My first big story was an interview with cricketer Arjuna Ranatunga, the then captain of the Sri Lanka team, which came to play in Goa. The highlight was not my interview with Ranatunga but the startling discoveries we made of some of the murky path in which the cricketing world travels. Aravinda de Silva asked us to speak his manager for permission to do a write up on him. To our chagrin, we realised that his manager was in Sri Lanka and this was an excuse by Aravinda de Silva. This came amidst reports of some cricketeers expecting to be paid a fee — or extract money, depending on how you see it — for an interview. The standard rate then it seems was Rs 10,000! Sunil Gavaskar too behaved oddly with us when we asked him to talk to us. This was much before the match-fixing scandal broke out.
Thanks to Choppy, even though I started by helping him out on the desk, I also got to do many stories for Sportswatch. This taught me many lessons in writing, meeting deadlines, and building up a nose for news. One incident I remember is the disbanding of the Sesa Goa football team. Somehow, Choppy got wind of this. So we went to the Sesa management, which denied plans for any such move. We ran a story to this effect in Sportswatch . By the next week, things took a dramatic turn and the news became official. The Sesa Goa football team was indeed disbanded.
On the day when the decision was announced, both Choppy and me did not even have time for lunch. We grabbed some samosas and straightaway landed at the team manager Joe Vaz's office in Miramar. Here we collided with a collage of emotions from the coach to the manager and the players all in a stupor. This was a unique experience. One which provoked us to criticise the management strongly; but journalistic ethics reined us in. It taught me not to be emotional when dealing with a profession.
It seems that Alvito D'Cunha, one of the dashing forwards for East Bengal today, was one among a group of Sesa Goa players who ditched the club midway in the Second Division league and came back to Goa from Bangalore during the players transfers period. Shorn of its cream players, the team was left high and dry without any strength, nullifying it chances of qualifying for the Big League. Peter Lima Leitao, who was the corporate manager for the team, is on record saying that if Sesa Goa had qualified for the National League, then perhaps the decision to disband the team would have been put off.
Of course, it was not all hunky dory for me on the Sportswatch desk. Neither could I boast that I had become a full-fledged writer with hardly two years of experience. When Brahmanand Shankhwalkar won the Arjuna Award, Choppy asked to me to go to Fatorda for a profile of this great football player. But I almost chickened out as I did not have the guts to meet such a famous personality like Brahmanand. Help came in the form of Ashley do Rosario, into his second innings in Herald by then, who offered to accompany me. In Fatorda, I found out that some great people like Brahmanand, who win laurels for the country and win accolades for themselves, have no airs about themselves. This Arjuna awardee was just an ordinary person who performed extraordinarily. Sheer grit, determination, hard work and humbleness were his only tools of success.
My passion for all things football sometimes landed me in trouble too.
Officially, my job at the Herald, by this time, was being part of the Goa desk. On a few occasions, the news editor and the editor discovered that I was going all the way to Fatorda, 40 Kms from Panjim, to watch the National Football League. Soon enough, I got a 'goonish absurdism' from the editor asking why action should not be taken against Mr Visvas Paul for 'subsidising' work. There were two or three points with which I was accused, one among those was that I had defied the News Editor Sergio Caldeira. I denied everything in a written reply. What they did not reckon was that I would sincerely came back from the football match, and complete my day's work, which was doing the Goa page. But seniors later did not have any qualms about accompanying Choppy and me for an important match during working hours. What's more, after coming back from the match, he even helped me complete the page!
Doing a Goa page was the dreariest thing on the desk, because, of the kind of stories that landed in from the correspondents.
Stringers used to send three or four pages of hand-written foolscape papers, which, when edited, turned out to be just single column stories. I wonder how the scene is now. In those days, there was no re-writing desk and the sub-editors had to do all the dirty work of re-writing, editing and making a page. It was a tough job but it improved one's editing skills and my patience and perseverance too. So how could one be blamed for opting to take a few hours for a harmless passion like watching a football match? I footed hefty petrol bills for this by the way, but could not claim the travelling allowance.
One's desk job also threw up some funny situations.