Whether it is Cashew or Mango flowers, there is a long wait before flowers become fruits. All flowers do not become fruits.
During the last six weeks, I kept watching the cashew flowers to get an early glimpse of the transition to fruits.
I have a photo of the first week of a fruit and fifth week of another pair of fruits.
The pulp of the fruit is smaller than the nut in the initial stages. This gets altered with the pulp becoming larger, colourful and juicy to be able to be eaten.
The miniature flowers and fruits, when compared to the large size of the tree, carry with them the essence life resident in the tree. It is the cashew nut, which when dried and planted would become another tree to bring forth onto being another generation of a cashew tree.
The plant life is a message about the cycle of life, in which the new beginnings are at the heart of its life.
The seed sprouts when planted in the soil give birth to a new tree! It is in the soil, a seed has the prospects to go beyond itself to become, plant or a tree.
Anna and I have been going through recently the archives of ASHIRVAD, Initiative for Child Development from its beginning in 1983 as a Child Development Centre, at Chennai till it was relocated at the Christian MedicalCollege, Vellore in 1997, to become the Developmental Paediatrics Unit. One message which we picked up from our correspondences, newsletters and articles published, that there was a measure of contentment about what had emerged in those 14 years in the discipline of child Development. It was a new discipline in India at that time. We were at the phase of enlarging our profile and service.
It was Dr V.I.Mathen, the then Medical Superintendent of CMC Vellore, which made a prophetic comment in 1994: 'The content, mission and academic strength of ASHIRVAD Child Development Centre can be a seed to give birth to the speciality Developmental Paediatrics in India' That was what happened in 1996, when Dr. Mathan, who by then was the director of CMC, invited ASHIRVAD to relocate its Child Development Centre at CMC Vellore, to become the first Developmental Paediatrics Unit in any medical college in India.
It is now, we have a better glimpse of how we were blessed to cast the seed of ASHIRVAD Child Development Centre to the soil of the academic world at CMC Vellore. With that relocation we 'let go' of a seed and allowed it to be replanted elsewhere. With the developmental Paediatrics Unit at CMC, in its 27 th year now giving a leadership role in this speciality, Anna and I get a fuller scope of the calling that came to us to offer the seed to be replanted in a new soil.
To see this speciality of Developmental Paediatrics take roots in India, through a small beginning that was initiated at ASHIRVAD Child Development Centre at Chennai in 1983, is 'God's doing and it is marvellous in our eyes'! Since then there were about 25 initiatives to start this academic speciality in different institutions.
The seed often outgrows its own past history.
Seeing this happen to the speciality of Developmental Paediatrics and how the Developmental Paediatrics Unit at CMC Vellore was its midwife for the speciality to be born in India, is a delight and surprise with which we live, beholding it as a mystery of our life time!
M.C.Mathew(text and photo)
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