This story was one that was told by late Manohar Parrikar erstwhile Chief Minister of Goa. This story was shared by him during an event in Baroda on the 11th of September 2016. It talks about the days when he grew up in a small village in north Goa called Parra. Parra is from where his name Parrikar comes from. It is a village nestled between Asagaon and Salegaon very close to the beaches in Baga and Anjuna. The soil there is extremely fertile. A bit sandy but full of moisture. Parra was well known for large Watermelons. During the end of harvest season in the month of May the largest farmer of Watermelon in Parra had a contest of eating the largest amount of Watermelon. And Parrikar loved this and it was a contest he looked forward to. In fact on the day of the contest he felt that the farmer was much better than his father! Parrikar went ahead and finished his studies from IIT and a few years after returning from IIT he went to the market looking for Watermelons. He looked around and couldn’t find the large watermelons. He asked around, “Where are the Watermelons from Parra?” One of the men directed him to another and said, “These are the ones from Parra.” But these weren’t very large, they were about mid-sized. He was perturbed. Over the next few weeks, he tried to find out, what happened to those large watermelons from Parra. What he found out was incredible! Using his questioning ability and his little interest in genetics, he found out what had happened. During the watermelon contest when he was a little boy, the kids were not allowed to bite or eat the seeds. The kids were supposed to throw the seeds in a small bowl that was given by the farmer. This farmer would then sow these seeds from the largest watermelon to get again a repeated harvest of large watermelons. The next generation of the farmer did not understand this, they still ran the contest but with smaller watermelons as they realised that the large watermelons got in a higher price. As a result, the contest gave the seed of the tiny watermelons and therefore the harvest gave the tinier watermelons. And it 7-8 years, the entire production of Parra moved from big watermelons to tiny watermelons. Paerrikar says that the generation of watermelons is just 1 year and it was destroyed in 7-8 years. Business Points ( Tags ) #Longtermgains #Parrikar #Watermelons #Parra #Goa #short-termgains
