rahmanand Shankhwalkar won the Arjuna
Award, Choppy asked to me to go to Fatorda for a
profile of this great football player. But I almost
chickened out as I did not have the guts to meet such a
famous personality like Brahmanand. Help came in the
form of Ashley do Rosario, into his second innings in
Herald by then, who offered to accompany me. In Fatorda,
I found out that some great people like Brahmanand,
who win laurels for the country and win accolades for
themselves, have no airs about themselves. This Arjuna
awardee was just an ordinary person who performed
extraordinarily. Sheer grit, determination, hard work
and humbleness were his only tools of success.

My passion for all things football sometimes landed me
in trouble too.

Officially, my job at the Herald, by this time, was
being part of the Goa desk. On a few occasions, the
news editor and the editor discovered that I was going
all the way to Fatorda, 40 Kms from Panjim, to watch
the National Football League. Soon enough, I got a
'goonish absurdism' from the editor asking why action
should not be taken against Mr Visvas Paul for
'subsidising' work. There were two or three points with
which I was accused, one among those was that I had
defied the News Editor Sergio Caldeira. I denied
everything in a written reply. What they did not reckon
was that I would sincerely came back from the football
match, and complete my day's work, which was doing the
Goa page. But seniors later did not have any qualms
about accompanying Choppy and me for an important match
during working hours. What's more, after coming back
from the match, he even helped me complete the page!

Doing a Goa page was the dreariest thing on the desk,
because, of the kind of stories that landed in from the
correspondents.

Stringers used to send three or four pages of
hand-written foolscape papers, which, when edited,
turned out to be just single column stories. I wonder
how the scene is now. In those days, there was no
re-writing desk and the sub-editors had to do all the
dirty work of re-writing, editing and making a page. It
was a tough job but it improved one's editing skills
and my patience and perseverance too. So how could one
be blamed for opting to take a few hours for a harmless
passion like watching a football match? I footed hefty
petrol bills for this by the way, but could not claim
the travelling allowance.

One's desk job also threw up some funny situations.

For one,