By Dr Olav Albuquerque drolav...@gmail.com Norbert Rego, who passed away on Monday, November 13, 2023, at the age of 70 years, was my colleague and friend for several decades in The Times of India (ToI) at Mumbai. He spent over 40 years in the ToI and adeptly brought out the Sunday Review much before some staffers were removed and it was shut down. He knew exactly what to say and how to say it. And what is more -- how to display it using banner headlines which adroitly fit into the space which kept changing with the changing advertisement position.
Norbert was ailing for two days before he died of a heart attack on the afternoon of November 13. He was admitted to hospital and discharged. After he returned home, he was feeling uneasy until the end came on Monday afternoon. I knew him as a warm, friendly, courteous and diligent human being. More than that, he was a competent professional, bringing out the Sunday Review with feisty headlines, witty acronyms and uplifting visuals to inject dull and prosaic copy with vivacity, sparkle and life. When I first knew him, he was working under Fatma Zakaria, the mother of the now US-based noted journalist Fareed Zakaria. She later joined The Daily, a tabloid launched by Russy Karanjia, a colourful and irreverent tabloid, which however folded up like its sister-publication the Blitz. Norbert would frequently chat with me in the fourth floor canteen of The Times of India building at Fort, opposite what is now known as Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus. And sometimes, another journo, the Goan-origin Ivan Fera, from the Illustrated Weekly of India, would join us in the canteen for a cup of tea or snacks which were heavily subsidized and cost one rupee or more -- something unbelievable today. Ivan Fera later died of cancer, at the age of 36. He never told a soul he was suffering from this killer illness. Our discussions would cover politics, law, science and technology. Norbert was an aficionado, who knew something of everything and everything about page-making and page-design. Apart from writing crisp copy. After we spoke, Norbert would rush off to meet his deadline which crept up every week. Before that, he would phone contributors to coax them to meet their deadlines. And when they did, with shoddy copy, he would phone them again with a diplomatic touch asking to clarify a badly-written phrase here-or-there. Norbert was the President of The Catholic Staff Association of The Times of India and managed this Association very well with the Secretary of the Association, Sylvester Lobo, who was a chief sub-editor in Science Today, before it closed down. Sylvester Lobo and this writer worked under the then feisty and outspoken Publishing-Director, Pritish Nandy, the anti-thesis of Girilal Jain, who was dour, kept to himself, and nearly always wore a suit-and-tie to office. As a journalist, Norbert Rego was in a class by himself. Though a deskman, he wrote articles and news items which were carried in the newspaper. His book reviews were pithy, succinct and encapsulated the essence of the book in as few words as possible. In fact, he was neither taciturn nor loquacious. He spoke when he had to. But the titbits he revealed about other senior journos like Walston Rego and his brother R.H.S. Rego, were interesting. As were his titbits about his boss and the then Editor of the Sunday Review, Fatma Zakaria. These were a triumvirate of Regos -- Rainier Hercules Socrates Rego (or RHS for short), Walston Rego, and well, my friend, Norbert Rego, the quietest and the most sober of all the three Regos. And all the three Regos were in different departments of Bennett Coleman & Co. RHS Rego headed the News Bureau, Walston was a Chief Sub-Editor in the Economic Times while Norbert was in the Sunday Review section. 2 Norbert Rego was a first-hand witness of the turbulent 1990s in Bennett Coleman & Co. Journalists who were members of the then vibrant Bombay Union of Journalists (BUJ) went on a strike because The Independent (a new newspaper from the ToI stable) had just been started to wean away journalists from The Indian Post, another paper then doing well, with attractive salaries. And well, hasten the shutting down of The Indian Post. All the BUJ members were afraid these journalists from The Independent, located on the fifth floor would be brought down to the ToI on the third floor and placed above us with fat salaries and fancy designations. This is exactly what took place. Norbert Rego carried on unperturbed because he was practical, analytical, and level-headed. He refused promotions-on-contract linked to a questionable evaluation-criterion with the result that he lost his seniority to juniors who were not as competent as he was. Had he to accept these promotions on contract, he would have perhaps been a Resident Editor of one of The Times of India editions. Journalists from The Times of India (ToI) were afraid these journalists from The Independent would be brought down to supercede ToI journos with long years of service. This is exactly what took plce. Dina Vakil, a sophisticated Parsi lady, headed The Independent at that time. Unlike journalists of today, she interacted mainly with her departmental heads and took decisions strictly based on what they told her. Norbert had never worked under her -- but knew about her and her style of functioning. After the Mumbai Mazdoor Sabha (MMS) entered the fray, the tug-of-war between the BUJ and the MMS intensified. The MMS raised slogans at the main gate of Bennett Coleman & Co., at times using cymbals to create a din during lunch hour in the 1990s. Pamphlets making allegations against the management and the BUJ journalists were left on the desks of the ToI journalists. One such pamphlet referred to Dina Vakil as a 'Banoo' -- a derogatory term. Norbert who was senior to me, advised me: "Do not get close to either the management or the unions. Just do your work sincerely and assert your rights." I took his advice seriously for 20 long years. Norbert must be chuckling when he reads what I have written about him. * * * Goanet Reader is compiled and edited by Frederick Noronha (FN). *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*- Join a discussion on Goa-related issues by posting your comments on this or other issues via email to goa...@goanet.org See archives at http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/ *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-