Thirteen year-old Shirley Quarachim, daughter of adoring parents, elder sister to a toddler and another soon-to-come, dreams under and makes up conversations with a statue in her garden, sails paper boats in rainwater, gets into mischief to escape the boredom of classes in her all-girls’ school, ends up making friends with Ana, the classmate who had till recently been her arch enemy, and gradually falls in love with Ana’s elder brother, João. It just happens to be late 1961, the year when India took Goa from Portuguese rule.
Having come to Goa from Karachi at the time of the Partition, Shirley’s father had acquired the surname Quarachim. A successful businessman, with some mining interests, he seems to have had underground connections with the Goan liberation movement as well.
Rescuing a River Breeze made me realize that I had never even thought about how Goa is part of my imagination of India though I knew it was historically ruled by the Portuguese.