GOAN JOURNOS-2 By Valmiki Faleiro I know my drawing a nexus between creativity and intoxication would have drawn ample puritan disdain last Sunday. But, indeed, look at the world of creative artists. Save the rare exceptions, almost everyone needed a ‘high’ to bring out the best from within. From Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, to Frank Sinatra, to Jimmy Hendrix. Journalists also need to be ‘creative,’ and that creates a thirst for intoxicants. It used to, in olden days. The story is told of the great AB Nair, as brilliant a journalist as he was a tippler. All his editorials could not stop then Chief Minister of the Bombay Presidency, Morarji Desai, from imposing Prohibition. The day that happened, all of Nair’s junior colleagues wondered how he would survive without the cup that cheers. Next morning, as Nair walked in, the air was heavy with Eau de Cologne. He had not liberally dabbed himself with it. He reeked of it. The alcohol in the Eau helped. Volumes could be filled with hilarious anecdotes on Goan journos and booze. I will mention just as many as this space permits. When Morarjibhai became Prime Minister in 1977, Goa’s chief minister Shashikala Kakodkar, already on a shaky wicket from within, had to curry favours with Delhi. As a curtain raiser to total prohibition, she severely curtailed the alcohol / beer quota to Goa’s then tiny overland pockets of Daman and Diu, in Morarjibhai’s home region of Gujarat. Goans were aghast. Dr. KSK Menon, Editor of a Goan newspaper, asked his budding cartoonist (not sure if it was Dr. Subodh Kerkar) to do a piece on the subject. The following day, the cartoon showed a scene at a bar in Daman. A customer orders, “Half peg beer.” The bartender enquires, “With or without soda, Sir?” Alfred Tavares (I prefer calling him “Chacha”) was Chief Reporter of ‘Goa Monitor.’ One cats-and-dogs rainy July, he spent almost the entire day at either Bar Fernandes or Pio. Dusk approached, and Chacha had not filed a single story. Chums in tow, he rushed to his room at Panjim’s Tourist Hostel, to freshen up and dash off the day’s stories. In he went to shower, to emerge only moments later, dry as a bone, towel around his waist. Rolled paper into the typewriter and furiously began punching that famous opener for the next day’s headline … “Water, water everywhere, not a drop to drink!” When I reported for the ‘West Coast Times’ (1978-79) from Margao, I had two buddies from the Marathi segment. One, of medium build, was better adept at ferreting out drinks than news. The other, just about a metre tall and rather plump, was better at producing notes (of the Reserve Bank of India’s stationery variety) than news copy. In true Bernard Shaw-Chesterton traditions, one couldn’t stand sight of the other. Both were my friends. The diminutive guy once likened the other to a dog, who follows whosoever shows not a bone, but a bottle. The other retorted, “put some currency notes in the mouth of that bottle and you’ll have two dogs following it.” A drunken journo can be harmless, but a combination with an inebriated MLA can be volatile. It was a rainy afternoon in the early 1980s, when I was covering the Goa Assembly, then in session, for a national daily. A fiery debate on the Bicholim floods ended in an adjournment. Everybody knew that a famous mineowner’s rejects had silted the river, causing the floods. But, not a single MLA dared utter the name of the miner, despite legislative immunity. This apparently annoyed our spirited journo, who in the Assembly lobby loudly taunted a “coward” MLA, who was equally ‘spirited’ and often snored when in his seat. The MLA warned the journo. The journo dared the MLA. Out went a shower of fists to the face of the journo, who did not, or perhaps could not, retaliate. I quickly asked my stocky friend, Dilkush Dessai, to intervene. Before the journalist could get a worse battering, Dilkush grabbed his fellow-MLA until he cooled down. Like technology, a lot seems to have changed for Goa’s journos. A kind of a paradigm shift. None of the younger generation journos, or at least the ones I personally know, either drink or smoke. It is significant that the unofficial Press Club in Panjim today is not Bar Fernandes nor Bar Pio, but the sedate Café Prakash opposite the Azad Maidan. Perhaps, as one would think, they were born drunk. But, seriously, to me, today’s teetotaler Goan journos are sufficient reason to raise a glass in sincere toast. (Concludes.) (Ends.) The Valmiki Faleiro weekly column at: http://www.goanet.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=330 ============================================================================== The above article appeared in the June 15, 2008 edition of the Herald, Goa
