The field work was a good experience and one which I cherish. I helped Guru plough about half a dozen fields and even now when the rainy season approaches I remember that experience with warmth and pleasure.
Chapter 3: Plant Festivals
The rainy season brings out the average Goan's passion ate love for plants and some of this fervour and enthusiasm finds its way into plant exhibitions and plant festivals. I would like to recount my experiences with two of them-at Saligao and at Siolim-two villages close to where I live. At the first I was a mere spectator but played a more active role in the second.
Saligao Sunday, the 1st of July, was an unusually bright day for the normally dull, wet, cloudy rainy season. I was looking forward to going to Saligao to see an exhibition of plants and was glad for the dry weather as I pedalled the 20 minutes it took to reach Lourdes Convent, the well known school in the village where the exhibition was being held. I reached around 10.30 in the morning. The exhibition had already been inaugurated and the place was crowded with people all trying to enter the main hall where the exhibits were kept. I too did likewise.
The main exhibition hall was quite big and the plants were exhibited in pots in the centre of the hall. Many of the plants were for sale. They had been brought there by different people and most of the pots had the names of their owners on them. The cacti were grouped together on a table on one side of the hall and the prize winning exhibits of the flower arrangement competition on another. I noticed that the first prize had been given to a flower arrangement done inside a painted scooter tyre. I thought this a really unusual idea. The two most attractive and unusual cacti were ones on exhibit: while one had a thin green base and a bright red lumpy top the other was like a cotton puff.
Besides the plants in the hall some classrooms alongside were also occupied with plants and other items for sale. There were food plants like coriander and coconut seedlings, ornamental plants such as money plants, creepers, and indoor decorative plants. There were also garden implements including spraying tools, cutters, flowerpots, seed packets and organic manures.
At eleven o'clock there was an announcement that there would be a talk given by Mr Francis Borges, the topic being `Organic Farming'. Francis Borges is a college lecturer but is better known for his experience and knowledge of plants. He practises organic farming and has a nursery called Apurbai. He used to write a weekly column in a Goan paper the "Weekender". My dad had already told me about him so I was eager to hear what he had to say.
His talk dealt with the consequences of using chemicals (pesticides, insecticides, fertilizers) which he said was a recent happening in the world. He stressed the need to return to organic farming which he said was the only sensible way of farming. He also spoke about the role of earthworms as friends of the farmer.
Many questions followed. Most of these dealt with problems people faced while gardening at home. Mr Borges in his reply offered practical solutions which he himself had tried out successfully. For example, to the query, "Why does a papaya plant die after flowering?" he suggested building a bund round the base of the plant because water collecting there rots the papaya base stem. In this connection he also spoke of a medicine which he and his colleagues had invented to drastically reduce the diseases which attack papaya. He markets this as "Papaya Cure". By around noon the talk ended and I left for home.
Siolim The plant exhibition at Saligao had given me an idea of what to expect at the next plant festival I attended, which was at Siolim. Here I took an active part thanks to the invitation I received from Alexyz, the well known Goan cartoonist, who was in charge of the Siolim Plant Festival called "Green Heritage". Green Heritage was started by Alexyz and his friends a few years ago and it has proved to be an enormous success with people eagerly awaiting the event each year.