and a retired English professor M.N. Pal as news editor
-- who spent a few months with us -- and G.K. Mohan Nair,
the ToI sub.

Ex-Herald colleagues included Francis Ribeiro. And
among the trainees was my good friend Vidya Heble. But
most of the staff were raw and we stumbled along in
those early days. The first year passed with GT barely
making a dent. I believe that the paper's circulation
barely exceeded a few hundred copies. And as the second
anniversary approached, Mr Mohan Rao was preparing to
say his goodbye. He original brief was to set up the
paper and leave after two years.

This set the stage for Ashwin Tombat to take charge of
the paper. And immediately we began to see a dramatic
change in the paper's fortunes. Of course, we were
helped along by the Narvekar molestation scandal. But
to be fair, it's not the issue that matters, but how
you handle it. If we did manage to raise our
circulation it was because of our reporting. Some in
media, did take exception to the fact that we named the girl.

But I feel it was needed then, specially if you have
are up against a powerful political figure. For those
who still doubt this view, I can only point to the way
the Miramar sex scandal died down without the guilty
being brought to book. However, one is not suggesting
that the victim in sex abuse cases should be named. The
only reason I have raised this issue is to explain why
the girl was named.

Sorry for digressing; but another turning point in the
history of paper came in 1993 when we were faced with a
contempt notice from the Supreme Court. Sadly, this
proved to me that whatever a management tells you, if
you get into trouble you face it alone. In the case in
question, we were hauled up for what was taken to be a
suggestion, in a cartoon, that a Supreme Court judge
was being bribed to adjourn a hearing in a case related
to the disqualification of then chief minister Ravi Naik.

How I got involved in the matter -- even though it was
my day off -- is another matter. But the real icing on
the cake was that what the court claimed we had
suggested in the cartoon apparently was the truth.
Unknown to us then, a colleague in our sister newspaper
had apparently tried to bribe a judge. But the deal had
fallen through because the judge wanted more money than
the politician was willing to pay. The story came out
when the journalist apparently did not return all the
money that he was given by politician and claim