He wakes up in the morning, his left foot on the ground and walks out of the bedroom. His muscle memory makes him unlock the front door. As he does that, his reflexes make him bend down, without even looking, to touch the daily familiar feel of soft paper. ‘0 Heraldo’ in hand, his day begins, and life resets for another day. He breathes, he lives, he reads, and he feels…. His Herald.
Many of us do different things. Some report, many edit, still others rewrite, others take photographs and videos, some update websites and social media, others work on columns and letters written to us, and yes, a team also fields calls, weathering criticism or accepting praise, as the due may be.
From midnight to the next midnight, there is someone in Herald or its support system doing his or her job at any given minute. As the reporters finish their task, the desk takes over and then the larger production team. The entire universe of printing takes over, followed by the logistics of dispatching your Herald to your town, village, and newsagent and then to your door.
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Beyond ordinary, simply ‘mission’-ary
This isn’t a job just done by so many hands and hearts and by ordinary people doing something extraordinary. It is done by dreamers on a mission that looks simple – being the Voice of Goa, every morning.
Those of us in Herald are obsessed with what does look like a simple mission. But 125 winters have taught the legion of Herald’s editors, reporters, writers and readers that being a Voice is a function beyond exercising one’s vocal cords.
For Mãe, & asmitai
As it turns 125, O Heraldo enters the legion of publications that have walked this path. Of being a people’s paper – of, by and for the people, chosen by them to carry their dreams, aspirations and pleas for justice. It has indeed done its duty of being a newspaper , the harbinger of news, but generations of families, across Goa – each new generation, echoing the previous – will vouch across eras, regimes, languages, and scripts, that their O Heraldo has dutifully performed its everyday task of being a responsible vehicle, and a spirit that acts as a shelter, a rock and protective arm as well as a clenched fist and a pen- wielded as a mighty sword, for its people, and beyond them, for its land, it’s Mãi Mãe (mother in Konkani and Portuguese) and its asmitai (identity)
With each dawn, each of us at Herald wakes up to see if we have passed this twin litmus test – of fighting for our motherland and preserving Goa’s identity.
