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Valmiki Faleiro

Valmiki Faleiro, a Goa-based working journalist between 1975-83, covered Goa for national publications like The Current Weekly, the Free Press Journal group and the Indian Express. He was Staff Reporter with the West Coast Times and as a freelancer, contributed to various journals like The Navhind Times, Goa Today, The Sun Weekly, Newstrek, Detective Digest, Mirror, Newsmag.

The early 1980s. Happy days were here again for Goa's first English-language daily, The Navhind Times (NT). After a brief challenge to its other crucial attribute, that of being the only English-language daily, from Goa Monitor in the late 1960s, NT had just staved off another. West Coast Times, launched July-1978, blazed a luminous trail in quality journalism but, like a comet after a brief showing, vanished into oblivion.

NT was back to its snug-seat monopoly.

A slave of the economic thought of Adam Smith, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill, or our own Nani Palkhivala, JRD Tata and M.R. Pai, I have been a votary of free enterprise and competition – and allergic to monopolies. A monopoly is bad for any consumer. And infinitely worse in a crucial commodity that helps form a society's opinion.

I had been speaking to some wealthier Goans, my idea of launching a broadsheet weekly, which would, over a period, be converted to a full-fledged daily. A tabloid (like Goa Monitor) did not appeal; and mere excellence in editorial content and quality printing (like West Coast Times) did not suffice. What mattered was the capacity to financially sustain a daily newspaper (by absorbing annual losses even while continuing to maintain quality) until the product turned round, which could take some years. That kind of money in Goa only mineowners had – like all of Goa's major dailies! So my idea was start small, stay around till you built adequate advertising recognition and support, and only then convert to a daily – at a fraction of a daily's budgetary requirement and without having to own printing facilities from day one.

Even then, not many Goan businessmen I was in touch with were willing to risk any substantial venture capital.

It was around this time, June 1983, if I recall the month correctly, that a mutual friend in the printing business in Mumbai and Goa, told me that A.C. Fernandes, Patrao of the Panjim stationers Casa J.D. Fernandes, was toying with the idea of an English-language daily. The mutual friend suggested I discuss my ideas with Fernandes.

A.C. Fernandes wasn't a mineowner, not yet anyway, but I had heard he was a shrewd businessman. He purchased Goa's only extant Portuguese-language daily, O Heraldo, not so much for love of the language or its dwindling local readership, but evidently for the intrinsic value of its press and its centrally-located premises. It was said he took full advantage of the daily's lable, in those days of the Permit Raj, to import (from Italy?) a Lino typesetting machine, which actually was used for all and sundry job works of the business house – even as the major part of good ole O Heraldo continued to be composed by hand!

But what the heck! A shrewd and street-smart man, I reckoned, would any day be better than a cash-filled dumbo. Moreover, what Patrao may have lacked by way of adequate resources was made up in having his priorities right. His love Goa and her way of life, his concern about increasing corruption in Goa's polity and aspiration for rightful honour to the mother tongue, were transparently genuine.

The mutual friend arranged our introductory meeting, over lunch at the A.C. Fernandes residence at Santa Cruz one rainy Sunday. The sharp-eyed (and, as I was later to discover, sharp-tempered) Patrao, his demure wife and sons, John, Raul and Oswald, with the mutual friend and I sat across a carefully laid table. I spoke about WCT and why it failed, my ideas for a successful daily and my business plan for such a venture. A.C. Fernandes (the sons, those days, played second fiddle), I think, was impressed. And thus began a relationship, where I did my best to midwife a second English-language daily for Goa – or almost.

The search was on for an Editor. Ads had been placed in the major national dailies. Surprisingly, about a dozen pros were willing to come to Goa! But the best were out of reckoning, they expected salaries the kind Patrao never figured existed! Ervelle Menezes was the best bet. When I covered Goa for the Indian Express a couple of years before, Ervelle was a Chief Sub at IE's Mumbai edition. After Bhat, the then News Editor, died in harness, Ervelle had taken over as the News Editor and was in that position at this point of time.

From deep within, I hoped that Ervelle it would be to launch the Herald as its founding editor. A professional and a Goan, he was a suitable choice. For me too: I had been, by now, ordained to be the to-be newspaper's Chief Reporter, on insistence of A.C. Fernandes and his son Raul. My own plan had been to be with them till the day the newspaper took off; I was, by this time, already getting into business, developing family-owned land at Fatorda, Margao.

I never met or spoke to Ervelle about this job. Raul had, and I gathered that Ervelle was indeed interested. I was aware that he had come to Goa to check things out. Ervelle, of course, is around and it would be for him to say why he declined. What I surmised at that time, though, was that Ervelle must have been put off by local opinion about A.C. Fernandes' financial capacity to sustain a daily newspaper to the stage it generated its own resources. Ervelle of course explained it had something to do with his mother's illness.

Ervelle's decision was a great setback to the plan – there was just one last application left in Raul's file of responses for the Editor's post. If I had not urged its consideration earlier, it was because the applicant lacked experience with a daily newspaper. The applicant's only exposure to a daily was a brief stint at the Financial Express – not a mainstream newspaper. His c.v. spoke of experience at Mirror. But then, magazine journalism is not the same as what goes into the making of a daily newspaper. Moreover, the applicant wasn't even into journalism for quite some time: he presently dwelt in the dreary world of advertising and public relations, at one of Mumbai's lesser-known firms. Such was the irony.

What the NT had been to Goa's English readers, a Hobson's choice, Rajan Narayan's application now was to Raul and me!

Fearing that Patrao may get discouraged enough to abandon the newspaper idea, my airflow changed and I convinced A.C. Fernandes that we invite the man and take a closer look at his credentials. Rajan was lodged at Panjim's Hotel Mandovi (I wonder if he ever stayed there again, used as in later years he was to offered or obtained five-star hospitality across Goa's coast!) Patrao, Raul and I met him. The parleys went so long in the afternoon that there was no restaurant open for lunch. Rajan and I had to make do with puri bhaji at Cafe Real (I wonder, again, how he'd have raved and ranted in his latter-day popular Sunday column, Stray Thoughts . But beggars were not choosers, those days.)

To me, Rajan came out as a clever and crafty mind. But again, what the heck! At that point of time, the NT had a clever and resourceful skipper at its helm. I had known Bikram Vohra from my days at the Indian Express. When marched to Ahmedabad as Resident Editor of the IE's local edition, to fend off competition from the formidable Times of India, one could count on Bikram to come up with extremely off-beat ideas: he painted the town red with the slogan, Keen ahead of the times, read the Express! To compete, we would need a crafty mind and I though Rajan fitted that bill pretty well. From me, Rajan wanted to learn more about Goa – its history, economy, religions, cultural mix the background of its English-language press and, of course, of the A.C. Fernandes clan.