After a season of doing freelance sports reporting for The Indian Express in the city now called Mumbai, I felt much like a lover.

However, I was involved in Goan journalism in Mumbai (then Bombay), but that too in a limited way.

I read The Navhind Times often, as the paper was available in Mumbai during the 1970s.

I was involved in mainstream journalism in Mumbai since my college days, first with The Indian Express and later with the Free Press Journal.

Getting into the field Felix Uncle, as I called him, introduced me to the news editor of Indian Express in Mumbai and I was given a chance to work in the sports department under CSA Swami .

My friend, Cyril D'Cunha, started a sports weekly called Goal, and I was its Mumbai correspondent.

To leave a city like Mumbai where journalism made blood rush in one's veins, and go to Goa, where things moved at a snail's pace, was something I dreaded.

The Fernandes family was close friends with my friends in Mumbai, the Ribeiros, owners of the Goan restaurant in Dhobitalao called Snowflake.

And whenever John came to Mumbai to get supplies for their store, he would visit Snowflake where I hung out most of my time.

I once covered a function at the United States Information Services (USIS) office in Mumbai where Narayan was present.

A well-known scholar of Black studies was visiting Mumbai from the United States.

I was content working in Mumbai where journalism flourished those days and continues to do so till today.

(Silveira was one of my two English lecturers at Margao's Damodar College and, with the other, B.G.Koshy, later turned to journalism: Silveira was Editor, ONLOOKER, of Mumbai's FPJ group and Koshy the Associate Ed.

While the Mumbai dak editions of Times of India (ToI) and Indian Express (IE) did the honours in coastal Maharashtra, it was Bangalore's Deccan Herald in coastal Karnataka.

And zipped their way with newspaper bundles to either end of Goa before the crack of dawn in terribly overloaded, ramshackle, dieselized Ambassador cars that should have been a delight to Mario Miranda and Alexyz (we used a syndicated pocket cartoon, incidentally, since Mario was with the ToI group in Mumbai and Alexyz hadn't yet surfaced as a cartoonist.)

I joined the FPJ Group (Free Press Journal, its tabloid-eveninger Bulletin and fortnightly, Onlooker) as Goa Correspondent; moved in like capacity to IE when FPJ's Chief Editor, S. Krishnamurty joined IE's Mumbai edition as Resident Editor; played a role in J.D. Fernandes' decision to start an English avatar of the near defunct Portuguese

Moreover, the applicant wasn't even into journalism for quite some time: he presently dwelt in the dreary world of advertising and public relations, at one of Mumbai's lesser-known firms.

On the way back to the hotel (he was returning to Mumbai that day), Rajan said I was the only person he could trust and would I please mail him on a weekly basis on the progress of implementation of the agreed blueprint.

This was essential, he explained, because as discussed and agreed, he would be asking some friends in Mumbai to quit their secure jobs to join the Herald and he didn't want to put people in trouble if the paper was, after all, not going to take off.

I presumed he was concerned with risking his Mumbai team's future.

His Mumbai team was to follow once we were staffed and ready to run dummies.

On the field, Devika Sequeira was to assist me with Mumbai's Sushil Silvano on the local crime beat, together with school chum Nelson Fernandes to cover sports and Lui Godinho on the camera.

Ticker lines were installed, typewriters and telephones put in place, and the Mumbai team arrived (I recall only S. Vaidyanathan on the newsdesk, though).

There must have been, in the initial stages, a lot of pain and personal sacrifice but let's also not forget that Rajan was, those days, without the responsibilities of a family and with only a pint of Old Monk for company, and the option to return to Mumbai's drab world of advertising!

After the much touted and much publicised millennium rave party by Mumbai tycoon Jay Wadia was banned by the High Court in December 1999, I was witness to two rave parties in January 2000, though on a smaller scale, but where the corruption by the police was displayed in its full naked glory nonetheless.