Читать книгу Behind the News: Voices from Goa's Press - Various - Страница 11

Valmiki Faleiro

One of Goa's own, home-grown profilic writers between the mid-seventies and mid-eighties, Faleiro worked his way through other professions too, before coming back to commit himself in writing once again, only to reveal a style that remains as readable as ever. Luckily for Goa, Faleiro doesn't rule out the possibility of taking to the pen – or should one say, the computer keyboard – sometime in the near future.

Summer, 1978. Whether Goa's only English daily hit newsstands in Margao at 9 or at 11 in the morning, mattered little. I was preparing for my final B.Com. exams due in a few weeks and had, in any case, tired myself of asking The Navhind Times' management to make it a newspaper (for us in South Goa) that went with breakfast, not brunch.

My association with The Navhind Times (NT) had begun precisely on February 23, 1975. NT carried an article penned jointly by D.M. Silveira and me. (Silveira was one of my two English lecturers at Margao's Damodar College and, with the other, B.G.Koshy, later turned to journalism: Silveira was Editor, ONLOOKER, of Mumbai's FPJ group and Koshy the Associate Ed. of The Current Weekly.)

Then on, the NT Editor, Dr. K.S.K. Menon, encouraged me to write. Off and on, he would also commission me to do Sunday features, sometimes full-page, on topics of prevailing reader interest. Between 1975 and 1978, I had some 45 by-lines at the NT, then a 6-pager (10 pages on Sunday.)

Sometime in between, Dr. K.S.K. asked me to join the NT desk – with free education at Dempo College of Commerce and no-night-shifts baits. I ought to have grabbed the offer. The company was great: K.P. Nair (News Ed), the incredibly witty Balan (Chief Sub), my friend Patrick Michael (a gifted Malayalee who, with me, but surreptitiously, covered North Goa for The Current Weekly – together we had done the Siddarth Bandodkar shooting story, but who K.S.K. ensured stayed as Proof Reader without promotion at the NT!) Gabru and Cyril D'Cunha were at the desk and Gurudas R. ("Kaka") Singbal, Pramod Khandeparkar and Jovito Lopes on the field?

For reasons that will take me off this track, I declined the offer. Promising Dr. K.S.K., however, that I'd join the day I complete graduation – though I never really meant to take journalism as a career. I had set my sights on becoming a Company Secretary after B.Com. but while doing the correspondence course, thought I'd work – and earn pocket money.

The '70s were times of MRTP culture. There were monopolies and there were restrictive trade practices, and Commissions that could barely hold them in check. Even though Dr. K.S.K. to my sheer amazement once bragged that the Prime Minister's private secretary telephoned him while he was shaving just that morning (to compliment him on the day's "excellent" editorial), fact was that NT rarely traveled 35 kilometres to Margao before 8 or 9 in the morning. Times wouldn't change and the NT stood still. It was a proud monopoly, which, after all, had weathered challenges from the likes of Goa Monitor (Papa Baba Sequeira-owned, Jagdish Rao -published, Mario Cabral Sa-edited and Alfred De Tavares -chief reported.)

Back to the summer of 1978. As our 'unholy trinity' of Aleixo, Shekhar and me daily sat at the Govind Poy house on Abade Faria Road, Margao, preparing for our final B.Com. exams, I missed Kaka Singbal – a.k.a. Balsing, the Sunday columnist and Chief Reporter of NT – and Sripad P. Madkaikar, who at one time or the other published most of Goa's dailies. Both had called at home earlier in the day. Kaka left a note saying he had something "interesting" for me and would I kindly see him soon. I met him at his Patto quarters early next morning. He said he had quit NT and joined a newspaper that was going to be published – from Margao! He said the proprietor, Panduronga (Chalebab) Timblo – Papa to most of us – had made a blanket offer: whatever the NT offered me, he would offer more!

I immediately went to Navhind Bhavan. Dr. K.S.K. was seated with Fr. Lactancio Almeida, then Editor of Vauraddeancho Ixtt. I explained that it would help me cope with my Company Secretary studies from the comforts of my own home in Margao? The ex-Army man perennially dressed in cool white almost sprang from the chair, his neatly waxed whiskers bristling with rage: "Are you going to that W.C. s**t Times?"

He tried a different line, "Are you going to join my competitor and stab me in the chest?" And yet another, "Remember I am the P.A.C. (Press Advisory Committee) chairman for another three years – and as long as I'm around, I'll ensure you don't get an accreditation!!"

I was painfully aware that I was reneging on a promise, that by joining a competitor, I'd hurt the hand that had, in good measure, groomed me. But Company Secretaryship was my object – not journalism – and I honestly imagined that studying the course material and sending out its Response Sheets would be better done from home and without working on shifts, as I'd at NT. [I was, eventually, recompensed with poetic justice. I hadn't reckoned that joining a fledgling – nay, nascent – publication as its Staff Reporter, with added responsibility of news-gathering in South Goa (which meant re-writing copy from mofussil correspondents who largely hailed from a vernacular background) would be so engrossing an affair that I ended up sending not a single Response Sheet to the Institute of Company Secretaries of India!]

The West Coast Times (WCT) began churning out dummies by late-June 1978. My die was cast on June 6, 1978, by way of acceptance of the appointment letter, personally signed by Papa (Panduronga Timblo) himself. One of the most promising publishing ventures in the history of Goa's print media was about to take off?

The mid-'70s witnessed a boom in Goa's mining industry, both in terms of productivity and profitability. Panduronga Timblo Industrias (PTI) had evidently also made pots of cash, particularly from its manganese mines in Rivona, Quepem. While brother, Gurudas' Timblo Private Limited (TPL) had during this time invested in some far-sighted (but alas, badly managed) industrial enterprises, including fertilizers, rubber footwear and collapsible tubes, youngest brother, Modu's Sociedade de Fomento Industrial (SFI) was consolidating its strengths in mining and diversifying into hospitality. PTI did not lag behind – with Parshuram Paper Mills at Chiplun, industrial gases in Bangalore and, to the surprise of many, an English-language newspaper from Margao!