Without any experience, it was difficult to get
work. Yet, at the same time, it was difficult to get
experience because I couldn't get any work.

So one fine day armed with a recommendation from the
late music maestro-priest Fr Lourdinho Barreto, who
hailed from my village of Galgibaga in the southern
extreme of Goa, to Fr Freddy for the post of proof
reader I arrived at the Gulab office. This got an
I'll-let-you-know from the editor.

Well at least I knew what job I was looking for.

Then, with a fantastic helping of luck I got a job with
the Herald -- oops actually it was with Norlic India,
the firm shown as the employer of those doing the
proof-reading of the Herald, in those days.

The job was as a proof reader, and the date was August
12, 1985.

To us, whether it was Norlic India or Herald did not
then matter, I was getting my bread, so there was no
point complaining about missing the cake.

But along with my bread, I also got a taste and a
first-hand glimpse of what I had only heard of earlier
-- exploitation. Obviously the Norlic India tag was
meant to deny us the applicable scales for
proof-readers. We were almost like daily wage factory
workers. Accept it or leave it. With pressing financial
constraints, and at that time there wasn't even a
functional union in the Herald (it came sometime later,
and have worked in fits and starts) the option was
clear: shut up and do your work or speak up and get
kicked out.

All said just-enough-to-survive Rs 400 a month was
still a luxury.

So I got myself testing the waters in the novitiate of
journalism. For a tender 'naal' (coconut) like myself
the sub-editors of the time -- Anthony, Rico, Godwin
Figueira and sports editor Nelson, to name a few --
were exceptionally good. If I had peanuts for salary, I
had gems for seniors.

For most people proofreading is basically checking
spellings and omissions by the typesetter. It was not
much different here. On the few occasions we, the
humble proof-readers, particularly Jack, ventured to
show our mastery in punctuation and grammar, the
concerned sub-editor would get furious, of course in a
playful way. Often we would end up exposing our
ignorance to the world.

Ignorant or well-informed, those two years in the
Herald were years of youthful exuberance and bliss.

And there was this noble soul Caetano. Well I call him
a noble soul because even as the foreman of the
composing section, he never gave me an opport