On Sat, 1 Nov 2003 06:19:32 -0500, "Lino Leitao" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Dear Editor of goanet: I�m e-mailing you a review of Behind the News: Voices From Goa Press, hoping it will make on your site. Thanks. Lino Leit�o Behind The News : Voices From Goa�s Press 11th October 2003 This E-book, the collected essays on Goan journalism, is a slice of Goa�s history in journalism after the Liberation. The public in general is often unaware of what goes behind the scenes of the newspaper world. The book acquaints us not only to the trials and tribulations of the journalists and their frustrations in this tiny State, but, reading their accounts, we can also envision how Goa�s history is being shaped after the Liberation. The first essay in the book � Sixties� Stories: Free Goa�s Elections - is by Ben Ant�o, a diaspora Goan, who now lives in Toronto, is one of the excellent essays in this Collection. "The concept of the freedom of the press" allures young Ben, and he passionately falls in love with journalism to bring in changes in the mental attitudes shaped by Colonialism. Burning with pristine idealism of the youth, he empowers his pen to break the fetters that chain freedom. Working for Goan Tribune, a pre-Liberation paper in Bombay, a paper devoted to unmask the ills of Colonialism and usher Goa into freedom, Ben�s soul cringes observing the Editor employing the same tools of the oppressors to free Goa from the Portuguese Colonial rule. His budding love affair discovers flaws in his inamorata � journalism. Ben doesn�t give up, though, on his pursuit of his inamorata. He chases her in Liberated Goa, and then, in North America. Pursuing her, Ben discovers that his inamorata (journalism), in the representative democracies like that of India and the Western World, is a puppet in the hands of the business elites, who use her to achieve their own ends. The concept of the freedom of the press, Ben finds out is an illusion. He expresses the illusion in this fashion, "Like beauty and sex, freedom of the press is in the eye of the beholder and in the lions of the performer. It�s all relative, never absolute." Reading his essay, I felt that Ben�s love affair although might have been journalism, his true love, I think, is the English language, which flows unpretentiously from his pen; and in this particular essay, we see her dressed with amorous imageries. Therein lies his true love. Goa�s Journalism: Views from near and far, the second easy in this book comes from the pen of another diaspora Goan journalist, Eugene Correia, who lives in Toronto. Though Eugene�s essay depicts his afflictions as he is establishing himself in the field, it also gives us his insights into various personalities that he comes across as a struggling journalist. One of the personalities that he encounters in the field of journalism is that legendary Lambert Mascarenhas, an iconic personality in journalism, an iconic personality in the Liberation movement and an iconic personality in Goa�s Anglophone literature. Mascarenhas comes out in Eugene�s essay as a prejudiced man who harbors the vestiges of caste superiority, a man who flaunts his ego to diminish others, and a man with paternalistic attitudes admonishing his subordinates. Eugene�s revelation about Lambert Mascarenhas, a man who was known in those heydays of Liberation as a spirited freedom fighter, to oust the Portuguese colonials from Goa�s soil by wielding his pen, is very intriguing. Rajan Narayan pops ups in many of the essays of this book. "Rajan Narayan is essentially a rhetorician," writes R. K. Nair in his essay � The Herald of A New Ethos and in another essay, Herald: Untold chapter, Valmiki Faleiro writes, "To, me Rajan came out as a clever and crafty mind." But the penetrating insights of Narayan�s personality as Editor of 0Herald0 are drawn by Fredrick Noronha in his essay: The banyan tree: working under Rajan. I remember, once, Nehru too was compared to a banyan tree, I do not know if his prot�g�s ever protested. If one doesn�t confront the idols or chop off the tops of the banyan trees, when one must, democracy becomes empty, and we remain stunted, both spiritually and intellectually. But in this case, the strangled journalists stood out against the dictatorial stance of the Editor and they addressed him a signed note asking him, " �It calls for deep soul-searching on the part of Mr. Narayan to find out why scores of journalists have resigned from the Herald since October 10, 1983 � date which the paper was launched�" Besides that bossy streak in Mr. Narayan, Fredrick Noronha praises the man for the significant contributions made to Goa�s journalism. Fred writes about Narayan, "Someone who has critically shaped the understanding of Goa, including how we see ourselves and what are the issues we define as important." Reading these essays, by various journalists of Goan origin and non-Goan origin, I got the measure of Goan journalism in Liberated Goa. Never again, I hope, the freedom of the Press will be suppressed in Goa. Rajan Narayan�s thought, "Denying journalists the right to express his or her views is like denying oxygen to a human being." How true! Lino Leit�o Ramadan Kareem to Goans and Goanetters ! ########################################################################## # Send submissions for Goanet to [EMAIL PROTECTED] # # PLEASE remember to stay on-topic (related to Goa), and avoid top-posts # # More details on Goanet at http://joingoanet.shorturl.com/ # # Please keep your discussion/tone polite, to reflect respect to others # ##########################################################################
