Nature is one of the best teachers we have around us. She imparts so many life lessons that drive home valuable pointers. She speaks to us silently, shows and doesn’t actually tell, in a myriad ways.
This is what came home to me yet again this summer as I watched our mango tree. It was one of many trees that my grandmother had planted and selflessly so, for she didn’t expect to be around when the tree took root and started yielding fruits.
Over the years we have had seasons in which the yield was generous and others in which it wasn’t so. During good years we learnt to share the fruit with others who couldn’t afford to buy this delicacy. After all there is only so much tree owners can eat. This year with some effort I identified at least half a dozen NGOs with whom we could share the fruits and the very act of doing so gave the family so much joy. A few batches were donated to the Shirdi Sai Baba temple for use in their daily Annadhana cooking and at a pooja for the padukas of Swami Samarth.
What we humans get to eat is what is left, after the birds, squirrels and insects have had their fill. As night falls there is the steady sound of mangoes falling to the ground nudged by the breeze or other creatures. These were collected in the morning and spread out over sheets of paper or jute inside a carton, no hay these days. The mangoes needed careful tending. Every single day one had to check on the fruits to see how they were doing and remove the ones about to rot. A day missed, thanks to life throwing one off track, meant there was a price to pay.
Every mango, we learnt, didn’t ripen to perfection. Even if it looked absolutely well-formed to start with, it sometimes turned black or brown in parts and ripened unevenly. Those mangoes were probably meant to go back to the soil and enrich it and weren’t really wasted in the end. There was a purpose to every single fruit.
Climatic surprises like unseasonal rains or a cyclone disturbed the growth cycle of the fruit. As the season draws to an end one is grateful for the lessons learnt and humbled by the realisation that nothing is under the total control of humans.