Last year, on October 1, Senhor Armando wished me, in his deep voice, ‘Happy Birthday and loads of health and happiness’, while I was thousands of miles away in Kansas, USA. He did the speaking and I listened because his hearing was poor. We said our cheerful ‘byes’ to each other and switched off our phones. And twelve days later, he joined the angels above the clouds. Those were his last words to me, I mused later. Am I weepy? No. He said his goodbye, and I said mine. But February 14, this year, was difficult for me because it’s his birthday and he’d have been 94, but I could not say ‘happy birthday, senhor!’ anymore. I’d call him from wherever I was … like the year I called him from Kiwi land. But now that chapter is closed; like every chapter of life must be.
Armando Santana Pereira was a unique man. Yes, every Goan loves Goa but he loved her more; he gave Goa his youth and even abandoned a medical and law career to join the liberation movement, much to his family’s consternation, surely. I hear he vowed to marry only after Goa’s liberation, keeping a bride waiting until then. He was referred to as the ‘paklo freedom fighter’ because of his good looks and deportment but he forsook his cosy life and roughed it out with the other freedom fighters of Goa. He once narrated to me how a Portuguese official asked him, while sitting in a trench in Belgaum, “Why are you in this mess… ask what you want; maybe settle in Portugal itself and enjoy the good life instead of being homeless, sleepless and hungry in these jungles” but the fire of liberation in his belly was too ferocious to be quelled for comfort or personal gain..
ASP was a master of languages – Konkani, English and Portuguese, both written and spoken. And what better route could he pursue than to use the pen as his sword to smote the colonialism that festered for more than four centuries in Goa. His fiery and provocative writings would spread the cry of freedom to every corner of Goa and that there was no dignity without the freedom of your spirit and mind. He would often relate to me how the ‘group’ hoodwinked the colonialists by sending in their ‘pieces’ after the editorial pages were scrutinized by the Portuguese officials for ‘critical/negative’ coverage. The colonialists were red with fury when they saw the printed newspapers the next morning, for the foxy freedom fighters got their ‘stuff’ printed! Heads must have surely rolled, the next day.
ASP’s writings were published in O Heraldo and A Voz de India in Goa. Several Indian newspapers too – The Indian Express, Free Press Journal, Blitz and Goan periodicals – Resurge Goa, Free Goa and Goenkar – published his writings on the draconian rule of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar in Goa and in the far-flung Portuguese colonies.
After Liberation, Senhor Armando wrote for the English Herald newspaper for more than 25 years. In the last decade of his life, his writings petered down, not because the ink dried in his pen, but because age was claiming his sight and hearing. Around 1997, I joined Herald and I benefited tremendously because of his assistance and guidance….I picked his brain which was filled with knowledge of not just the Portuguese colonialists but also of the entire British domination from the East India Company to 1947 when they made an exit leaving India in the capable hands of Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Dr. Ambedkar and the other stalwarts who struggled for years to witness the new dawn of a free nation.
Senhor Armando was a silent warrior who mingled in the red soil of the land like thousands of freedom fighters and later used his pen as a sword, especially during his exile in free India, to strike at the gut of Portuguese fascism in Goa. After Liberation, and as a mark of appreciation for his valour and sacrifice, he was appointed as Civil Administrator of Quepem and later he was the Administrator of Communidades of South Goa and Mayor of Salcete municipality. He was awarded the ‘Tamra Patra’ by the Union Government, New Delhi. On June 18, 1992, on Revolution Day, the Goa Government honoured him for his invaluable contribution to the freedom struggle of Goa. All these accolades did not make him pompous, in fact, till the end of his life, he remained the demure, elusive, very knowledgeable, away from public gaze, freedom fighter.
In 2018 a book titled ‘Looking Back and Forth’ was compiled of his articles written from 1994 to 2005.
And we got a glimpse of his inner thoughts from his articles, which will be passed on to the next generation thus enabling it to know the pains and trials of our little but gritty state.
The book is available at all leading bookstores in Goa.
Senhor Armando discerned a lack of leadership in the country and vouched in one of his articles, ‘Only the people of India are to blame (for the lack of leadership). This is not the age of kings and subjects. The people themselves are sovereign. Hence, the burden to rule ultimately rests on their shoulders…they have to elect their representatives without any sentiment.’
On Revolution Day and Goa Liberation Day, Senhor Armando invariably sent us a lead article for the editorial page of Herald in the early 2000s. He gave us his vivid recollections of Revolution and Liberation Days… after all he’d been there and done that. Senhor Armando wanted Goans to commune with Pandit Nehru through his writings and understand Nehru, the builder of free India and he elaborated in his 2005 article, ‘The burden of revitalizing our people is upon us. Let us discharge it adequately and thus pay our homage to the one, who did so much for his people (Pandit Nehru) and especially for Goans, for having liberated Goa from the Portuguese fascist rule. I only hope the young men and women, who take to politics, will grasp the significance of June 18, Goa’s Revolution Day. The young of today have vast opportunities and many decades in which they can finish the revolution and, as a last wish, Senhor Armando hoped and believed that the youth will do so and redeem the pledges his generation was unable to honour, in their time.
Jai Hind, Jai Goa!
