My 'studies' did not end with desk itself. I did my internship on the field as 'unofficial special stories reporter'. The love for writing prompted me to scan the paper for interesting news and do follow-up on these. This in the long run gave me the rich experience of a deskie as well as reporting, something which no journalism school would probably offer.
But I was not prepared for all this when I applied for the job of a sub-editor. Neither was I prepared for a question like 'Do you know English?', when I came for the interview. Asking a question like this to someone who has applied for a job in an English-language daily does seem to be a strange question. But 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 of Herald, Francis Ribeiro, who after initial hiccups became my friend and mentor. Francis Ribeiro's hand was in a crepe bandage when I first shook hands with him: Later on I came to know that he broke his hand in an unsuccessful attempt to jump over a bull while riding his scooter on the road to Saligao at night.
Not even in my nightmares had I ever seen myself sitting in the office of the Herald happily churning out copies or giving headlines to stories which thousands of readers would read the next day. But this happened on December 31, 1996. Since then, my innings in the Herald was full of excitement. Not even one single unnecessary off, as Francis would put it.
My tryst with the Herald began as a reader though. Those were my school days in Don Bosco, Panjim. Coming to think of it now, it does seem to be a strange coincidence that I joined Don Bosco school in 1983 as a fifth standard student, a few months before the Herald was launched as an English-language daily.
Don Bosco is such a fine school because, as one realised later in life, this was a school which awakened the latent talent in every student. Here my appetite for news (and, or course, lunch) grew day by day. Every morning, just before classes began, snippets 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 the ground-floor notice boards. A crowd of boys used to gather around this newspaper board during the 11 am interval, snacking on every word. I used to be part of this crowd. It became a ritual, to read the front-page and sports-page of the Herald in school.
In my higher classes, one enterprising fellow used to buy the whole newspaper and bring it to class, inevitably triggering a mad scramble for the eight pages. It was in my eighth standard, when one of the then Salesian fathers, Jude 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 moral that day for us kids was: read the Herald newspaper, it enriches your knowledge because it has got more news than advertisements compared to the other leading daily. Father Jude left us behind with one moral. I felt like crying.
Meanwhile, Rajan Narayan's editorials and Stray Thoughts rose to dizzying heights, and so did my reading interest in the Herald. So finally when I met the man himself, I was in a kind of daze.
Of course, the man never ceased to amaze me.
Much water has flowed under the Mandovi bridge carrying with it the angst, dismay, despair, frustration of many people who worked with me in the Herald into the Arabian sea over my style of functioning. Call it what you want, my stars, 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 who mattered most. Because, for a rookie like me, who had no formal training in journalism, getting trained or learning the nuances of journalism was of utmost importance. If I need to tweak my brothers for that, a little 'mea culpa'.
My innings in the Herald was a kaleidoscope of events both inside and outside the news-room. But, Goa being what it is, with sports and politics dominating the news-pages, I kept myself out of the politics and devoted myself to sports. Among other things, 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 got an opportunity to help in layout and editing of stories. This was really an exiting break for me because, being a sportsman myself, having played competitive judo, and with keen interest in football, I naturally took to Sportswatch like a fish to water.