Behind the News: Voices from Goa\'s Press by Various

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After a year, I returned to Belgaum and two years later
when I returned the Herald had changed. Rajan had a
bigger cabin. Norman Dantas had a smaller cabin and
Gustav Fernandes the manager had a cabin of
intermediate size. The News Desk had morphed from two
unvarnished desks to a large one with a sunmica top.
Now it looked more like a cheap dining table from the
Holy Spirit Church fair. It was was positioned between
Rajan's and Norman's cabins and under the altar.

Rico had left and Anton had become a reporter. The
others had left too. Wilfred Pereira, who was a
stringer from Margao, had become chief-sub. Willy, as
he was known, was a very organized man. His drawer,
which was located at one end of the news-desk, was
neatly kept and contained almost everything like pens,
scales, soap. It was like a mini-stationery shop. I
always suspected Willy also had a tin-can opener and a
Swiss army knife stashed somewhere in that drawer.
Willy also had a lovely handwriting.

It was during this second stint that I met Ivo Vaz from
Varca. He was blessed with cat feet and always walked
into the office with an old airline bag without making
a sound. Ivo looked dead serious all the time, even
during picnics. He once organized a picnic for Herald
staffers at Varca, where he sat in one chair throughout
the day. When we left, he was fast asleep. Ivo also had
a strange way of editing copy which reminded me of an
automobile assembly line. After editing each news story
he would attach a rectangular piece of blank paper with
a pin to the left-hand corner and keep it aside. After
piling up several copies in this manner he would start
giving each story a heading. Ivo had an antique olive
green Morris Minor, which he treasured, and a daughter
whom he loved. Everytime his daughter recovered from
some ailment he would treat all of us to ice cream,
with our peon Jose acting a facilitator in the whole
process. Jose would do anything for a free cake, ice
cream or anything edible.

Then there was Bone-Crusher Agnel who took pleasure in
squeezing the life out of anyone who made the mistake
of shaking hands with him. My hand some how survived
Agnel's vice-like grip.

Another sub-editor who caught my attention was
Cornelius Gomes who worked on the sports desk with
Nelson Dias. Cornelius always sported a beard and
mustache which covered most of his face and gave him a
Ringo Starr look. Cornelius also played football for
the Herald team and had this 'queer' technique of
tackling rough players. When ever he encountered a
player leaning on him to head the ball or digging an
elbow in his ribs, he would tickle the chap's backside.
This technique proved to be more effective than the
ref's whistle.

By the time Herald completed its tenth year we had a
formidable team with players like Tulsidas, Jason,
Alaric, Jose, Domnic, Pradeep, our platemaker, and
Vilas Sarang who never made it to the team. Umesh alias
Umi, our sleepy paster, was a live wire in the goal.
With Choppy as manager we were willing to take on anyone.

On one of our anniversaries Choppy set up a match with
the Navhind Times. Two or three days prior to the match
we were shocked to discover that NT would be fielding a
few first division players from the Dempo team. We
nearly suffered a stroke. But then Choppy always had
this never-say-die attitude. In a crisis he would take
two deep inhalations from an anti-asthma pump which he
always carried in his pocket, and, in seconds go from
Bruce Banner to The Hulk. In a day, Choppy's
never-say-die attitude spread to everyone and off we
marched to the Don Bosco school ground in our new
uniforms for the slaughter.

Guess what? We won.

That was not all. Choppy loved ceremonies and had
arranged an elaborate function with a chief guest,
prizes and speeches. After the speeches the Herald team
captained by Tulsidas (I think) went up and received
their medals. Everyone who had adorned the Herald
colours got a medal. Next was the turn of the Navhind
Times team to collect their medals. Half way through
this process Choppy realized that he had bought less
medals. We hit the panic buttons. But then, in the
Herald you have to be resourceful to survive. We
quickly formed a human chain and started passing medals
presented to the Herald team back to the chief guest.
It was a smooth operation. Months later, when the time
came for Navhind Times to celebrate its anniversary,
they did not dare play a football match with us.

I also remember playing a football match on the beach
during a picnic at Candolim. Our team had earned a
penalty and Pamela D'Mello decided to take it. (Yes,
she played football). By the way, picnic matches are
scaled down versions of the world cup. The goals are
tiny, the playing field is small and there's no ref.
Before the penalty could be taken, a dispute broke out
between us and Ashley do Rosario over how the penalty
should be taken. Ashley grabbed the ball and insisted
that the spot kick should be taken with the heel and
with the player facing his back to the goal. I don't
know where Ashley found this rule, but we were aware of
Pamela's prowess as football player, and hence,
objected. Those were pre-mobile phone days, so there
was no way of contacting FIFA for their take on the
rule. Finally after much cajoling and arm twisting,
Ashley relented and allowed Pamela to take the kick.
The ball was placed five feet from the goal which was
one-and-half foot wide. Tulsidas, our captain, who was
desperate for a goal gave Pamela a thorough briefing on
how to take the kick. Next he drew a line in the sand
starting from the ball to the center of the goal line
to make it easier for Pamela. Ashley did not object. We
all stood back and waited. Pamela positioned herself
behind the ball, lifted her right foot and kicked with
all her might. The ball missed the goal by three feet.
That was how Pamela missed her chance to enter the
Herald football hall of fame. She went on to be a very
good reporter.

This was also the picnic when Ashley drove from Candolim
to Betim in his Fiat without releasing the handbrakes.

Somewhere during the eight years I lived and worked in
the Herald, a fellow villager named Lirio Vasconsales
found employ as a sub-editor. This wiry chap had a face
full of hair and was a die hard Navhind Times fan. He
used to fold the NT and stuff it into his trouser
pocket, to be retrived for leisure reading on the last
bus to Margao. This habit earned him a sobriquet --
pocket Navhind Times. Lirio also possessed a
matter-of-fact sense of humour. One day Lirio was
feverishly editing copy with a ball pen refill even
though he had an empty ball pen in his pocket. Sports
editor Nelson Dias, who happened to pass by, asked
Lirio: "Arre baba, why don't you put the refill in the
pen and use it?" Lirio looked up at him through his
glasses and said: "No time". This was the one and only
time I saw Nelson hit for a six.

In those days before the lazer printer was perfected by
HP the A4 sized `butter` paper used to get `jammed`
inside the machine very often. During one such occasion
Lirio who had been observing the machine for over
half-an-hour in the composing department turned to me
and said: "We insert butter paper in the machine, so
how do we get paper jam?"

My first encounter with Rajan Narayan was not
awe-inspiring. Rajan was never a dresser and, on the
few occasions when he managed to get into a long
sleeved shirt and ironed trousers, he looked quite
smart. The first time I saw him for one of the
anniversaries when he came with a slightly over-sized
navy blue coat. The next occasion was when he returned
from Dubai on the first Air-India direct flight from
the Gulf. His attire never bothered him or any of the staff.

Rajan had two indulgencies -- smoking and chewing
`Halls' sweets. And the smoking nearly burnt him out
one day. I was in the office that day when a couple
arrived to see Rajan. As usual he lit a cigarette and
was puffing away when the couple noticed smoke under
the table. It didn't take long for Rajan to realize
that his trouser pocket was smouldering. He thrust his
hand into the pocket to put out the fire and in the
process burnt his fingers. After a little slapping here
and there the fire was put out. I was quickly summoned
and told to buy a tube of Burnol. Rajan never believed
in moderation. He squeezed half the tube on his fingers
and continued conversation with the couple with the
yellow paste all over his hands. I don't know how his
pocket caught fire, but I think Rajan absent mindedly
shoved the match in his pocket instead of the ashtray.

There were a lot of other interesting incidents that
happened in the Herald, some nice, some not so nice.
Like how we played mandicot all night in the composing
room or how we celebrated on Independence eve with a
bottle of whiskey and nearly got caught or the
formation of the Union, or the time when the electrical
system short circuited and Pamela, Alaric and Paul
filed stories in candle light, or Rico's hoi-te.

Perhaps some other time? Perhaps, for the twenty-fifth
anniversary e-book.

Chapter 12:
The proof of it all...

Tony MartinTony Martin, the better-known pen-name of Anthony
Barretto, worked his way through Goa's English-language
newspapers, before shifting to education. He has gone
into self-publishing, and, in his own modest and
low-profile manner, has managed to put out books with a
print-run of 5000 copies (amazing by Goa's standards).
Currently, he is working on a website on Canacona.

Just an out-of-school teenager that I was, life then
posed a 'Catch 22' situation when one first landed in
Panjim. Without any experience, it was difficult to get
work. Yet, at the same time, it was difficult to get
experience because I couldn't get any work.

So one fine day armed with a recommendation from the
late music maestro-priest Fr Lourdinho Barreto, who
hailed from my village of Galgibaga in the southern
extreme of Goa, to Fr Freddy for the post of proof
reader I arrived at the Gulab office. This got an
I'll-let-you-know from the editor.

Well at least I knew what job I was looking for.

Then, with a fantastic helping of luck I got a job with
the Herald -- oops actually it was with Norlic India,
the firm shown as the employer of those doing the
proof-reading of the Herald, in those days.

The job was as a proof reader, and the date was August
12, 1985.

To us, whether it was Norlic India or Herald did not
then matter, I was getting my bread, so there was no
point complaining about missing the cake.

But along with my bread, I also got a taste and a
first-hand glimpse of what I had only heard of earlier
-- exploitation. Obviously the Norlic India tag was
meant to deny us the applicable scales for
proof-readers. We were almost like daily wage factory
workers. Accept it or leave it. With pressing financial
constraints, and at that time there wasn't even a
functional union in the Herald (it came sometime later,
and have worked in fits and starts) the option was
clear: shut up and do your work or speak up and get
kicked out.

All said just-enough-to-survive Rs 400 a month was
still a luxury.

So I got myself testing the waters in the novitiate of
journalism. For a tender 'naal' (coconut) like myself
the sub-editors of the time -- Anthony, Rico, Godwin
Figueira and sports editor Nelson, to name a few --
were exceptionally good. If I had peanuts for salary, I
had gems for seniors.

For most people proofreading is basically checking
spellings and omissions by the typesetter. It was not
much different here. On the few occasions we, the
humble proof-readers, particularly Jack, ventured to
show our mastery in punctuation and grammar, the
concerned sub-editor would get furious, of course in a
playful way. Often we would end up exposing our
ignorance to the world.

Ignorant or well-informed, those two years in the
Herald were years of youthful exuberance and bliss.

And there was this noble soul Caetano. Well I call him
a noble soul because even as the foreman of the
composing section, he never gave me an opportunity to
see him angry although we proof readers (which, of
course, includes me) used to give him a chance to be
angry almost every day.

One day when 'penis' became 'mightier than the sword',
he laughed at it together with the subs, and then,
after they had left, politely warned us to be careful.
He had no special training in people-management; he had
surely not attended any hi-fi seminars now conducted by
self-proclaimed management gurus. Yet, if there was one
thing he knew other than typing at an incredible speed,
it was to keep his juniors motivated. We owed our
productivity and effectiveness to him. He would
challenge the Subs to a rupee for a mistake in a report
or an article. On that count we didn't let him down, at
least not often, even considering that overlooking
errors in a straight read-through -- without the luxury
of checking print-outs, but doing the proofreading on
the flickering screen itself -- was a distinct possibility.

Ironically, on the few occasions, the editor, Rajan Narayan
-- he was not yet the super-man of the Herald then; he
acquired almost that status during and after the
language agitation -- entered the composing room, we
were just logs of dead wood for him. Not a side glance
even to acknowledge our greeting. My view: perhaps all
these years Mr Narayan was soaring too high on the
pedestal the management had seated him on, after
granting him a free hand. And as is the rule of nature,
every thing that goes up comes down. And he came down
with quite a bang.

But that was just a stray cloud in the silver lining
the Herald offered. That indifference apart, our Herald
innings is something to look back and laugh about. I
can still sense the taste of the first sip of urak at
an after-work session. Not long later, Remy and I
crashing into a cow with my rickety cycle on our way to
the Don Bosco Hostel. Time: around 3 a.m.

Another party we had in the office was a chicken party.
Nice dry fried chicken. Courtesy Jack. Everybody had
and there was still more to go around, much like in the
Biblical parable of loaves-and-fishes. But nobody
except Jack knew, until the next day, from where the
chicken came. The next day a notorious looking man
walked into the Herald office. To make bad matters
worse he happened to meet the 'patrao', the publisher
and then patriarch A. C. Fernandes. They talked a while
and he left. The next moment the old man came charging
and thundered, "Kal kombeo konnem adleo re?" (Who
brought in the chicken yesterday?) "Aayem Patrao, mhaka
rostear podlo mevloleo," (I, boss. I found it fallen on
the road) Jack confessed not unlike a frightened
rabbit. "Faleamson kamank enaka," (You're fired). And
Patrao left. Of course all those who had enjoyed the
chicken the previous day came to Jack's rescue.

In the good old days, the pace was leisurely, stresses
fewer and everything was rosy. But the pay packet was
not growing significantly heavier even after two years.
I was stuck at Rs 500. We were free to ask the then
Manager Gustavo Fernandes for anything except a raise.
Asking for a raise was invariably met with a simply
question, 'Do you want to continue?'

There was no choice. Choice came knocking with the
arrival of Gomantak Times. And some of the more
enterprising journos left their training ground and
joined GT. But, to this day, Herald remains an
enriching and fond experience.

Chapter 13:
Birth pangs at Sant Inez

Elston Soares

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Elston Soares, a veteran of the desk, has worked at the Herald, Newslink and
Gomantak Times. Since moving out of Goa, he has worked in publications in
the Gulf and Singapore.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

February 15, 1987 marked a watershed in the history of
English-language journalism in Goa. That date marked
the launch of Goa's fifth English-language daily to be
launched in the union territory-turned-state.

Fifth, that is, if one includes the now defunct West
Coast Times and Newslink, an English-language newspaper
launched by the Tarun Bharat Group, and targeted at
Goa, though like the Tarun Bharat in Marathi earlier,
it too was printed from the neighbouring city of Belgaum.

This writer spent two months with Newslink in late 1986
in Belgaum, together with Haseeb Shakoor and Derek Almeida,
bringing out the newspaper in very trying and
primitive conditions.

Strangely, the Tarun Bharat group then thought that
they could do another Tarun Bharat with Newslink, that
is, to produce a newspaper for the Goa market from
Belgaum. But with one significant difference.

We did not have the wide correspondent network of Tarun
Bharat. We were, instead, expected to translate the
stories from Marathi -- something we did rather more
successfully in Gomantak Times a few years later.

But then, at Belgaum, this was a task easier said than
done. And as anyone who has tried translating stories
from Goa's Marathi press will testify, most stories
contain enormous amount of comment and a large number
of them are un-sourced.

Our plight could therefore be well imagined. Things I
guess have become somewhat better in the last few
years; but then it was a nightmare. Trying to fill up
six broad-sheet pages with material translated from
Tarun Bharat was way too optimistic a goal, to put it
mildly. So at best you managed a couple of pages. The
rest of the paper was trusty old teleprinter copy,
courtesy UNI (United News of India) and PTI (Press
Trust of India).

And as for our own reporting resources, there was
Lionel Messias who slaved all alone in the Panaji
office. This couldn't last. So in early December 1986,
when the Gomantak Group advertised for staff, I jumped
at the opportunity and applied. Besides being a good
opportunity to return home from Belgaum -- anyway one
used to travel home every week -- the adventure of
being there as a newspaper was being born was too good
to miss.

Not that I was totally unfamiliar with the birth pangs
of newspapers -- having joined the Herald as a trainee
when it was a few months old and Newslink when it was
in a similar position. But, birth pangs or whatever,
there's nothing like competition to add a little
excitement. It shakes up established players, and all
the poaching for staff only pushes up salaries and
gives hitherto ignored journalists their day in the sun.

I too was offered more money -- more than double my
last salary drawn in the Herald -- which I had quit a
few months earlier in less than happy circumstances.
Meanwhile, just as Gomantak Times was about to be
launched, Rajan Narayan in his inimitable style
launched a broadside against the to-be-launched
newspaper. For days, he wrote about how the Maharashtrawadis
were planning take over Goa's English-language media.
Never mind that most of the to-be-launched paper's
staff were old Herald hands.

However, GT -- as the paper was later referred to --
seemed on to making great progress as we neared launch
date. For the first time in the history of Goa's
English-language media, we had newspaper designers
working on what the paper would look like. A two-man
team from what was then Bombay was paid a princely sum
of Rs 25,000 to come up with the new design.

But that was where the good news stopped. The company
which had sold the Chowgules the desk-top publishing
equipment for the new newspaper had amazingly been able
to convince the management that there was no need for
paste-up artists. So there we were, trying to put
together a newspaper without artists or computer
operators or journalists who could do screen-based page layout.

There were no dummy runs; in fact, on the night before
the first edition, I was forced to call one Herald's
former paste-up artists to come in and help produce the
paper. Today, all this may sound strange -- given the
technological innovations of the last decade -- but
then it was crazy, particularly given that the
Chowgules had a fully functioning newspaper Gomantak
and should have known better.

Then to the issue of staff recruitment, and and one of
my pet peeves.

Goan newspaper managements have always hired
journalists from outside the state -- at exorbitant
salaries -- believing them to be better than local
talent. And so was the case with GT, where my then
chief-sub colleague, a sub from the Times of India, was
paid twice as much as I was. But just because they are
imported, foreign talent isn't always good or suitable
for the job at hand. This Bombay veteran was such a
miserable creature that on launch night, with editor
Mohan Rao shouting his head off, one was forced take
charge and ensure that we got the paper to the press.

But no mention of this paper's launch can be complete
without a mention of the role Gomantak editor Narayan Athawale
played. While generally supportive of the idea of the
newspaper in the early days, including recommending the
hiring of staff whose knowledge of the language was
less than adequate, he almost knocked the paper off its
feet before it was launched.

For this the late Mr Rao was to blame; but it was an
innocent mistake. A few days before the launch, Mr Rao
asked Mr Athawale to write a piece for the new
newspaper -- it remains the only one he ever did.

And with good reason.

In it, he proceeded to say that the new newspaper would
convey the views of the Marathi Gomantak in English. It
was a ridiculous claim; but something that the new
newspaper took years to live down. This proved to be a
real gift to the paper's rivals, which they exploited
to good effect.

The early days with GT were fun, because most people
didn't give us much of a chance. Our staff resources
too were meagre. There was Pramod Khandeparker, who was
the Assistant Editor but was more of a chief reporter;
and a retired English professor M.N. Pal as news editor
-- who spent a few months with us -- and G.K. Mohan Nair,
the ToI sub.

Ex-Herald colleagues included Francis Ribeiro. And
among the trainees was my good friend Vidya Heble. But
most of the staff were raw and we stumbled along in
those early days. The first year passed with GT barely
making a dent. I believe that the paper's circulation
barely exceeded a few hundred copies. And as the second
anniversary approached, Mr Mohan Rao was preparing to
say his goodbye. He original brief was to set up the
paper and leave after two years.

This set the stage for Ashwin Tombat to take charge of
the paper. And immediately we began to see a dramatic
change in the paper's fortunes. Of course, we were
helped along by the Narvekar molestation scandal. But
to be fair, it's not the issue that matters, but how
you handle it. If we did manage to raise our
circulation it was because of our reporting. Some in
media, did take exception to the fact that we named the girl.

But I feel it was needed then, specially if you have
are up against a powerful political figure. For those
who still doubt this view, I can only point to the way
the Miramar sex scandal died down without the guilty
being brought to book. However, one is not suggesting
that the victim in sex abuse cases should be named. The
only reason I have raised this issue is to explain why
the girl was named.

Sorry for digressing; but another turning point in the
history of paper came in 1993 when we were faced with a
contempt notice from the Supreme Court. Sadly, this
proved to me that whatever a management tells you, if
you get into trouble you face it alone. In the case in
question, we were hauled up for what was taken to be a
suggestion, in a cartoon, that a Supreme Court judge
was being bribed to adjourn a hearing in a case related
to the disqualification of then chief minister Ravi Naik.

How I got involved in the matter -- even though it was
my day off -- is another matter. But the real icing on
the cake was that what the court claimed we had
suggested in the cartoon apparently was the truth.
Unknown to us then, a colleague in our sister newspaper
had apparently tried to bribe a judge. But the deal had
fallen through because the judge wanted more money than
the politician was willing to pay. The story came out
when the journalist apparently did not return all the
money that he was given by politician and claimed he
had incurred "expenses".

Ravi Naik ultimately resigned, ironically after himself
losing an appeal against his disqualification in the
Supreme Court; and I was cleared of contempt charges.

Two years later I left GT.

But the memories remain.

Chapter 14:
An era of free sheeters

Miguel BraganzaHaving an educated father with a flair for speaking and
writing helps : Miguel's is a typical case study. As a
school student of St.Britto, his contributions to the
school magazine were like a celebrity column -- ghost
written by his father! His first original contribution
to the printed word was in a tabloid, bilingual 'free
sheeter' of sorts called the 'Vanguard' ('O Vanguardo')
in the mid 1970s. While at the University of
Agricultural Sciences,Bangalore, he was a
founder-member of the "Writers' Club" and one-time
Editor of the FYM: the Farm Yard
Manure..ooops...Magazine. Since then, Miguel has been
Goa University's first and only Garden Superintendent.
He took to writing more seriously after getting in
touch with journos in local newsrooms. He became the
first Consulting Editor of the Mapusa Plus free-sheeter
in July 2001.

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