Damodar Mauzo’s ‘Boy, Unloved’: Surviving loss and loneliness with friendship and books

Written by Jnanpith Award-winning Konkani writer Damodar Mauzo and translated by Jerry Pinto from the Konkani, Boy, Unloved is the coming-of-age story of Vipin, born to a middle-class family in Goa. He is lonely for the most part until he learns how to let people in. Vipin’s father stays angry all his life and inflicts pain on his wife and son. Vipin is used to his father’s aggression and his mother’s submission – he has never known familial love. He grows up in isolation with parents who can’t seem to exist peacefully together. He has no friends to play with. The doors and windows of his house are rarely opened. His parents’s neglect makes him an easy target for paedophiles.

Boy, Unloved is also about the loneliness of women in domesticity. Vipin’s mother has been suffering from depression that started right after he was born. She makes sure her son knows this. She says, “You turned up in my tummy and took my happiness away with you” and, “You came along and your father drifted away from me”. She is in an unhappy marriage which makes their home an unhappy place to grow up for a child.

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