Memories about a Newspaper

Memories of Goa’s first English daily newspaper and my school days are entwined, peculiar though it may sound. The Navhind Times, which completed 50 years on February 18, was established when I was studying in Class 2 English medium primary in my village, with Konkani in Devnagri as a subject.

My idea of a newspaper was shaped by the structure, layout, presentation, contents and style of this only English newspaper that I could lay my hands on, there being no other local one in the nineteen-sixties. The Marathi dailies Gomantak  and Rashtramat, and the Portuguese daily O Heraldo were out of my circle, and the Konkani Uzvad in the Roman script could not sustain my interest for long in its short life span. 

Two other English dailies, the Goa Monitor in 1972 and later the West Coast Times, made their appearance for a short time but had to be closed down. The television would make its increasingly mighty presence in Goa in the nineteen-eighties. The Herald in its English avatar, and the Gomantak Times came into existence along with the advance of television. The local edition of the Times of India followed much later in 2008.

Back to the nineteen-sixties. Goa had been liberated end of 1961. Goans were looking at their world in a new way. New openings. New commercial opportunities. A democratic way of life. English education. New industries. National outlook.  An English newspaper was the need of the hour. So the Navhind Times was established at the right time in the right place: Panjim, 1963. I guess it was appropriately named Navhind, meaning New India. The very first Panchayat election in Goa had taken place in the closing quarter of 1962, and the first election to the Legislative Assembly of Goa, Daman and Diu was impending. It took place in December 1963. Democracy was on the move and the fourth estate had to be in place.

The new daily helped Goans to get into the national mainstream by presenting national news every morning in print form. Listening to the news bulletins on the All India Radio would be another way of keeping in touch with daily events. 

The assassination of American President John Francis Kennedy and the death of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru were two events that took place in 1963 and 1964. These events were big enough to draw the attention of school students like me. We must have seen the first pictures of these shattering events in our local newspaper. Where else could we have seen those photographs? The election of Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1964, the India-Pakistan war 1965, the ‘Jai Javan, Jai Kisan’ slogan, the shocking death of Prime Minister Shastri at Tashkent in January 1966, and the election of Indira Gandhi as prime minister immediately thereafter are events recorded in my memory as they are in the archives of the newspapers of those eventful times. The newspapers played as important a role in making news interesting as the news itself made the papers interesting. The sports page was much sought after by students, specially the football coverage at the local, national and international levels. Where else could we see pictures of Pele? No colorful news magazines were available on the newsstands. At times we could lay our hands on  few copies of the Illustrated Weekly of India, more for the illustrations than for the serious content. Now I miss it, contents and all. Very interesting newsmagazines are published these days, but the Illustrated Weekly and the secretly borrowed Eve’s Weekly of my student days will never be forgotten. 

What brought me seriously to the newspapers, the daily and several weeklies, was the Opinion Poll of Goa in 1967 . I was in middle school at that time. I discovered the power of the press. And the power of the platform. The press would present the news, comments, editorials and letters to the editor. What a marathon debate. So what if we students were not eligible to vote. Our parents, our relations, our neighbors, our teachers were all going to vote. Our future, our identity, our land and our language were all at stake. We had to read the newspaper to check about yesterday while we anxiously waited for tomorrow. And the day passed, 16^th January 1967. The papers became even more interesting with three days of counting. The results were declared on the All India Radio on 19^th January afternoon. We had won. Our excitement knew no bounds. But still we had to wait to catch a glimpse of the newspapers on 20^th January. It was a delight to see the results in print.

Ever since then newspaper reading became a necessity, a habit, a compulsion.

A month later the first English daily of Goa completed four years. 

I wish the daily many more interesting years on the occasion of its golden jubilee. I consider it appropriate to quote James Thurber: “There are two kinds of light – the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures”. Keep illuminating.

Published in The Navhind Times, Panorama 24.02.2013