KONKANI MOGI: Aravind and Lata Bhatikar are ardent Konkani mogi who have written more than two dozen novels in Konkani. Lata is a trained counselor from the Christian Medical College in Vellore and has written several books in her own right.

By Aravind Bhatikar

Aravind Bhatikar is one of Goa’s senior Administrative Services officers although he chose the Tamil Cadre. Bhatikar occupied several senior positions including that of the chairperson of the All India Silk Board based in Bengaluru. For two decades Aravind Bhatikar was the chairperson of the Mormugao Port Trust. What brought us together was our love for Konkani-mai. Even at 83 Aravind bab and his wife Lata Bhatikar (nee Panvelkar) keep dictating Konkani novels to each other.

IT WAS one of those rare days when you wake up and find that everything is right with the world. A highly excited Rajan Narayan called me and gave the “breaking news” that he was awarded the “Journalist Life-Time Achievement Award” by the State government on the recommendation of The Goa Union of Journalists (GUJ). I could not believe what he said. I thought, I might have heard him wrong. I adjusted my hearing-aid and asked him to break the news again. After he did it, I asked him to send to me the government letter on my Whatsapp. He was apparently upset that I had not believed his words and that is why I wanted to see the letter.
It was not that I disbelieved Rajan, but what I disbelieved was the news that the BJP government of the day could be so magnanimous as to give a Life-Time Achievement Award to Rajan who is nothing if not anti-BJP, anti-Hindutva brigade and all that.
Rajan’s contribution to political commentary in Goa can never be overstated. The credit for doing something which should have been done long time back goes first to The Goa Union of Journalists and second to Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant, who I am told has to approve the nomination for the award.
The Journalist Life-Time Achievement Award was reportedly instituted by the Goa government in 2019 with the active involvement of the Goa Union of Journalists (GUJ). The last three recipients were Lambert Mascarenhas, Sitaram Tengse and Gurudas Singbal.
I first met Rajan Narayan when I was posted to Goa as chairman of Mormugao Port Trust in 1991. He was then the editor of OHeraldo and one of the invitees at a dinner hosted by the MPT. I was shocked to see a relatively low-profile person flanked by gun-totting PSO’s, he introduced himself as Rajan Narayan. Editors are generally believed to write a lot and say nothing. Rajan was more than the editor. He had chosen to take up causes which he thought were in Goa’s interest and pursued these like a “possessed” man. He has paid the price for commitment to his job. I was told by his friends that an unscrupulous politician who happened to be a minister in the year 1989 had commissioned goonda to attack and immobilize him for good. The minister, I was told, had to resign due to an alleged scandal associated with him and which Rajan had pursued single-mindedly through his editorials and other writing.
In the decades that I served in various parts of Tamil Nadu, I never heard of such a vindictive attack on journalists. Goa was projected by media everywhere as a peace-loving state with friendly people. The merciless attack on Rajan Narayan in November 1989 might have been the only one of its kind on a journalist those days in our country. The killing of bold journalists, writers and opponents of religious extremism apparently started much later in the country with the entry of religious extremists and fanatics in our political system.
Rajan was beaten badly on his neck and with spinal injuries had to be rushed to the GMC first and a leading hospital in Bombay later, he also went to the United Kingdom to find a solution to his steroids medicines which were impacting him badly and taking a toll of his eyesight. The treatment was almost fully financed by private donors in Goa. Rajan never fully recovered from that attack but he did not give up journalism. He continued to live and work with a “degenerative spine” and cervical region infections.
He started the English edition of OHeraldo in 1983. Before that the paper was a Portuguese language daily newspaper in Goa with a reported circulation of hardly 500. Rajan’s slogan, “Utth Goykara Utth,” might have been the catalyst for the official language movement in 1986-87. His total involvement in the official language movement and for the Konkani Projecho Awaz (KPA) could have been the single important factor responsible for skyrocketing the circulation of the paper.
The story of why he had to leave the OHeraldo was apparently more about the rapidly personalized politics of Goa. Manohar Parrikar, who was then Chief Minister of Goa, was fond of food served by a “gaddo” outside Alankar cinema in Mapusa, and used to visit it every day on his way back home from Panaji. Tara Narayan, a journalist in her own right, wrote a story about Parrikar’s “gaddo”habit as an anchor piece. Parrikar personally complained to the management of OHeraldo against Tara Narayan and eventually Rajan chose to quit the OHeraldo. He started the weekly Goan Observer in October 2003. When Rajan left OHeraldo, the reported circulation of that daily was about 30,000.
Rajan, now 75, has innumerable health problems, most of which can be traced to the goonda attack on him. The Goan Observer touched 20 years and survives, but it is not the same Goan Observer of yesteryear. The Award for Life-Time Achievement though delayed, is a well-deserved recognition of Rajan Narayan’s contribution to Goa and Goans.