meeting,
over lunch at the A.C. Fernandes residence at Santa Cruz
one rainy Sunday. The sharp-eyed (and, as I was later
to discover, sharp-tempered) Patrao, his demure wife
and sons, John, Raul and Oswald, with the mutual friend
and I sat across a carefully laid table. I spoke about
WCT and why it failed, my ideas for a successful daily
and my business plan for such a venture. A.C. Fernandes
(the sons, those days, played second fiddle), I think,
was impressed. And thus began a relationship, where I
did my best to midwife a second English-language daily
for Goa -- or almost.

The search was on for an Editor. Ads had been placed in
the major national dailies. Surprisingly, about a dozen
pros were willing to come to Goa! But the best were out
of reckoning, they expected salaries the kind Patrao
never figured existed! Ervelle Menezes was the best
bet. When I covered Goa for the Indian Express a couple
of years before, Ervelle was a Chief Sub at IE's Mumbai
edition. After Bhat, the then News Editor, died in
harness, Ervelle had taken over as the News Editor and
was in that position at this point of time.

From deep within, I hoped that Ervelle it would be to
launch the Herald as its founding editor. A
professional and a Goan, he was a suitable choice. For
me too: I had been, by now, ordained to be the to-be
newspaper's Chief Reporter, on insistence of A.C. Fernandes
and his son Raul. My own plan had been to be with them
till the day the newspaper took off; I was, by this
time, already getting into business, developing
family-owned land at Fatorda, Margao.

I never met or spoke to Ervelle about this job. Raul
had, and I gathered that Ervelle was indeed interested.
I was aware that he had come to Goa to check things
out. Ervelle, of course, is around and it would be for
him to say why he declined. What I surmised at that
time, though, was that Ervelle must have been put off
by local opinion about A.C. Fernandes' financial
capacity to sustain a daily newspaper to the stage it
generated its own resources. Ervelle of course
explained it had something to do with his mother's illness.

Ervelle's decision was a great setback to the plan --
there was just one last application left in Raul's file
of responses for the Editor's post. If I had not urged
its consideration earlier, it was because the applicant
lacked experience with a daily newspaper. The
applicant's only exposure to a daily was a brief stint
at the Financi