Behind the News: Voices from Goa's Press

also covered sports for the daily's special supplement. Subsequently, he h

to me like a dress rehearsal. Always

e and silently promised to skip rum the next Saturday night. And on moon-less nights, I stayed awake thinking about the burden of the Fourth Estate,

hat set apart this journalism school was its sense of applied practical nightmares. None wanted you to co

to a world of words. This wordy world consisted of stories and stories, each of them carrying a life of their own, each one clamouring for atte

he love for writing prompted me to scan the paper for interesting news and do follow-up on these. This in the long run

the interviewer was Rajan Narayan, the editor of Goa's oldest daily. I was almost in a stupor after meeting the man whom I had admired for over a decade. But this was an interview and I stumbled out an answer. Thankfully, the interview was very short and soon Rajan introduced me to the then Deputy News Editor o

ing headlines to stories which thousands of readers would read the next day. But this happened on December 31, 1996. Si

ing to think of it now, it does seem to be a strange coincidence that I joined Don Bosco school in 198

of important news used to be read out over the school loudspeakers. One fine morning, it was announced that a newspaper has been launched in town called the Herald, and that the front-page and sports-page of this newspaper would be displayed daily on one of

Borges, who taught moral science, brought copies of the Herald into the class and asked us to count the number of advertisements and the number of news items on each page. The verdict: There was more news than advertisements. The m

dizzying heights, and so did my reading interest in the Herald.

man never cea

rs, fate, karma, foolishness, anything, but I have this knack of raising the hackles of people. This inherent nature was actually a boon for me as it was a kind of weeding out process through which I landed in the company of those w

s, some months after I joined, the Herald launched the Sportswatch, the only sports supplement in Goa at that time. Francis Ribeiro, affectionately called Choppy, given charge to bring out the supplement every Friday, was running short of hands. So I go

keting world travels. Aravinda de Silva asked us to speak his manager for permission to do a write up on him. To our chagrin, we realised that his manager was in Sri Lanka and this was an excuse by Aravinda de Silva. This came amidst reports of some cricketeers expec

ing up a nose for news. One incident I remember is the disbanding of the Sesa Goa football team. Somehow, Choppy got wind of this. So we went to the Sesa management, which denied plans fo

Joe Vaz's office in Miramar. Here we collided with a collage of emotions from the coach to the manager and the players all in a stupor. This was a unique experienc

a from Bangalore during the players transfers period. Shorn of its cream players, the team was left high and dry without any strength, nullifying it chances of qualifying for the Big League. Peter Lim

t football player. But I almost chickened out as I did not have the guts to meet such a famous personality like Brahmanand. Help came in the form of Ashley do Rosario, into his second innings in Herald by then, who offered to accompany me. In Fatorda, I found out that some great p

gs football sometimes l

sking why action should not be taken against Mr Visvas Paul for 'subsidising' work. There were two or three points with which I was accused, one among those was that I had defied the News Editor Sergio Caldeira. I denied everything in a written reply. What they did not reckon was that I would sincer

on the desk, because, of the kind of stor

-writing desk and the sub-editors had to do all the dirty work of re-writing, editing and making a page. It was a tough job but it improved one's editing skills and my patience and perseverance too. So h

so threw up some

ald, we had another kind of rivalry. This running feud was between compositors and sub-editors on the Goa desk. The intensity of this feud b

ompositors used to concentrate on composing advertisement, after reporting to work regularly irregular, while we sub-editors breathed down on their necks to type our stories which we

d became their

dant. Our man, Mehboob, usually is deadpan on the keyboard but that particular day, he finished it on time. When I opened the copy, suddenly, the story seemed to be different from what I had read earlier. Wondering whether I got my story wrong, I rechecked the hard copy

told him that Good Friday fell on Thursday that particular year. All said and done, Mehboob was

otype operator was an apology of a man, most of the time reeking of a combination of the local urrak or feni and ghutka. The chief sub sent the page for spooling and left. Before I signed off from the office, I just happened to go to the plate making section to see how my page was shaping up and just glanced at Page 1 which was spooled and ready for plate-making. Lo and behold, yesterd

3 and brought it up for cut pasting on the grid. Somehow, our animosity made us wary of each other and we developed a mutual respect. Despite num

ugh these laws are hardly taken out of the freezer and defrosted. A case in point is the anti-smoking and anti-spitting law decreed in Goa with much fanfare and welcomed by many quarters. One aspect which was raised by noted anti-tobacco activist Dr Sharad Vaidya, was ho

spirit as they have no clue as to how to go about it. When the High Court gave an order banning loud music after 10 pm based on

000 watt music speaker and say the decibel level were high. When pointed out, the Secretary of the Goa State Pollution Control Board talked greek. For that matter, we discovered that the pollution control board was no

cale, but where the corruption by the police was displayed in its full naked glory nonetheless. At one rave party at Bamboo Forest in Anjuna, instead of stopping the party, the police arrived, collected their s

cing the law. We do not know whether money had changed hands but when we did not get any response to the repeated phone calls we made to the nearest police station we personally went to speak to the police officer on duty - but to our horror found the police station was closed, lock stock and barrel, as dese

re invaluable. Any memories I carry of Herald must be painted with the pictures of Choppy, Rico and Ashley, who contributed greatly to my development as a j

s notes or government hand-outs, is a different ball-game altogether. It was a question of being there first which I liked most in Herald. During the police firing incident at Cortalim on the anti-Meta Strips agitationists, when

first hand accounts of how the police firing started in Cortalim. We managed to elicit the names of injured, right from the horse

n us as we could not forget the gory images of the body parts of one injured youth. He was shot through his genitals. But we we

ed my cloak and bought