Telo Mascarenhas

Mascarenhas as a young man

Telo de Mascarenhas was an author, a poet, a journalist and eminent freedom-fighter from Goa. He was born on 23 March 1899 at Mormugao Harbour, Goa. He actively participated in Goa Liberation Movement. The Portuguese rulers deported him to Portugal where he was jailed in Peniche for 10 years. After liberation of Goa he was released by Government of Portugal in 1970.

During his years of exile in Bombay, he published clandestinely Ressurge Goa, a political newspaper from 1950 to 1959. On his return to Goa from Portugal in 1970, he restarted Ressurge Goa as a cultural and political paper. He was a prolific poet in Portuguese and also did a Portuguese translation of the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi and of many novels by Tagore. He died in 1979.

External References

• Bio entry on Mascarenhas
• Obituary of Telo de Mascarenhas (in Portuguese)
• Text by Mascarenhas recollecting his political past (in Portuguese)
• Mascarenhas memories of the Liberation of Goa as accomanied from his prison cell (in Portuguese)
• Poem dedicated to Mascarenhas by Eduardo Pereira de Andrade (in Portuguese)

Poetry in Portuguese

• Dois Poemas
• As Sementeiras
• A Primavera Chegou

Prose Writing in Portuguese

• Crónica de Viagem a Bombaim

Sinfonia Goesa

In 1962, whilst imprisoned in Aljube gaol, Mascarenhas wrote a lyrical novella entitled Sinfonia Goesa. Though it was never published in its entirety, several fragments saw the light on day in the post-Liberation Portuguese-language press.