When Four Shared A Typewriter (Camil Parkhe, in ... And Read All Over)

[Frederick Noronha]

When Four Shared A Typewriter

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Camil Parkhe

When I entered the field of journalism, I didn't even know what journalism was. I had answered my BA exam in Panjim in 1981, and before the results were out, I got published as a reporter in the English-language daily The Navhind Times. Swimming requires you to keep your hands and legs moving, to float; likewise the rules of journalism I learnt only after entering this field. Many a times my nose seemed to go underwater; but after a while I learned how to stay stable without getting tired.

After joining journalism, I completed journalism courses, first at the Lucknow University and then at Bulgaria, Eastern Europe. A tour of Russia followed, and my roots as a `comrade' in the journalist workers' union got further strengthened.

Life began as a campus reporter in The Navhind Times, where my weekly column entitled `Campus Notes' showed up. Then one also handled beats like Crime, Defence, the High Court, Goa Assembly, Politics. Each news source tends to be different, working methods are different, vocabulary and writing style and even code of conduct differ!

In those days, there were no female reporters in any daily newspaper in Goa. So when the All India Women's Conference was held in Panjim, I was the only man as a reporter in the crowd of four hundred women at the Institute Menezes Braganza Hall and I recall my difficult situation at that time. Was it just a small mistake about the mental state of women while living in a male-dominated culture?

After leaving Goa, I worked as a reporter and on the newsdesk at Aurangabad's Lokmat Times, Indian Express, The Times of India and the Sakal news group's Maharashtra Herald-Sakal Times. My total career in English journalism so far totals almost 40 years. My job of three months in Shrirampur's Sarvamat Marathi daily was the exception.

When I became a reporter, a typewriter was used by four people, and printing technology used seemed influenced by the seventeenth century. Most hardly had a landline phone.

Jeans, a colored khadi kurta and a shabnam

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A traditional, hand-crafted bag that is often made of cotton and features a shoulder strap.

strung across one shoulder would be my outfit for many years in the 1980s. In those days, this used to be an unwritten dress code of journalists and social workers! Much water has flowed down Panjim's Mandovi river and the Mula-Mutha river bridges, along with it changing the concept of journalism and culture and ethics in all sectors.

In those days, the number of reporters in every daily's head office was barely two or three. There were only three reporters including me at our Navhind Times. The age gap between the other two senior reporters and me was about 15 years apart! Since the number of reporters was limited, everyone had to handle many beats. There was no opportunity to say, `Sir, I can't do this. I don't know about that.' Thus, I benefitted and learnt a lot.

I got a rare opportunity to take an eight-day tour in the deep Arabian Sea on a very large warship from Karwar, on a tour organized by the Indian Navy, as I was handling the defence beat. Planes would land on that warship; the practice of maritime warfare used to go on. An unforgettable experience! One had a great experience on various beats, and these took us all over Goa, through many parts of the State.

Spending eight to nine years in the Navhind Times, one got a chance to interview many persons, and write news stories about various developments. Slowly, I got used to writing in English. While learning in the Marathi medium till the eleventh standard, never once did I imagine that English-language journalism would be my bread and butter for so long.

One afternoon, our news-editor asked me to report about the film shooting then going on at the nearby Azad Maidan in Panjim. When I ran there, I saw Amitabh Bachchan and Zeenat Aman, really big stars of those times, and many extras dancing there, all wearing colorful clothes. That was the shooting for the movie Pukar. This 1983 Bollywood film had among its cast Amitabh Bachchan, Zeenat Aman (as Julie), Randhir Kapoor (Shekhar); Tina Clerk (Usha), Prem Chopra and others. This is one of the very few news articles I've done about a movie. I've handled many beats while on the job, except a few fields like movie (entertainment), sports, music or science.

Recently, two years before writing this, the Sakal Times business beat was also handled by me. While visiting companies like Mercedes-Benz, I experienced this new glamorous beat, which offered flights to Delhi, Kolkata and elsewhere. It gave me the opportunity for an eight-day tour organised as part of the Thailand Tourism and Industry Conference. In journalistic lingo, such extravagent trips are called `junkets'.

At the beginning of my career, The Navhind Times in Goa had given me an opportunity to go for courses in Lucknow-Russia-Bulgaria. Sakal Times sent me on a tour to Thailand just six months before retirement. I was among the 64 journalists from different countries around the world who had been invited to Thailand at that time. I have still preserved that badge written `Camil John Parkhe, Sakal Times, India' which I wore around my neck at that conference!

Different pages of a newspaper have diverse articles, and are adorned with various forms of news and articles — like political articles, interviews, profiles (personality), obits or obituaries, travel descriptions, timely review of past events, etc. In those times, it was felt that journalists should contribute to all these pages. There was an extra honour for column writing and supplying feature articles at that time. That's why journalists got the freedom to write in different styles and beyond just the news.

Many journalists say that they don't have time to write for other pages, to craft columns or contribute to supplements because of the daily news they need to file. When in Panjim, I would write articles for the editorial page, for the Sunday supplement of The Navhind Times, and even for the Marathi sister-publication, the Navprabha, edited by Laxmidas Borkar, whose birth centenary year has just been observed. I continued this habit further in The Indian Express and while at The Times of India, and even the Maharashtra Herald-Sakal Times.

Looking back today, I realise how much I benefited from this distributed writing. That is because the articles thus written from time to time were the seed of my future English and Marathi books.

Source: `Stories in journalism in Goa and Maharashtra' by Camil Parkhe. Available via Amazon. See http://alturl.com/vnzqm

`Congrats, you are the Goa SSC exam topper!

As the campus reporter of The Navhind Times in Goa, the last week of May used to be very stressful for me. During this period, the Goa, Daman and Diu Board for Secondary and Higher Secondary Education would announce the results of the SSC examinations. The press conference of the education board's chairman was an annual function at the Mandovi Hotel located on the banks of the Mandovi River in Panjim.

Suresh Amonkar was then chairman of the newly-constituted Goa education board. After handing over copies of the SSC examination results to journalists, Board Chairman Amonkar would speak about the salient features of the results and this was immediately followed by lunch. In Goa at that time, there used to be a drinking session at every press conference, even in the afternoon!

Unfortunately, I was not able to enjoy this sumptuous meal consisting of a variety of dishes, including tiger prawns and other fish, and chicken and, of course, a choice of drinks, including feni. This was because as soon as I got hold of the printed copy of the SSC exam results, I had to leave the venue and rush out for conducting the post-result interviews.

Of my campus reporting throughout the year, that day used to be one of the most stressful, and equally, the most professionally satisfying.

This was the post-1981 period of my campus reporting. At that time, the total number of SSC students appearing for the Goa Board exam was around 12,000 and the number of HSC students was just around 4,000! In those days, all the dailies in Goa used to publish the complete list of successful SSC and HSSC students. On that day, the circulation of the newspapers increased manifold.

The exact date of the examination results was not announced in advance. After receiving a copy of the examination results, it was my responsibility to visit the towns and villages in Goa to interview and collect photographs of the top ten students on the merit list.

After travelling all over Goa, I used to return to The Navhind Times office in Panjim in the evening and file my news copy within the deadline.

“At least on this day of the whole year, Camil works really hard, and does some good work,” Pramod Khandeparkar, the chief reporter of our newspaper, used to say half in jest and also as a matter of fact.

I had been doing my postgraduate studies while working for the newspaper.

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Masters level classes — at the Centre for Post-Graduate Research and Instruction (CPIR), the predecessor of the Goa University — were then conveniently bunched up in the afternoon hours, allowing working students to continue their studies.

Thus, I would daily report directly to News Editor M.M. Mudaliar, who had given me a very long rope in my reporting work and timings. Therefore, Khandeparkar and Senior Correspondent Ravi (R.V.) Prabhugaonkar never counted on me for day-to-day news reporting.

On coming out of the Mandovi Hotel, I would drop the copy of the examination results in my shabnam bag and rush to the nearest motorcycle pilot. The motorcycle pilot service was then a unique travel facility found only in Goa among the entire country. Just as you have autorickshaw stands at intersections in various cities elsewhere, in those days motorcycle pilots used to wait for passengers with their black-and-yellow motorcycles. Riding pillion, I used to go to Mapusa, Margão, Bicholim, Vasco, and even Canacona, Ponda, and also to some remote villages, giving preference to the first and second rank students.

My schedule was fixed. First, I went to the school of the student who stood first in the merit list. At the school, I would get the residential address of the student, and the photo of the topper boy or girl would be literally plucked from the school's register. In the 1980s, there was no guarantee that students or their parents would have these photos on hand, and there was no way to photograph the topper there. Cameras were not easily available, and mobile phones equipped with cameras were still an idea some decades away.

What was special was that during these seven-eight years when I worked as the campus reporter of The Navhind Times, no one had ever mistrusted me or demanded to know my credentials, asked for my identity card or a visiting card as a reporter. I am now especially grateful to those school principals and others who, without any hesitation, pulled out the photos of the students pasted in the school registers and handed them over to me, a newspaper reporter whom they did not know. Obviously, they too shared the joy of their school student appearing in the toppers' list of the Goa Board!

The reaction at the residence of the topper students and their family members was similar, expectedly.

`Hello, I am a reporter of The Navhind Times. Congratulations, you have topped in the SSC examination in the Goa Board!' This used to be my opening remark.

The shrieks of amazement and cheers of joy that followed in every house I visited were identical and on expected lines. The bewildered family members would take some time to recover from the shock as it were, and then force me to have some sweets. If it was a Catholic family, I would usually be treated to a glass of chilled beer, or sip some home-made wine and cake. The topper students had to be interviewed in the meantime. My questions were almost identical for all the toppers (I doubt they have changed over the years) – about what their ambition was, their study schedule and hobbies.... The answers by these toppers were also often similar — their stated ambition in those days being to become doctors or engineers.

But the hospitality at each family had to be confined to a few minutes, as I had to leave immediately to complete the rest of the work. Like the lunch at the Goa Board's press conference at the Mandovi Hotel, the hospitality at these toppers' homes also had to be forfeited. Similar incidents used to take place at the homes of other meritorious students. Sometimes I would find that the house of the topper was locked, the student's family apparently having gone to Bombay or elsewhere during the summer vacation. In that case, his or her photo taken from the school office would come in handy.

By late in the evening, at around 6.30 pm, I would return to the newspaper office in Panjim. Invariably, I would have failed to get the photo or interview of the second or seventh of the first top-ten meritorious students. In such a case, a photo sent by the local correspondent of Navprabha, the Marathi daily twin sibling of The Navhind Times, used to save my reputation. We, sister-newspapers, used to compete with Marathi dailies — the Panjim-based Gomantak or Margão-based Rashtramat, and in later years also with the Herald, for publishing maximum photos and interviews of the topper students. Moreover, sharing a photo with the others was impossible in the time-consuming photo block-making era.

The Union Territory of Goa, Daman and Diu was then only a single district, consisting of 10 talukas in Goa and one taluka each in Daman and Diu, located far off, some hundreds of kilometres away, off Gujarat. The Portuguese had ruled over Goa, Daman and Diu until December 1961, and this was the only reason why the three regions, though geographically separated and culturally unrelated, were united into a union territory.

Even the chief minister of this union territory seldom visited the Daman and Diu talukas. At that time, not a single student from the rural talukas of Daman and Diu appeared in the Goa Board's SSC or HSC merit lists. After Goa became a full-fledged state in 1987, its ties with Daman and Diu were severed for good.

Similar episodes were repeated when the Goa Board announced its HSSC examination results a few weeks later. My travel itinerary however was restricted in this case as there were very few higher secondary units, located then only in Panjim, Mapusa, Ponda, Vasco, Margão and Bicholim towns in Goa at that time.

After the results of the 10th and 12th boards, I used to submit the bill for the expenses of the motorcycle pilot service to the accounts department with the approved signature of News Editor Mudaliar. This was always followed by the same question-and-answer session every year.

`Motorcycle pilot travel fare of Rs. 300 on a single day? Why did you hire a motorcycle pilot? Could you not travel by bus?'

What could have been my answer to this question? At that time, according to the Justice Palekar Wage Board Commission, my monthly salary was Rs. 530. But as the bill was approved by the news editors, I used to get that amount.

In the whole region of Goa, I was the only reporter who used to travel to various towns and also villages like Mapusa, Bicholim, Ponda, Agassaim, Sancoale and Mardol to get interviews and photos of the SSC and HSC toppers. No other reporter repeated this feat after me. This was because of my overzealousness and willingness to work hard.

The other dailies — Gomantak, Navprabha and Rashtramat — relied on their respective local stringers to send photos and interviews of the toppers. At that time, The Navhind Times, the only English-language newspaper in Goa, had its stringers only in Margão and Vasco.

After a few years, all the newspapers also stopped publication of the complete results as these results were available for the students on the same day.

Forty years ago, the telegram was the fastest communication service. At that time, newspapers were instrumental in informing thousands of students about their SSC and HSC results. Now there is no such need.

In today's era of the Internet and mobiles, the results of all the public and competitive examinations are available online. In keeping with the technological revolution, the functioning in the journalism profession and newspaper industry is also changing.

Camil Parkhe came to Goa to become a Jesuit priest, but ended up a journalist, a profession he recently retired from. He has authored a number of books, and writes frequently online, especially on Facebook. Feedback: camil...@gmail.com