A Career Well Charted
Published on: November 6, 2010 - 20:29
By Mário Cabral e Sá
I am glad Eduardo Faleiro was felicitated on his 70th birthday. I could
not attend for reasons of health his graceful invitation to lunch at his
house at Raia, his ancestral village.
His late wife, Muriel had caringly rebuilt the house and I was sad she
was not present to see the public recognition his work for India and
Goans - at home and at large - as commissioner for NRI affairs received.
I happen to know Eduardo since he was a child with a sad look on his
face, holding by his hand his father professor Martinho Faleiro, who
taught Sanskrit and Marathi at the Lycée. He had gone almost totally
blind. His mother had died when he was still a child and his only
brother had died of rabies.
For a while he boarded with my neighbour and former librarian Aleixo
Costa and his wife Olga, a very artistic seamstress, embroiderer and
craft teacher of many a nubile girl of my generation. She looked after
Eduardo very caringly.
Eduardo was a very good student and went with his father to Lisbon when
he retired. Unsurprisingly, he earned with distinction his law degree
in Lisbon. Just when he had concluded his graduation, Goa was taken over
by the Indian Armed Forces. Eduardo and many other Goan students
returned to Goa. My co-islander, the great professor Armando Menezes, a
brilliant poet and the then Vice chancellor of the just carved-out
Dharwad University that was till then a faculty affiliated to the Bombay
University, gave him a most helpful hand. He got him admitted,
straightaway, to the LLM course.
He practiced for a while in Goan courts with moderate success. By then
Goa was in the thick of partisan politics, and Erasmo Sequeira, the
emince gris of his father, Jack de Sequeira picked him as a UGP
candidate for the Curtorim constituency, which till then Enio Pimenta, a
fine orator who did his homework meticulously, had represented. Why
really Enio and Jack parted company I do not know, but guess. His
independence of character and mind, his best qualities, may not have
pleased the UGP supremo Jack de Sequeira.
South Goa was then represented in parliament by a nominated MP, António
Colaço, a distinguished physician with a large practice but, again, a
very independent minded-man. Then my friend, Mukund Sinkcre surprisingly
won the election on an MGP ticket and, if I mistake not, later Erasmo
was elected.
UGP broke its ties with the Congress. Indira Gandhi rushed to Goa with
her then trusted party treasurer Uma Shankar Dixit, who at a memorable
meeting with Sequeira proposed that he merge his party with the
Congress. Jack de Sequeira, haughty as ever, riposted, “Why instead does
not the Congress merge with the UGP?” Dixit was left speechless. He
mockingly bowed to Sequeira, reverentially bared his head and said,
“Doctor Sahib, mand lia”, and left it at that.
With elections knocking at the door, Eduardo Faleiro was the choice by
default. Salcette was solidly for UGP, but had the commonsense to see
through Jack de Sequeira’s flatulence and he met the destiny that
awaited him.
To Eduardo’s credit he worked his way into Indira’s heart and unlike the
chameleons that abounded in the Congress (by now Congress (I)) stuck
with her through thick and thin. She inducted him in her cabinet as a
junior minister. Knowing Portuguese at that point in time perhaps better
than English he acquitted himself with distinction in the long drawn out
controversy over what in common parlance is known as “BNU Gold”.
The case was that on the eve of Goa’s assault by the Indian Armed Forces
BNU’s general manager sent all the gold pledged by its borrowers by the
last ship to Lisbon. India ordered the currency notes issued by it lying
in its coffers to be burnt to ashes. Two junior officers were put in
charge of the operation and Taleigao being in the interior was the
chosen place. Small wonder some of the BNU officers, menials and
perhaps some passers-by as well helped themselves to the notes. Some
were burnt to ashes, those which were not enriched the retrievers.
BNU, as with all Portuguese banking organisations, had carefully packed
and sealed the gold pledged with it with the signature of the borrower,
his identity and thumb impressions. When the gold eventually was
returned to Goa it was discovered that some of the packages contained
tinsel, but that was a trick played by the borrowers in collusion with
the respective BNU teller.
Kudos to Eduardo for his mission successful. I cannot say the same
thing about his loan melas. My dear friend, the advocate Mukund Sinkcre,
once told me that he had cautioned an old client, who was a clean and
sumptuous man, “Are you participating in a ‘mela’? Remember you will
have to repay the money. You have enough of your own. Why borrow then?”
And the client replied in good Salcette Konkani “Saib, yen rinn nuin, ho
‘loan’ assa.” A ‘rinn’ had been conscientiously repaid. Which he always
did. “Loan”, to his mind, was something the sarkar thrust in his pocket
to meet the target given to the bank managers.
He saw himself under no obligation to repay.
Every bank was stuffed with bad debts. Many reminders were sent, most
was ignored. Money is money and the bank managers who had
enthusiastically met their target ended up being sued and repaying it
from her/his own pocket.
But yes, as Commissioner for NRI Affairs, despite his many handicaps, he
has done very well. Not all his dreams are achievable. I know he is
being criticised for the money spent on his travels. But life is like
that “Preso por ter cão”, “preso por não ter cão”! It is the story of a
man whose house was broken into. He went to the police to register a
complaint. The cop on duty promptly asked, “Why don’t you keep a dog?”
and when the dog bit a visitor and a complaint was lodged the cop asked,
“Why do you keep vicious dogs?”
http://www.navhindtimes.in/panorama/career-well-charted
