AN ACTIVIST friend argues vehemently that this editor single-handedly opens up space more than any other in Goa. Some staff who worked under him have a sneering you-don't-know-the-inside-story attitude. Others credit the man with making them what they are. For the average Goan Catholic, Rajan Narayan is virtually a hero in real life, if not the newspaper equivalent of a patron saint.
Undeniably, this is the man who has shaped Goan journalism for at least two decades, and has big plans for more. Any venture to understand the contemporary media in this small state would be incomplete without a chapter on Rajan Narayan, who at the time of writing (end-September 2003) has just announced his decision to resign from the Herald.
This writer epitomises the love-hate relationship many a journalist in Goa would share with someone who suddenly descended on the Goan scene sometime in 1983. Someone who has critically shaped the understanding of Goa, including how we see ourselves and what are the issues we define as important.
Clearly, Rajan — by design or default — has contributed in significant manner to the Goa debate over the past two decades. If one has to name the five positive aspects of his legacy, it would be his ability to extend the debate (by saying things no editor would say); heading an organisation that, by design or otherwise, actually gave a chance to many youngsters to enter the profession; building up a till-now sustainable alternative to the once arrogant lone English-language daily in the state; giving space for speedy growth to youngsters entering the profession (even if, ironically, blocking that very growth later on); and for taking on some of Goa's most sacred of cows.
But Rajan's ability to cast himself in the 'anti-Establishment' mould is equalled by his skills in brokering deals (the recent track of contentious and fast-confused charges over the Rs 300,000 government sponsorship of the SARS campaign at Remo Fernandes' 50th birthday is a case in point, as are the willingness to propose projects to a government that are otherwise blasted from the editorial pulpit). This rather personalised essay, obviously biased and clouded by a string of personal experiences, seeks to narrate one person's run-ins into Goa's most long-serving editor. Perhaps from it could emerge a few snapshots outlining how things really work in the Goa media.
ONE'S FIRST impressions of Rajan was meeting up with a long-sleeve and tie-clad middle-aged 'uncle' during an interview a month or two before the launch of the English-language Herald in 1983. The location was in the old balcony (now demolished) that stood almost over today's Cafe Shanbhag, near the Panjim Municipal Garden. Besides Rajan, also sitting in on the interview was Valmiki Faleiro, who was egged on by the recent public debate to tell his side of the story in another chapter. (Devika Sequeira, then still in her 'twenties but quite in command of the situation, willing to spend extremely long hours and clear about what she expected to bring out a thoroughly-worked on feature page or front-page report as we later saw, had interviewed me in an earlier round. Being quite thick-skinned, one went in once again for another interview when advertised subsequently, only to be told that it was just as well one had returned, as the earlier applications had got misplaced!)
In the second round of interviews, my first encounter with Rajan, it took this then raw third-year college kid quite some to gauge some clues about the identity of this man shooting across the questions. Only a syllable or two gave hint of his South Indian origins, and with his formal clothes, he could have easily passed off as a scion of a landed Goan family. Rajan did seem a bit embarassed to make the offer of Rs 300 as the payment for a trainee sub-editor. But money didn't matter, and the joy of becoming a journalist while still in college more than sufficed. In any case, this princely sum was thrice what one then irregularly earned as an articled clerk to a chartered accountant. This offer was made on the spot, and accepted as instantenously.
In no time, we got that that telegram calling on us to join 'immediately'.
One recalls rushing into the colonial styled offices of what was to become the Herald — we then didn't even know what the paper was to be called, whether it would survive, who owned it, or whom we were working for. Within minutes of each other, Bosco Souza Eremita of Santa Cruz, Flavio Raposo of Carenzalem, Oswald Pinto of Aldona and myself took up our seats on the bare sub-editor's table, learning the basics of a profession that some continued in. Bosco seemed to be disillusioned that journalism offered so little scope for creative writing; but he stayed on and worked his way through Goa Today, Gomantak Times, the Portuguese Lusa news agency, and the Jesuit-run UCAN, apart from The Week and others publications. Flavio opted for a life in academics. Oswald Pinto went across from one form of reporting to another, and stuck with working at the less-insecure 'reporting' section of the state legislature. Reminiscing old times still brings back a smile. We remain friends.
But this was not always the situation. You could argue whether it's a Rajan-influenced legacy, but at our time the staff would often be at loggerheads with one another. It could have just been a faulty manner of encouraging subordinates to improve in their performance, but promises of promotions to more than one candidate, and repeated if unfair comparisons with one another, sometimes did leave strained relationships among the staff that otherwise worked together fairly peacefully.