It was really nice to read that Gurunath Pai was promoted as Information Officer in the IIS. He has done yeomen service in Goa, bringing to public attention the small but significant aspects of life. Till recently he was the news editor fro AIR station, Panaji. He was the Director of Information during the 1994 exposition of Goemcho Saib.
I first met Gurunath when we did a course in Tiger prawn farming at the Fisheries Department's Dauji Fish Farm, Old Goa, along with Max Lewis[ now of Sure Clean fame]. It is a friendhip that has stood the test of time and human exigencies. My last interaction with him was for the promotion of Kokum and the Festival of Plants and Flowers at SFX school, Siolim. Gurunath is a committed nature lover. I hope that he will soon be posted back to work in amchem bhangarachem Goem. Thankfully, the All India Radio is not stuck with script polemics. It accepts 'scripts' or text of the talk/tiatr/lecture in both, the static 'Nagri' [Devnagri] and the roaming 'Romi'[ Roman], scripts in its stride. The script is hardly the problem, the vocabulary and the grammar is. A language has to communicate, to be understood. Gurunath and I understood our mother tongue. ................................ PANAJI, Sept 8: Mr Gurunath K Pai, in charge of regional news unit, AIR Panaji, has been promoted to senior technical grade of Indian Information Service[IIS] and has been posted as information officer at Press Information Bureau, Kolkata. Mr Pai started his career in journalism in 1975 as sub-editor of Uzvadd, a daily published in Roman Konkani script from Panaji. Later, he joined as sub-editor at AIR Panaji and was Konkani news reader AIR Panaji and Mumbai. In 1982, Mr Pai joined Indian Information Service. He also served in PIB at New Delhi and Panaji and had a stint as Director of Department of Information and Publicity, Goa, for two years on deputation. Mr Pai has toured Zimbabwe, Zambia and Tanzania with the then President, Mr R Venkataraman, on his official tour. (NT) ................................................................. Viva Goa. Miguel
