The Teaching Tree

                                                                    The Teaching Tree

For the last few months during my morning peregrination, I had noticed a couple of small, green, unripe papaya fruits hanging from their mother tree. They neither grew big nor shrunk with the passage of time but seemed well ensconced in their mother’s arms. Every day I would look at the two little papayas and wonder how the tree had held them firm in its grip without letting them fall. Somehow an uneasy thought used to cross my mind that the tree seemed over protective and did not give the tiny green fruits enough space to grow and ripen into big yellow ones that would have fallen down by their sheer weight. Last night’s thunder storm with dusty winds raging at a speed over 90 kmph brought down many trees and this morning while walking  through the devastation, I noticed the two unripe fruits missing on the tree. My heart missed a beat as the tree had let them go unable to withstand the thunder squall. The tree stood as a mute spectator as the fruits lay scattered around the tree amidst fallen leaves and branches.

I returned home with a vicarious sadness at the mother tree losing her children especially the two weaker ones who lacked adequate genetic strength to ripe and mature and stand on their own. I ruminated pensively on protectiveness that hinders development of any vestige of self dependence  in a growing person and denies them the opportunity to rise up to their potential even if that potential is among the lowest rungs of human calibre.  What is more alarming is protectiveness is a double edged sword; it weakens him that gives and him that receives. Just as the Tree could not hold on to its young ones in the presence of Nature’s fury, mother’s protectiveness of her children against external power or influence-personal, social, political or economic that is endemic to humans as social beings- ends in a disaster. Mothers should learn to leave their  grip over their children at the time they start growing their wings and not hang on to them till both end as victims to forces beyond their power to resist.

I write this in the context of the drubbing Congress had received in the recently concluded elections. Mother-son relationship is always wonderful provided it does not carry the baggage of protectiveness. The Rahul fruit clinging to the Sonia Papaya has been blown by the Modi gale that swept through the nation. That fruit never ripened in the first instance, as it was forever in the shadow of the protective mother and in that unripened form did not have the strength and vigour to face the onslaught of the fury whipped by a focused, Modi galvanized BJP. It will be foolish for the Congress once again to pick the pieces that are strewn all around the mother tree. It is time for the mother tree to leave the battle to the better and more mature fruits that had ripened without her protective garb and found favour with many who relished their sweetness.  The seeds of those fruits have gone into the soil and are rising up in new bloom.

Congress revival depends on new seeds, fresh plants  and unfettered growth  in a new ambience that builds upon the inherited culture and philosophy of the 125 year old grand old party and tweaks it purposefully to meet the aspirations of the new-age people that go beyond their earlier demands that sought freedom from  poverty, hunger and social deprivation. The mighty fall of the mother-son duo must herald the rise of a new leadership that is ethically and morally strong, intellectually visionary and emotionally at home with diverse population, respecting every individual as a part of the great Indian humanity.