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It is Ganesh Chaturthi, when we celebrate the god of learning and wisdom, whose name comes from the first alphabets that one learns in the Marathi language – Shree Ga Ne Sha.
Today is also the feast which gained fame from the Capela de Monte, on the Old Goa-Daujim road, and is popularly known as Monti Fest or Bandra Fest, dedicated to the birth of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Like Sao Joao, it is a fixed date feast and celebrates birth, instead of punyatithi as in the case of the feasts of the other saints.
All learning begins orally, sitting on one’s mother’s lap and listening to her, even if one disputes the script of one’s ‘Mother Tongue’ when learning and writing it later. It is also just past Teachers’ Day in India.
I have, therefore, been motivated to write about the books on plants published in English, especially because the only Agri Diary published in Konkani and Marathi in the Devanagri script in 1986, was acceptable to nobody! In fact, there were protests by persons who could read and understand it.
Those who could not read Devanagri script did not even know that the protest was because half the text was in Konkani!
Those who could not read Devanagri script did not even know that the protest was because half the text was in Konkani!
In 1984, Hiralal Prabhudesai, my senior in the Directorate of Agriculture, went to Pondicherry (now Puducherry) for an agriculture conference, and returned with a diary published by the agriculture officers’ association there. It had some information on crop cultivation and insect management which was useful to farmers and agriculture extension staff alike.
Funding for it came through advertisements of fertiliser and insecticide manufacturers and dealers.
We enthusiastically replicated the model to publish the Agri Diary ’85, and it became a fundraiser for the next bilingual publication, which was a complete loss.
As secretary of the association in 1987, I had to find ways to restart from scratch. We did, and annual publications continued well into this millennium.
In 1985, a training course in gardening was conducted for the students of St Xavier’s College, Mapusa, by the Agriculture Officers’ Association (AOA) of Goa. This was long before ‘Skill Enhancement Courses’ were conceptualised under the NEP 2020.
The idea came from Fr Nicolau Pereira, the USA-educated principal, under whose care I had completed my HSSC studies.
The course was conducted on every second Saturday of the month on a voluntary basis by members of the AOA. The training notes were put together as a cyclostyled manual, long before Xerox came with photocopying machines.
It was later updated and printed, partly in linotype and partly offset, as the Kitchen Garden Manual in May 1987. The AOA then published books annually on different aspects of crops and gardening that could be useful to a householder and farmer, alike. All these books are now out of print, but copies are prized possessions of garden enthusiasts.
This concept of publications, funded by advertisements was adopted by Green Heritage, and later by the SFX School, Siolim, for funding the ‘Festival of Plants and Flowers’ since 1992.
This concept of publications, funded by advertisements was adopted by Green Heritage, and later by the SFX School, Siolim, for funding the ‘Festival of Plants and Flowers’ since 1992.
Most of the publications are sold out, but a few copies of the latest publications on vegetables, pulses and millets are still available.
(The author is the former Chairman of the GCCI Agriculture Committee, CEO of Planter's Choice Pvt Ltd, Additional Director of OFAI and Garden Superintendent of Goa University, and has edited 18 books for Goa & Konkan)
