinted the following year and again in 1970. It has been translated into Marathi, Telugu and Konkani. His other works include In The Womb of Saudade, The Greater Tragedy, and Heartbreak Passage. Mascarenhas was awarded the Laxmidas Borkar Memorial Award for journalism for 2004. He was also awarded Goa’s highest civilian award, the Gomant Vibhushan, and was awarded the Padma Shri in 2015. Mascarenhas is survived by his wife Dr. Jolly Mascarenhas, who was Professor and Head of the Physiology Department of the Goa Medical College, and later Member of the Goa Public Service Commission. He has three daughters and a son.