"That's the answer I get after all that I have done for you? I am disappointed. Goodbye and good luck tomorrow."
"Thank you," he said and put the phone down first. I pictured him, in his customary white khadi bush shirt and pants, wearing a self-righteous expression on his face.
During this call, over the carriage of my Underwood typewriter, I was watching the news editor for my voice carried unusually far. But he was focused on his work and didn't look up in my direction.
I lit up a cigarette and hunched over the typewriter, dismayed beyond description. I had heard that Kakodkar was a highly principled man, and then with a sinking feeling in my gut, I realized I was being used, a means to the end. I shall never forget that moment.
Then I walked to my favorite bar to nurse my bruised ego.
Three days later, the election results came out. The Congress was wiped out without a single seat in Goa. The MG won 14 seats to the UG's 12, with two independents, plus an independent winning in Diu and a lone Congress victory in Daman.
I kept brooding about Kakodkar. Did he know something that I didn't? Was that why he said he couldn't do anything for me? I had no heart to ask him that. After that personal and private telephone conversation, the two of us carried on as if nothing had happened. And during the next year, my encounters with Kakodkar became strictly professional but cordial.
Echoes in Toronto
But the manipulation of news by newspaper proprietors was not limited to Goa. I heard a similar echo in Toronto in the nineties.
In the 1988 elections, the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, led by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, had won a second majority with 169 seats out of 295 in the House of Commons. The Liberals were in opposition with 83. In the ensuing five years, the Mulroney government brought in a new bill called Goods and Services Tax, a highly controversial measure that proved unpopular with the majority of Canadians. Still, the government went ahead and passed the tax bill — a 7% tax on all goods and services effective January 1990. During this term, Mr. Mulroney was also criticized for being too friendly with the Americans.