What a lovely post by Gerald Pereira’s daughter. Living in Byculla in the 60s, a few buildings away from Gerald and his family, I closely relate to everything Lara writes. My father naturally knew Gerald and his friends of whom Raymond Dantas and Victor D’Mello were also friends of my family.
These men then in the prime of mature adulthood were intellectual Goans who in their idealism and communist influenced thinking were constantly conspiring to find ways to discredit Portuguese rule in Goa. Trade unionism was another extension of their idealism. Early days after Indian independence were the times of rich moneybags like Birla, Goenka and Morarka who unlike the Tatas, cared nothing about the welfare of the workers they employed. Gerald Pereira and his group must have been moved to find some decency for these poor blue and white collars for whom a good life must have been a dream.Even the banks before nationalization were no better in this respect. To a man, people like Gerald were the core of concerned Goanhood, men sacrificing their needs and sometimes the needs of their own families for people they didn’t know. It is rare to find stature like theirs - then and definitely more so now. If Gerald was in the Congress Party instead of the CPI and later the CPM he would without doubt have been a minister in the governments of his time. George Fernandes also a trade unionist like Gerald had nothing of the intellectual capacity of the latter. From what Lara writes, his reward was with his wife, his family and the workers he led selflessly throughout his life. Great wealth must have crossed Gerald’s doors many times but was never invited in. My striking memory of Gerald is when my father tasked me to walk across to hand some papers to Gerald in his low-rise Patel Building penthouse office. He was standing with a slight stoop from reading from some slim binder underneath a majestic portrait of Vladimir Lenin. With his thick horn rimmed glasses he could have been easily mistaken for some powerful Russian Commissar. Thank you Lara for those Bombay memories. Roland. Toronto.
