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.
The Green Heritage programme had several aspects: (i) the exhibition, (ii) lectures and talks on different subjects and (iii) competitions of different kinds-all related to the green world.
The main exhibition hall was very big and it was filled with all kinds of plants, arranged in such a manner that people could move around easily and view the plants without too much difficulty. Altogether there must have been about two hundred pots. There were vegetable plants such as chillies and brinjals. There were flowering plants, cacti, creepers, ferns, bonsai of Banyan trees, peepal trees, etc. There were also lime trees, orange trees and chickoo trees all growing in pots.
On the stage in the hall, competition exhibits-vegetable-carving crafts and flower-making crafts of students from different schools-were kept.
Outside the hall there were two corridors. In one corridor the government nursery was stationed, where neem, mango, coconut, chickoo, tamarind, cashew and some other kinds of trees were being sold. Along the other corridor a variety of other items were kept on sale: a small table held copies of the book, Total Gardening as well as the previous two volumes released at the earlier exhibitions by the Green Heritage; another table held beautiful coconut handicrafts for sale. There was an elephant head, a table lamp, a skull, all made out of different parts of a coconut. Next to this, The Other India Bookstore had set up a stall with a large variety of environment titles. Further down was the Garden Glory stall selling various types of garden implements such as lawn movers, cutters, sprayers and other accessories. Apurbhai had a variety of organic manures like leaf mould, Karanji and bone meal besides ornamental plants, palms and creepers. There were pickles, squashes and medicine for papaya plants also on sale.