Yasin, Austin, Yatin. Take your pick. The choice is offered by this year’s Jnanpith award-winning Konkani writer Damodar Mauzo. In his new anthology, The Wait and Other Stories, he tells us the story of an endearing Goa cab driver who, while doubling up as a tourist guide, assumes diverse religious identities to “serve” his heterogeneous clients. As a Yasin, he recounts the glorious history of the Ponda Safa Masjid. As an Austin, he drives his guests to Palacio de Idalcao to celebrate Alfonso de Albuquerque’s defeat of the cruel Adil Shah. And as a Yatin, he concentrates on completely different bylanes of history, steering more towards temple precincts. Depending on the tourist, he decides if he will broach religious conversions, or refer to the civic imperative of beach cleaning.

Mauzo’s driver hero, like most other characters the writer has given birth to since 1971, represents a quintessential part of Goa’s soul. He is a character modelled on many real-life drivers who are polyglots, adept at small talk, alive to non-verbal social cues, and eminently likeable. Even when these drivers spin sellable tales around the iconic Basilica of Bom Jesus or plug for the newly-built Mahalasa Narayani temple at Verna, they have a worldview on offer. It is impossible to miss their perspectives, whether you visit Goa for work or leisure. This columnist has been fortunate to avail of the lens provided by these “guides” who ask: “Raikar? That’s a Goan name, right? My aunt’s landlord was a Raikar.” Communication can never go wrong, when the personal is warmly interwoven in the political.