By Rajan Narayan

An excerpt from my book “Goencho Saib” which we hope to bring out in its third edition for the forthcoming Exposition of St Francis Xavier from November 21, 2024 to January 5, 2025…

Preface

THIRTY-five years ago in September 16, 1989 I was brutally assaulted by hired goons, barely a hundred meters from my residence at Dona Paula. The crippling attack followed a campaign I had launched in the OHeraldo against the then Speaker in the Goa Assembly, Dayanand Narvekar. Who allegedly attempted to molest an 18-year-old woman clerk in the Speaker’s Chamber.
I was admitted to the Goa Medical College & Hospital with agonizing pain in the lower limbs and the spine. Presumably, with a view to relieve the pain, the then Head of the Department of Medicine, Dr NGK Sharma, who was personally supervising my treatment, resorted to the medical fraternity’s favorite quick-fix solution.
Dr Sharma pumped me with steroids. In the full awareness that steroids have devastating side-effects. When the side-effects like a bloating of the body, acute diarrhea, and much else, started manifesting themselves, Dr Sharma abruptly withdrew the steroids. Confessing that he did not know the cause of my aches and pains. And telling me that I should go to Mumbai for a more accurate diagnosis and treatment. Even a rookie medical intern knows that the abrupt withdrawal of steroids can be life-threatening. When the steroids were abruptly withdrawn, instead of being gently tapered off, I went into a coma. And was air-lifted to Mumbai on a stretcher courtesy my good friend Dattaraj Salgaoncar. Who also spoke to his brother-in-law Madhav Kamath in Mumbai to ensure that I got prompt attention at the Jaslok Hospital.
I arrived at Jaslok more dead than alive. By than the damage had been done. The steroids which the irresponsible GMC doctor had pumped into me masked my symptoms. Making an accurate diagnosis extremely difficult. Worse, Dr Sharma had sown the seeds of confusion and doubt in the minds of subsequent doctors by suggesting that I may have polymyositis. A condition which leads to the wasting away of the body and requiring the administration of steroids. Virtually ruling out the possibility that all my pains and aches could be due to damage to my nerves rather than my muscles. If I had instead been diagnosed as a case of peripheral neuritis, steroids would not have been necessary. In fact, their use would have been counter-productive.
This marked the beginning of five years of excruciating pain, mental agony, torment and torture. I went to a succession of hospitals and consultants. I was referred to the best known names in the country. And the Mecca of neurology, Queens in London (UK), in quest of the Holy Grail. Which would relieve me of the torment I was going through. But all to no avail. Not a single one of the so called experts were willing to tell me that the first doctor had possibly made a mistake. That I may not have polymyositis. That I should not have been put on steroids at all. That my only salvation lay in detoxification from steroids. They did not want to take the risk. In the fear that if they withdrew steroids and something happened to me their precious reputation, which enabled them to command exorbitantly extortionate fees, would be damaged. Why fool around with a journalist?
And so the mortification of the flesh continued. Four years down the line my dependency on steroids had taken a deadly toll of my body and my mind. Long term use of steroids causes water retention. Leading to the bloating of the body. My weight had gone up to an ungainly, unhealthy 180 kg. Steroids lead to loss of calcium which in turn makes the bones brittle. Steroids cause cataracts and glaucoma. My vision was so badly affected that I was afraid of going blind. And since it is difficult to predict how a steroid drugged body would react to anesthesia no one was willing to operate. Steroids make you hyper. Which in turn leads to instant combustibility. So I used to go into inexplicable rage at the slightest provocation. And even without any provocation. I was put on very strong downers to keep my aggression under check. This led to violent oscillation in moods.
There was no light at the end of the tunnel. Not even the flicker of one. And by 1993 all my friends including my close doctor friends in Goa had given up on me. At my usual birth- day bash on July 4, 1994 my doctor friends virtually performed my last rites. This was on the eve of my going to the famed Arvind Netralaya at Madurai. In a last ditch attempt at saving my vision. Since reading and writing was my whole life, the impending blindness was terrifying. The doctors in Madurai turned me away. They told me that my general condition was too precarious to risk an operation. Coming out of the hospital I had a fall and almost lost consciousness. Somehow, I managed to board the plane to Bangalore en route to Goa. I collapsed at the Bangalore airport and was taken by a friend who had come to receive me to the Mallaya Hospital. And this was when the series of miracles which made me whole again in body, mind and spirit, began.
A young endocrinologist trained in Massachusetts the USA had joined the hospital just a week before. He took one look at me and concluded that steroids were the cause of all my problems. A simple, candid, straightforward truth, that none of the top neurologists in the country or in London would acknowledge. I told Dr Shrikanta, the young endocrinologist, that all the top neurologists had warned me that if I stopped taking steroids I would be dead in a fortnight. Dr Shrikanta very gently but very firmly told me that if I continued to take steroids I would probably be dead in a month anyway. Dr Shrikanta was emphatic that all the other doctors who had examined and treated me were wrong. That I did not have polymyositis. That I probably never had polymyositis. Dr Shrikanta virtually pleaded with me to subject myself to steroid detoxification. Let us together climb Mt Everest in good health, he pleaded. Dr Shrikanta warned me that detoxification would not be easy. That the withdrawal process would be extremely painful. That it would take time and patience on my part. And even after I had fully detoxified it would take months if not years to recover fully.
I returned to Goa. I was already convinced that I had no option but to undergo detoxification. I had accepted the doctor’s suggestion fatalistically. Anything was better than the living hell that I had to endure day in and day out every waking hour. And there were precious few of those hours when I could escape into heavily drugged sleep. I decided to return to Bangalore. Not really hoping for a cure or even surviving the detoxification. But it was better to have tried and lost than never to have tried at all. I had a few commitments to fulfill before though. My then housekeeper Nalini Gauns and her fiancée Ashraf wanted to get married. So I performed the marriage. I was so pessimistic about returning from my voyage into the unknown that I gave away my vast collection of books to friends. Even my collection of images of Ganesh collected lovingly over a period of 15 years were given away. And then I packed my bags and went back to Bangalore. I went back alone because I did not want anybody to witness the agony and the indignities I would have to go through in the next few weeks in Mallaya Hospital.
The detoxification took over three months. Dr Shrikanta had indicated that it could stretch to five to six months. But I had told him to speed it up for a very simple reason. I could not afford to stay in the hospital. When I look back at those dark days I still shudder. I was in constant pain. There were any number of times when I felt suicidal. I was virtually locked into a room so I would not harm myself. There was a nurse in attendance 24 hours a day. A psychiatrist came in every day to help me cope with my anxieties. A neuro-physician and a cardiologist were on standby. And Dr Shrikanta besides supervising my treatment would come and spend several hours with me every evening to reassure me that everything would be all right. And even reading passages from the Bhagvad Gita. At the end of my hospital stay, I had been completely detoxified. I was able to discard the chemical crutches which had become an extension of my body. I had entered the hospital weighing 180 kg. I returned to Goa after my three months journey through madness weighing 36 kg.
I was advised to stay in Bangalore. My doctors were apprehensive that if I returned to Goa, I would again be subjected to severe stress, which might undo whatever had been achieved. But I knew no other home and decided that I would feel psychologically more secure in the land that had adopted me.
I could not afford to return to work full-time, because that would have involved more stress than I thought I could bear at that time. I confined myself to writing editorials. But this was not enough to keep me occupied: to exorcise the demons from my mind – has it not been said that an idle mind is the devil’s workshop?
I decided that I would attempt a biography of St. Francis Xavier to coincide with the decennial exposition of his relics. And by coincidence, just when I was wondering how I would do the research that was necessary, a friend from Delhi came to my rescue. She had decided to spend some time in Goa and was looking for an assignment to keep her occupied. This was literally a godsend, as I had been warned not to move around, but to take strict bed rest.
Lakshmi pursued her research into the life and times of St Francis Xavier with the kind of missionary zeal that Santo Padre himself displayed. And as the material accumulated, and as I sat down to transform it into a book, I experienced a great sense of serenity. It kept me purposefully occupied, and I slowly began pulling myself out of the cesspool of self-pity that I had been drowning in. The indomitable spirit that marked the life of St. Francis Xavier revived my flagging faith in myself and in humanity; a faith which had been battered and bruised by the insensitivity of many whom I had presumed were intimate, caring friends. St. Francis Xavier was perhaps the best therapy I could have chosen.
Things were difficult for me when I came back. My employer, like everyone else had given up on me. He decided that I was an invalid. The situation was worsened by the fact that the Publisher, AC Fernandes, who always stood by me, giving me complete freedom to run the newspaper in the best interests of Goa, was ailing. Soon after I returned he passed away.
Unfortunately, his son who inherited the newspaper did not share either the vision or the commitment of his father. To him, the OHeraldo was purely a business proposition. He was only interested in the bottom line. I realized to what extent the situation had deteriorated when I presented him with a copy of my book on St. Francis Xavier. Instead of applauding my courage in having undertaken such a challenging venture in as delicate a state of health as I was then, he very promptly decided to stop various allowances that I was getting till then. I had hoped for appreciation but Raul Fernandes promptly stopped my paltry allowances on the premise that I was engaged in private work on office time. All of which did not help in reviving my spirit and restoring my earlier zest for life and journalism.
For almost five years after my return from Bengaluru, I vegetated. My employer and even close friends had decided that I was a burnt-out editor. And since this was repeated to me so many times over not very subtly, I had begun to lose confidence. I had lost much of the vital spark that had animated me throughout my life leading up the assault and its aftermath. True, I had received a new lease of life. My body had mended to the extent it could. Some irreparable damage had taken place. Or at least damage which I had come to accept as irreversible. And I existed rather than lived in limbo till yet another miracle happened.
It was November, 2000. I got a call from a journalist whom I had vaguely known in Mumbai. Tara Patel, who loved Goa and had spent her birthday month of November in Goa for several years. On previous visits, she had called up and asked if I could give her a job as she was keen on relocating to Goa. I had always put her off conscious of our pathetic salaries.
In November, 2001 she asked if she could come and interview me for the paper she worked for in Mumbai, The Afternoon Despatch & Courier. I told her I was not worth interviewing. She insisted. And I relented. She came home and we talked about journalism. It was only then that I learned that I had first met her exactly 25 years ago when I was editing a magazine called Onlooker way back in 1975. Apparently, she had come to me with a short story, her very first short story, which I had promptly published. I forgot all about her. But apparently, she had kept track of me and my career. She went back and wrote an extremely flattering piece about me in The Afternoon Despatch & Courier.
The write-up was a turning point. It was a major turning point because it greatly revived my faith in my self-worth. It took me back to my youthful idealistic phase when I was convinced that I could change the world. The days when I felt a compulsion to fight injustice and oppression in any form. The days when my journalistic dharma was honed. When I had decided that a journalist by definition had to be critical of the establishment irrespective of the establishment in power.
Tara was a mirror to my soul. And the fact that someone believed that I continued to be the same idealistic, reverential, committed, passionate journalist, gave me the impetus to rejoin the good fight. To become fully engaged with life again. And perhaps somewhere at the back of my mind must have been a desire and determination, or perhaps even an obsession to continue to enjoy the respect and faith Tara (her earlier maiden being Pankajbala R Patel) reposed in me.
In the state in which I was in, I needed reassurance that I could be whole again. That I could take on the world anew. And that I would have sufficient resilience to battle demons, real and imaginary, which the path of adversarial journalism inevitably brings. Tara and I got married on February 10, 2001.
Writing this Preface ten years after my detoxification, eve of the last Exposition of St Francis Xavier in 1994, I feel a sense of exhilaration. A sense of exhilaration over the fact that I had the courage to walk away from a newspaper and an employer who had reduced me to a puppet and made a mockery of all that the OHeraldo had stood for. I feel a sense of jubilation that I have been able to launch a newsweekly owned by readers and run by professionals, and accountable to a responsible, enlightened Board of Directors. Who share my conviction that a newspaper should be committed exclusively to fulfilling the aspirations of the people. And should not succumb to pressure either from the government of the day or advertisers. The launch and modest success of the Goan Observer which will co-incidentally complete a year on November 15, 2004, just a week before the commencement of the Exposition, is a culmination of my struggle to be whole again. Not only in body but in mind and spirit. I hope Goencho Saib will continue to guide me in His infinite mercy and compassion.
When I was writing this book way back in 1994, I had approached Dr Ivo De Costa Azaredo for help in meeting part of the printing cost. Dr De Costa Azaredo had readily agreed but because of my poor health then, I could not follow it up. I am grateful to Dr De Costa Azaredo for readily agreeing to sponsor the new edition of “Goencho Saib,” when I approached him yet again on the eve of the current Exposition. Dr De Costa Azaredo has been intimately associated with the Church and is the only producer of sacramental wine in the country. He is also associated with several charitable causes.
I also wish to express my deep sense of gratitude to my colleagues in the Goan Observer, Agnelo Rodrigues, Jonquil Sudhir, Pravina Sivanandan, Gustav Fernandes and Veena Naik in preparing the second edition of “Goencho Saib.” Kavita and Shamir Diniz share my reverence for Goencho Saib and have brought out an hour long video CD on the life and mission of St. Francis Xavier on the occasion of Exposition 2004.
I am also very obliged to Impressions, a unit of Tarun Bharat for an excellent job of printing the new edition of “Goencho Saib,” I have always found them extremely cooperative and thoroughly professional in their dealings.
And last but not least I would like to acknowledge my deep debt to my wife and companion and indeed my resurrection, Tara Narayan, for all her support in my publication ventures.
I am confident that readers will be inspired by this story of the aristocrat who gave up everything to serve his fellow men and God.

(Rajan Narayan was the editor of the OHeraldo from 1983 to 2003 and now continues to be the CEO and editor of the goanobserver.in as on October 5, 2024)