"ALL SEEDS DON'T SPROUT, MY SON"
Pic.: Alwyn Mathias
“No force on earth can stop an idea whose time has come.”
When I was small, back in our village, I would
feel excited seeing seeds sprout in the wild orchard. They were all sorts of
seeds - cashew seeds, mango seeds, jack-fruits seeds, tamarind seeds, berry seeds, coconuts seeds, papaya
seeds, chikoo seeds, guava seeds and all sorts. Many a times, after returning from
school, I would attempt to plant a cashew or a mango seed in place of my choice…
And, then, I would go there, every day, to check if it had sprouted…. Most of
the times, it hadn't… and, I would wonder ‘Why’?
“Because,”
my mom would tell, “all seeds don’t sprout, my son.”
“But,
why so?” I would insist.
“For,
that’s how God wants it to be!” my mom would calm me down.
Today,
I attempt to plant seeds of different kinds… One of them is my ideas. The ideas
that I try to give life to… Like I did as a little child, even today, I go out
there – into my orchards – and try to plant my ideas where I presume they would
sprout, grow into rich fruit-giving trees… I wait and watch… I wait and watch…
And, many a times, I do feel disappointed…
I
ask: Was it a bad seed? Was it an infertile soil? Was it a wrong season? Or,
was it not in God’s plan?
True,
just as all seeds don’t sprout, all ideas too, don’t. And, just as they do when
everything is right for them to, our ideas, too, shoot up when everything is
right for them to… And, as Victor Hugo’s famous line goes, “No force on earth
can stop an idea whose time has come.”
My
mom did no t know who Victor Hugo was. That’s why she would calm me down with
her words:
“For,
that’s how God wants it to be, my son!”
So,
so be it!
GERALD
D’CUNHA
Comments