West Coast Times : A dream ruined
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!
A rival to Hobson's choice NT
The last comment may be off the mark. As I later learnt
from Papa himself, the project was conceived from a
broader vision. Throughout the Konkan, from Ratnagiri district
in Maharashtra to South Canara (now Dakshin Kannada)
districts in Karnataka, no English-language daily was
available before noon or afternoon those days. While
the Mumbai dak editions of Times of India (ToI) and
Indian Express (IE) did the honours in coastal
Maharashtra, it was Bangalore's Deccan Herald in
coastal Karnataka. Goa's NT, which took only a couple
of hours less to reach Margao, could not be expected to
travel beyond its borders on mass circulation basis --
till WCT arrived, NT was in fact believed to have
pegged its circulation (to avoid re-classification to a
higher bracket, which implied higher minimum wages to
staff and workers!)
It was Papa's dream to fill this void of a morning
English-language daily for the entire Konkan, from Goa.
Hence the West Coast in the newspaper's name.
Competition to NT was only incidental. (I am not aware
of any family feuds among Goa's mining magnates at the
time and shall stand corrected if there was any such
raison d' etat. If there really were any differences
between the two families, they would be buried some
years later: under blessings of the Partagal Swamiji,
Papa's grand-daughter, Pallavi, was given in marriage
to the Dempo headman, Vasantrao's son, Srinivas -
current Chairman of the Dempo group.)
The infrastructure put into place to realize Papa's
dream matched. A modern civil construction,
meticulously designed, was put up at Davorlim, just
beyond Margao's municipal boundary. Editorial,
advertising and printing departments were housed under
one roof for optimum synch. All sections of the
newspaper's production process, from subbing to
typesetting, from proof reading to optical processing,
from plate-making to the final printing, were so
located as to achieve maximum production speed.
Attention was paid even to minor details, like sending
galley proofs to the news desk in a jiffy. Such were
the conveniences that the edition could go to bed by a
leisurely 4.30am (the print run took barely half an
hour.) Communication lines were made as reliable as
possible, given frequent power interruptions. Both PTI
and UNI ticker services were subscribed to (though only
the PTI had a carrier station in Margao to cope with
breakdowns.) A full-fledged bureau was set up in
Panjim, connected to the editorial offices in Davorlim
by teleprinter link.
The printing technology employed was said to be the
best available in India -- except in typesetting, where
for some unknown reason, Lino machines were used
instead of computers (maybe the value of lead scrap, in
place of katchra bromides that computers generated
those days, had something to do with it!) No more
block-making for photographs and illustrations; these
were optically processed directly to printing plates. A
modern web offset printing machine was brought in
(together with a Delhi-based Haryanvi operator who soon
acquired fondness for palm feni from nearby Jose's bar
and other unprintables from across the Rawanfond
railway tracks!). The machine churned out, if I
remember right, 50,000 copies/hour. Even the camera
purchased for the Staff Photographer was a
top-of-the-line German Leica, complete with an array of
lenses and filters, worth a lakh of rupees of 1978.
Krishna Kurwar managed the plant, under the
GM-cum-Publisher, Madkaikar. The result was a
refreshing, never-before-seen product on the landscape
of Goa's print media.
To match, a high-profile editorial team was put
together under the stewardship of Konkani-speaking M.G. Bailur
and his Associate, Tulu-speaking Y.M. Hegde, both
originally from South Canara. The backbone of the
newspages, the News Editor, was P.R. Menon, the old and
revered FPJ warhorse. The complement of three Chief
Subs and about a dozen Subs was picked from various
national dailies -- Goa could come up with only two
pairs of hands on the news desk. Being unfamiliar with
local affairs, this cast added onus on Kaka Singbal and
me to mark the priority of our dispatches in the
initial days!
The news-gathering team headed by Kaka (assisted by
Dharmanand Kamat in Panjim and Karamchand Furtado on
the TP link) was, of course, entirely home-bred. I
rushed college-mate Leslie St. Anne thro' a crash
course in typing to join me in Margao. In South Goa, we
had Radharao Gracias and Joey Rodrigues (both law
students then), Felicio Esteves (who went on to become
a Ministerial P.A. and co-author of the infamous Marks Scandal
subsequently scooped by me for the FPJ), John Carlos Aguiar
in Ponda, Vallabh Dessai in Quepem, Minguel Mascarenhas
in Sanguem, Kelly Furtado in Vasco, and half a dozen stringers
across South Goa. Manikrao (brother of the
award-winning ToI photographer, Prabhakar M. Shirodkar)
was our lensman, assisted by Lloyd Coutinho in Margao
and Lui Godinho in Vasco, excellent photographers all,
who provided the memorable photo inputs that shot the WCT
to instant fame.
WCT hit the newsstands in early-July 1978. We raced. In Margao,
I concentrated on at least one off-beat,
human-interest, interview-based or photo-story per day,
carried usually boxed or in anchor position. Aware of
our printing process strengths, I never lost an
opportunity to get Manik shoot a good pic, including
one that had to be clicked from a bubbling canoe in
choppy waters off a rocky beach in Betul, South Goa.
[This one was of a rotting human male corpse --
sprawling, shocking and white on the dark rocks - which
the cops had neglected to recover despite the local
Sarpanch's days-long complaints. P.R. Menon splashed
the pic in the lead-story position. I had to take
Papa's reprimand the following morning -- it seems the
Lt. Governor was taken so aback picking the morning's
WCT that his P.A. personally called Papa to complain
about bad taste. But I still considered the
two-and-half Rupees paid to the canoe man for the ride
a fine expense!]
Consciously, though, we shunned sensationalizing and Kaka
firmly shot the idea of carrying the day's matka
figures. We refrained from gimmicks like carrying dummy
advertisements, especially in the Classified columns,
barometer to a newspaper's popularity.
Instead, we went for innovative editorial content.
[Including, at my instance, a SundayMag column on
Sleight of Hand by the Salcete magician, Marco. When
Marco didn't show up for a couple of weeks, leading to
howls from eager readers of his column, Y.M. Hegde was
so furious that I had to fill in with a piece on how
Marco had performed the Vanishing Trick and restore
YM's trademark smile!]
To further notch up circulation, I almost coerced Madkaikar
into breaking the back of monopoly newspaper
distributors in South Goa -- by selling retail bundles
to any willing vendor on an initial sell-or-return basis.
Results were evident. By month 6, we sold around 4,500
copies in and around Margao alone, compared to less
than half that number by NT. Circulation problems,
however, persisted in North Goa, including delayed
deliveries to news stalls in the northern talukas. But
then, we had just two vehicles to cover the entire
territory. ("Penny wise, Pound foolish," P.R. Menon
forever rued, he never carried much of an impression
about the managerial abilities of Goan mineowners --
all his life, after all, Menon had worked in a
establishment owned by the Karnanis, Marwaris to the
core!) Even then, overall, WCT's print order would be
just about 2,000 copies short of the NT. And at the
rate we were going, the gap would fast be closed and surpassed?
My heroes, of course, were Shivram Borkar and Babal Borkar,
ace drivers who by day ferried the shift editorial
staff to and from quarters in Margao to office in Davorlim
. By night, the duo snoozed whatever time available, on
heaps of 'raddi' in the press. And zipped their way
with newspaper bundles to either end of Goa before the
crack of dawn -- in terribly overloaded, ramshackle,
dieselized Ambassador cars that should have been a
delight to Mario Miranda and Alexyz (we used a
syndicated pocket cartoon, incidentally, since Mario
was with the ToI group in Mumbai and Alexyz hadn't yet
surfaced as a cartoonist.) Babal and Shivram, true
heroes who virtually were at call, round the clock,
round the year. [They of course made out-of-pocket
money, ferrying passengers on the return. When this
reached Papa's ears, he tailed one of the drivers one
fine morning. When the unsuspecting fellow stopped to
take in passengers, Papa is reported to have pulled
alongside and advised the driver, "Bhara, bhara, taxi
ti!" The man was often magnanimous. The driver did not
lose his job.]
By the first year of publication, despite impressive
circulation figures, there were no signs of advertising
revenue picking up to reach the financial break-even
point. To the sheer dismay of our well-knit editorial
team, there were also no signs of implementation of the
pan-Konkan Plan. The management, instead, began
fighting shy to inject fresh investment in the
enterprise. Corners started getting cut. Virgin plates
came to used only for jacket pages, inside pages were
processed on recycled plates. Papa's dream began to
show signs of fatigue?
By the third month into the second year of publication,
amid this uncertain scenario, arrived Nicholas
("Nicky") Rebello, a lino-typesetter and leader of the
NT worker's union. I will not hedge a bet if Nicky was
'inspired' by his employers, but having been in touch
with him much after his retirement from NT at his home
in Betim, I can vouchsafe Nicky didn't travel to Davorlim
by any 'political' inspiration. My best guess is that
some restive workers of the WCT press, aware of wages
being paid at NT, must have approached and invited
Nicky to Davorlim. The workers of WCT press got
unionized and Nicky soon served a Charter of Demands.
The management stood its ground, often unreasonably in
the opinion of the editorial team - which of course had
no locus standi in the imbroglio. As the strike showed
signs of protraction, P.R. Menon, known for leftist
leanings from his fiery days at the FPJ, tried to
intervene with the management. To no avail.
(P.R. Menon was forever of the conviction that
managerial skills of Goan mine-owners were limited to
blasting, transportation and shipping -- and after the
importer's cheque arrived, to distributing the proceeds
to those who had blasted, transported and shipped. And,
of course, to profits!) Papa, strangely, sometimes used
queer management methods. There was this Chief
Accountant, hired for the PTI group, on a then princely
salary of Rs.4,000 a month. To get a feedback on the
Chief Accountant, Papa assigned a peon drawing no more
than Rs.250 a month. After office hours, the peon would
report to Papa on the activities of the C.A. from
which, inferences on the Chief Accountant were drawn!
But a man of immense experience and intuition he was.
From the streets of native Assolna in Salcete, where as
a child he hawked textiles, a wooden yard measure slung
across his shoulder and a coolie with a headload of
wares in tow, Papa must have surely post-graduated from
the University of Experience. On occasions when I was
seated in his chamber, his P.A., Sambari would buzz to
announce a visitor. In a flash Papa knew why the man
had come, what he would say, and had the replies even
before the visitor entered! I personally saw flaming
creditors leave his chamber smiling, even though not a
paisa had yielded! He had that rare ability to disarm
even the most irate visitor. But when it came to the
WCT strike, I have always held the belief that a man of
such calibre who could have easily placated the
agitated workers and even broken their Union, was
somehow carried away with the opinion of one trusted
man, who was obviously misleading him -- and since I've
named names, I will exclude Madkaikar and Kurwar.]
With no end to the strike in sight, Bailur, Hegde, Kaka
and me next met and virtually pleaded with Papa to
concede some sops to the striking workmen and get the
publication going. I think the establishment (may not
have been Papa) thereafter regarded as being pro-Union!
The editorial team, bulk of which was from outstation,
met frequently during those bekaar days and finally,
the painful decision emerged that we tell the
management to either settle the dispute with the Union
or we quit en masse. The management was unmoved. We
quit, but Papa's dispenser of bad advice insisted on
serving 'dismissal' letters!
And thus a lofty dream to publish from Goa, the land of
Banna Halli, an English daily serving the entire of
Lord Parashuram's Konkan on the West Coast of India,
went phut. A modern press and process, an excellent
editorial team -- path-breaking infrastructure in Goa's
history of newspaper production -- lay in waste.
The venerable Bailur returned to retirement, as did
P.R. Menon. Y.M. Hegde joined Mumbai's Shipping Times
as Editor. The Chief Subs and Subs returned to their
original publications or to new jobs. A Goan Sub,
Vincent Rangel, from Tivim-Bardez, went into business,
as the Mumbai-end partner of Manvin Couriers. I joined
the FPJ Group (Free Press Journal, its
tabloid-eveninger Bulletin and fortnightly, Onlooker)
as Goa Correspondent; moved in like capacity to IE when
FPJ's Chief Editor, S. Krishnamurty joined IE's Mumbai
edition as Resident Editor; played a role in J.D. Fernandes'
decision to start an English avatar of the near
defunct Portuguese O Heraldo (including the hiring of
its first editor) -- and almost joined, but didn't
quite -- as that newspaper's Chief Reporter, for
reasons that Rajan Narayan should know. And finally got
into business. Without regrets.