Vinayak Bharne is a jointadjunct faculty at the Sol Price School of Public Policy and School of Architecture at theUniversity of Southern California in Los Angeles, and the Principal of design at Moule & Polyzoides Architects & Urbanists. He is the co-author of Re-Discovering the Hindu Temple: The Sacred Architecture & Urbanism of India anda contributing authorof several books including Planning Los Angeles and Aesthetics of Sustainable Architecture. We were honoured to host him at our home amongst like minded people to provide with sustainable solutions for the Campal Creek.
Yogendra Yadav is an Indian politician, psephologist and academic whose primary interests are in the political and social sciences. He has been a Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi since 2004. He visited our ome at 7 a.m for a breakfast meeting with stalwarts of Goa like Environmentalist Dr. Claude Alvares, MLA of Curtorim Reginaldo Lourenco, Historian Prajal Sakhardande, Architect Dean D'Cruz amongst other. Therafter we organised two televised interviews for him in two different rooms one after the other with HCN and the other with Prudent Media. Later, after the interviews were done, a panel discussion was thrown open to the general public at the conference hall of the Gonsalves Mansion. It was a high energ morning at the Gonsalves Mansion discussing various Political options for Goa.
M C Raj was an award winning author with more than 18 published books. He wrote on philosophy, psychology, spirituality and Politics. He was also a well acclaimed fiction writer. He was an International opinion leader on Dalit issues and a strong campaigner for Dalit rights. He has initiated a huge national campaign for electoral reforms in India known as CERI to usher in proportional representation in India. He has created history by registering the first ever Dalit CDM Project with the UNFCCC. M C Raj was with us to discuss about Porpotionate Representation which was attended by reputed Politicians like the Former Minsiter of Law Shri Ramakanth Khalap, MLA of Goa Velha Shri Vishnu Wagh, former Editor of Times of India Shri Sreenivas amongst others.
Thomas Michael Keneally, is a prolific Australian novelist, playwright, and essayist. He is best known for writing Schindler's Ark, the Booker Prize-winning novel of 1982 which was inspired by the efforts of Poldek Pfefferberg, a Holocaust survivor. The book was later adapted to Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
We hosted a dinner for The Lukas Roos Quintet who performed at one of our jazz events. The Gonsalves Mansion (hpl to: http://goaforgiving.org/gonsalvesmansion/index.html) always serves home food and is a great ome to all our musician friends who stay with us while they perform at our home.
Chef Cyrus Todiwala was a very special guest at our home and will always be. He loves Goa as much as we Goans do and highly speaks of his days when he worked here.
"The Kindness Campaign", was led by Fr. Bismarque Dias. We hosted a meeting at our courtyard for him where he interacted with people about his campaign.