r 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 ei