The early 1980s. Happy days were here again for Goa's first English-language daily, The Navhind Times (NT). After a brief challenge to its other crucial attribute, that of being the only English-language daily, from Goa Monitor in the late 1960s, NT had just staved off another. West Coast Times, launched July-1978, blazed a luminous trail in quality journalism but, like a comet after a brief showing, vanished into oblivion. NT was back to its snug-seat monopoly. A slave of the economic thought of Adam Smith, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill, or our own Nani Palkhivala, JRD Tata and M.R. Pai, I have been a votary of free enterprise and competition -- and allergic to monopolies. A monopoly is bad for any consumer. And infinitely worse in a crucial commodity that helps form a society's opinion. I had been speaking to some wealthier Goans, my idea of launching a broadsheet weekly, which would, over a period, be converted to a full-fledged daily. A tabloid (like Goa Monitor) did not appeal; and mere excellence in editorial content and quality printing (like West Coast Times) did not suffice. What mattered was the capacity to financially sustain a daily newspaper (by absorbing annual losses even while continuing to maintain quality) until the product turned round, which could take some years. That kind of money in Goa only mineowners had -- like all of Goa's major dailies! So my idea was start small, stay around till you built adequate advertising recognition and support, and only then convert to a daily -- at a fraction of a daily's budgetary requirement and without having to own printing facilities from day one. Even then, not many Goan businessmen I was in touch with were willing to risk any substantial venture capital. It was around this time, June 1983, if I recall the month correctly, that a mutual friend in the printing business in Mumbai and Goa, told me that A.C. Fernandes, Patrao of the Panjim stationers Casa J.D. Fernandes, was toying with the idea of an English-language daily. The mutual friend suggested I discuss my ideas with Fernandes. A.C. Fernandes wasn't a mineowner, not yet anyway, but I had heard he was a shrewd businessman. He purchased Goa's only extant Portuguese-language daily, O Heraldo, not so much for love of the language or its dwindling local readership, but evidently for the intrinsic value of its press and its centrally-located premises. It was said he took full advantage of the daily's lable, in those days of the Permit Raj, to import (from Italy?) a Lino typesetting machine, which actually was used for all and sundry job works of the business house -- even as the major part of good ole O Heraldo continued to be composed by hand!