| Free From School By Rahul Alvares |
| 1 | Chapter 1: A Fish Shop in Mapusa You must try to understand that when I finished school I was as raw as raw could be. I had never travelled anywhere on my own, never purchased a train ticket, since like most kids my age I had only travelled with my parents or relatives and they made all the decisions. I had no experience of how to handle money (my knowledge being limited to spending the 50 paise or one rupee I would receive as pocket money now and then). |
| 2 | So while I had set my sights on travelling far and wide my parents wisely thought that I should begin by learning to manage on my own within Goa itself. It was also the rainy season and travelling around the country would be much more difficult they explained. So I started out by helping at an aquarium shop in Mapusa, the town nearest my village. The proprietor of the shop is Ashok D'Cruz, a college friend of my father's. |
| 3 | I must tell you about Ashok. He is no ordinary businessman: keeping fish is a passion with him. He is far more interested in chatting with his customers about fish than making money selling them. I have never seen him forcing any of his customers to buy from his stock of aquarium fish. In fact, it was Ashok who introduced me to the amazing world of aquarium fish way back when I was just nine and studying in Class V. |
| 4 | Under his guidance then, I experimented with breeding guppies, platties and mollies, fairly simple types of fish to breed. However, it was a matter of great excitement for me at that time to be successful in my experiments and Ashok was generous enough to even buy back from me the baby fish I reared just to encourage me. Later I developed sufficient confidence to experiment with and breed more difficult types of fish, like Siamese Fighting Fish and Blue Guramies-all under the expert tutelage of Ashok. |
| 5 | So it was to Ashok's shop that I went every morning at 9.00 a.m., speeding on my bicycle to be on time. I would stay there until lunch time, a regular hands on, doing whatever I was asked to do. Ashok's shop is not very large. It is a two-roomed shop on the ground floor of the Gomes Catao complex. It has a display section in front and a store room at the back. The showroom has about twenty fish tanks on display with a variety of fish that Ashok purchases mainly from Mumbai. |
| 6 | Each tank stores a particular species of fish. Ashok's shop is located away from the main market area so he does not have the advantage of casual customers dropping by. However Ashok has his regular customers and there are always at least twenty to thirty customers daily. During my first few days at his shop, my work was only to watch the tanks, clean those which were dirty, remove the dead fish and do some other small jobs. |
| 7 | I also fed the fish and treated the wounded and diseased fish. Sometimes, I also attended to customers. Gradually, I began to accompany Ashok on his rounds to various places. A gentleman in Moira wanted to set up an aquarium at his home. He had a tank. He also had definite ideas about how he wanted it to finally look and Ashok was called to see how it could all be done. The man sent his car for us. |
| 8 | At his house we discussed the location of the tank, lighting arrangements, the water filters, the kind and quantity of fish he would like to have, and maintenance. After we were fully satisfied that we had everything right and had noted down his requirements, we returned to Mapusa. Later he came for the material which we kept ready for him. Another time I accompanied Ashok to a client's office to put a pair of Dwarf Guramies in the fish tank and to fix a picture as a backdrop for the tank. |
| 9 | On such visits I watched care fully what Ashok did and soon enough Ashok started sending me on my own to visit some of his clients who had small or simple problems. I went to clients to fix aquarium equipment such as air pumps and filters, to fix toys in the tanks, to check fish for diseases or if there was a sudden crisis such as fish dying in numbers, or if a client wished to add more fish to his collection. |
| 10 | I was sent to collect overdue payments or simply to enquire the aquariums were doing. Sometimes I went on my own to visit some of the places where we had set up tanks and enjoyed watching the fish swimming happily in their new homes. One day my employer decided to send me as a spy to find out the prices of fish and fish food at a competitive fish shop. I tried to behave like a casual customer and walked coolly into the competitor's shop and gradually began to ask the prices of fish and fish food. |
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