Alvares, Rahul; Natural history -- India -- Anecdotes
I woke up early on the morning of August 11th, 1995 and pedalled away
to Siolim, which is a picturesque village across the hill from Parra. I
found myself sitting at Alexyz's doorstep much earlier than expected.
Alexyz and his wife Tecla arrived home in time for lunch. After lunch,
I hopped on the back of Alexyz's Kinetic Honda and we set off to visit
the homes of all those participating in the exhibition, informing them
to keep their exhibits ready for us to collect the next day.
I woke up on the 12th morning to the sound of Alexyz's gibberish much
like scatman's scat. "Come on man, let's get going", he yelled. He was
a college friend of my parents and he is one of the funniest people I
know. Just being in his company is one big laugh!
Our task that morning was to collect the plant exhibits from the homes
of all those on our list. The tempo arrived at 9.30 a.m. We covered the
base of the tempo with shrubs to act as cushions for the potted plants.
We had a long list of homes to visit. Each time we picked up an item
for the exhibition we tagged and numbered it so we would know the
correct house to return the pot to later. We had to be careful at some
houses otherwise we might have ended with torn pants ripped up by the
huge Dobermans people owned.
When the tempo could carry no more we would return to SFX school where
the exhibition was to be held in order to unload the pots and start out
again. Each round was an experience of new people, new homes, new
gardens. On one round we visited the famous pop singer Remo's house.
His mother was taking part in the exhibition.
It took us all day to complete the list and we eventually made three
trips round the village. We then arranged the pots on the benches in
the school hall. Miguel Braganza (an agricultural officer of the
Government who at that time was posted to the Indian Council of
Agricultural Research in Old Goa) and Francis Borges (the same person
who gave the talk on organic farming at the Saligao Plant Exhibition)
were also there along with several other village boys and girls all
helping in various ways to set up the show which was to begin the next
morning. In fact by the time we finished it was already one a.m. of the
13th. We would have only a few hours of sleep before we would all be on
duty again at 9 a.m. to complete the last minute jobs before the
festival got started.
The Green Heritage Plant Festival lasted three days. The Director of
the Agricultural Department, Mr P.K. Desai, inaugurated it at 11 a.m
(instead of a ribbon to be cut between the doors of the exhibition,
there was a creeper). He also released a book titled, Green Aid
III-Total Gardening that the Green Heritage had published. The book was
wrapped up in a large money plant leaf instead of wrapping paper. I
thought this an unusual and apt idea. After the inauguration and the
release of the book, the official made his speech which was followed by
a funny speech made by Alexyz.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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