Goa, Aug. 23 -- Vivek Menezes

Thanks to my neighbour Bosco Gracias, I had the opportunity to encounter the work of yet another spirited artist from the far-flung Goa diaspora, via the handsome bilingual volume Leslie De Melo: A Song in Praise of Beauty from the high-quality Austrian publishers Verlag Bibliothek der Provinz. The large-format art book contains reproductions of drawings, paintings, photographs and sculptures from across almost three decades of self-expression by a Dar es Salaam-born "world wanderer," in the felicitous term coined by the late, great Manoharrai Sardessai about Goans who have scattered across the globe for centuries while retaining an emotional connection to their ancient homeland in the Konkan.

Sardessai sum...