--
all his life, after all, Menon had worked in a
establishment owned by the Karnanis, Marwaris to the
core!) Even then, overall, WCT's print order would be
just about 2,000 copies short of the NT. And at the
rate we were going, the gap would fast be closed and surpassed?

My heroes, of course, were Shivram Borkar and Babal Borkar,
ace drivers who by day ferried the shift editorial
staff to and from quarters in Margao to office in Davorlim
. By night, the duo snoozed whatever time available, on
heaps of 'raddi' in the press. And zipped their way
with newspaper bundles to either end of Goa before the
crack of dawn -- in terribly overloaded, ramshackle,
dieselized Ambassador cars that should have been a
delight to Mario Miranda and Alexyz (we used a
syndicated pocket cartoon, incidentally, since Mario
was with the ToI group in Mumbai and Alexyz hadn't yet
surfaced as a cartoonist.) Babal and Shivram, true
heroes who virtually were at call, round the clock,
round the year. [They of course made out-of-pocket
money, ferrying passengers on the return. When this
reached Papa's ears, he tailed one of the drivers one
fine morning. When the unsuspecting fellow stopped to
take in passengers, Papa is reported to have pulled
alongside and advised the driver, "Bhara, bhara, taxi
ti!" The man was often magnanimous. The driver did not
lose his job.]

By the first year of publication, despite impressive
circulation figures, there were no signs of advertising
revenue picking up to reach the financial break-even
point. To the sheer dismay of our well-knit editorial
team, there were also no signs of implementation of the
pan-Konkan Plan. The management, instead, began
fighting shy to inject fresh investment in the
enterprise. Corners started getting cut. Virgin plates
came to used only for jacket pages, inside pages were
processed on recycled plates. Papa's dream began to
show signs of fatigue?

By the third month into the second year of publication,
amid this uncertain scenario, arrived Nicholas
("Nicky") Rebello, a lino-typesetter and leader of the
NT worker's union. I will not hedge a bet if Nicky was
'inspired' by his employers, but having been in touch
with him much after his retirement from NT at his home
in Betim, I can vouchsafe Nicky didn't travel to Davorlim
by any 'political' inspiration. My best guess is that
some restive workers of the WCT press, aware of wages
being paid at NT, must have approached and invited