Sorry to be the harbinger of such bad news this early in the morning... our long-time friend and a very widely known figure in cyberspace, journalist Joel D'Souza (69) passed away after a very brief illness at the District Hospital, Mapusa. Joel was a journalist since the 1960s almost, worked for a range of mastheads, and had so many interesting stories to narrate...
We were good friends and worked a lot together. He was extremely productive. While also very low-profile and always excessively modest about his work, he kept reporting, photographing, videographing,and editing on so many Goa-related issues. To get him to talk about his experiences, you needed to bait him with names of others! Joel had a lot of unfinished work on hand... one is a (Romi Konkani-English) dictionary he co-authored with Isidore Dantas, awaiting publishing. Joel successfully made a shift-over to the online media, early on, soon after it reached Goa in the 1990s. He had a long stint with GoaCom and Goanet, send out news updates for perhaps a decade... Just a few months back, we were sitting in a very noisy restaurant in Porvorim, and I was coaxing him to write about his experiences in journalism for a forthcoming book. As usual, he was reticent, almost believing that he had nothing to talk about. But as he kept telling me one fascinating story after another, I just could not resist and used the video cam for note-taking. The resultant interviews are below... (What was most surprising was when he told me his name wasn't actually Joel... and brushed aside my curiosity. Just this morning, his good friend Alexyz told me it was... Joseph!) Joel D'Souza, a journo in Goa since the 1960s! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54zwYM_a154 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfhtcrczvaM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NA-wvQIz78I Joel, you did a great job in taking the story far and will, and in documenting the Goa reality. Rather than mourning your death, we need to celebrate the wealth of your work. Your contribution to the Romi Konkani cause will also be long remembered. Needless to say, we will miss your regular presence ... but there are a lot of happy memories that will live on. FN -- P +91-832-2409490 M 9822122436 Twitter: @fn Facebook: fredericknoronha Goa,1556 Shared Content at https://archive.org/details/goa1556
