The World’s Best Brinjals!

In our home is a little balcony. It’s the venue for the morning coffee-newspaper routine.

It’s also the place where the wife has lined up lots of pots to create a mini kitchen garden. And it is so much fun seeing her tend to the plants, helping her water them, take out the weeds, and celebrate when that brinjal coyly says I am ready for your Baingan-Bharta. And when that happens, you should see the wife’s face light up. Like it did this morning.

If our home has a nice, fresh and green feel, it’s all thanks to her. But all that greenery does more than just make our home look nice. It also reminds me of some valuable lessons every day. Like these.

1.   Don’t let excuses come in the way of your passions and your dreams. If you want to create a kitchen garden, space is not a constraint. It’s all in our heads. You don’t need a farm house or a villa with a garden to indulge your love for gardening. Apartments work fine too.

2.   Ensuring that the plant survives indoors means giving it just the right amount of water and the right amount of sunshine. Plus a lot of hard work. Nothing of significance happens without patient, consistent effort. Stick with it. The reward will come.

3.   Sometimes, a visitor to our home will see the greenery and remark how lucky we are, and how nothing seems to grow in their house. And my wife will smile and almost apologetically say that it’s not all luck, you’ve got to show some love to those plants too. True for our lives too, no? Luck matters. But most times, we make our own luck. With effort. Dedication. And passion.

4.   The Baingan-Bharta made with the brinjal from our own kitchen garden seems to taste just that bit more special. Mirroring the reality of our lives. The fruit of your hard work is way sweeter than anything else you might get. The quality of your life then is not about the quality of the brinjals – but about the joy of growing it and making it happen. The world’s best brinjals are usually the ones you’ve grown.

Like some wise man once said, the journey is indeed the reward.