The three Chiku trees

"Geri Care" welcomes one with much green all around it  adding to the natural panorama of a backdrop of stately hills ,silent sentinels to all at "Geri Care". As if to make this beautiful scene more beautiful,  there was a tree plantation drive, which translated into many a pot and sapling of dancing,  beautiful, colorful flowers and even fruit bearing trees.

My mother, a recent addition  to the geri care family expressed a rather out of the box wish...she wanted to plant a Chiku tree. And as many  others, this wish was granted to her too, as there happened  to be a Chiku sapling thoughtfully bought, among the splendor  of plants.

This took me back into her childhood,  a true story that I had listened to at her knee as a child, wide eyed and amazed.

My grandfather  had a huge house with a big sprawling  garden,with different  flowering plants and fruit bearing trees and a wife, ( my grandmother), a gardening  enthusiast with green thumbs.

One corner of this garden, was " reserved " for his 3 beloved daughters, ( my mother being the eldest)  should they decide to add to the garden.

One day, the three girls, (my mother, called "Tai", Sudha and Manda) welcomed their much loved uncle from the heart of the Konkan region. This time he had got them 3 little saplings  of  Chiku tree as a “gift".

With great excitement, all three went to that little corner and each one neatly and enthusiastically  planted "their" tree and  watered it. The uncle praised their gardening  talent and their enthusiasm and returned home soon.

After a couple of months, he returned and  went to see how the saplings  had fared.

One sapling had rotted due to over watering. The second had grown beautifully,  all ready to bear fruit  and the third had died, wilted due to utter and sheer neglect.

My grandfather,  a famous  and prizewinning  author, saw this and said, these saplings  have taught us such a great lesson in life.

How often one sees, dreams wilt and die due to too much care, too much of clutching hard to it, just as this plant died of too much water, too much of a good thing.

Dreams die, people drift away like the third plant, due to sheer neglect, no investment, relegation to the forgotten realms...what a loss…

Like the second plant,  one has to have the right amount of holding close and investment  in people and the right amount of letting go, but never too far, that they drift away too far

The balance in everything  is the key and that leads to a healthy,  productive  plant, that grows into a strong healthy tree .
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Thought- provoking, isn't it?

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