A dozen bananas, five chickoos, three guavas, two boxes of strawberries, two pomegranates, one huge canary melon and lots of grapes. This is my menu for today.

Over the last few months, I have spent more money on fruits than on anything else. I have delayed holiday trips, I have avoided eat outs, I have avoided movies, I have avoided summer shopping, I have avoided spending on books but I have not been able to avoid spending on fruits. Moreover, I have begun to dislike the regular spicy food and I have fallen in love with the natural sweetness and nourishment of the fruits.

Has it helped me? Yes!

I feel fresh despite of working in an office which is closed, humid and dull. I feel grateful, thankful towards the existence, the nature, which provides such wide variety of fruits for all the different seasons throughout the year.

In fact, when I gave a deep thought to it, I discovered that Mother Nature is the best cook we have ever had the pleasure to know. She uses such minimal ingredients and prepares so much variety for us to enjoy.

Let’s stop for a moment here as I need to ask a question. When you read the words ‘we’ and ‘us’ in the above para, what did you think in your mind? What did you picture? ‘Us’ humans or ‘us’ living beings?

Those of you who thought I was talking about ‘us’ humans, please carry on reading. Those of you who thought I was talking about ‘us’ living beings, you may stop reading further. You know the truth, you know the message and you are unique.

Coming back to fruits, just think for a moment about why do fruits exist? What is the purpose of a fruit? What makes a fruit and for what a fruit is made?

I watched ‘Ship of Theseus” last year and it was a rare experience. I won’t say it was a life altering one because I ended up crying in the end. Why did I link ‘life altering experience’ with ‘crying’? I usually cry when some picture, some story or some movie relates to how I think about things. It was nice to know that there are weird people like me in the world and they are in a much better position to help spread the message. There was so much detail in the movie that I had to watch it tens of times later to grasp its entirety. In a scene, an ailing monk is shown picking up fruits from the ground. It gives such a beautiful message. A fruit will fall down only when it needs no more nourishment from the tree and a monk is shown picking up fruits from the ground. He respects the fact that fruits which have not fallen yet, need more nourishment, just like we do.

I remember very few people sat still as the credits rolled in the end. Most of the people turned on their phones to catch up with what they had missed during the movie, whatsapp messages, facebook tags, facebook photos, tweets. We are all concerned about things that don’t matter at all. What did our friends do? What would they do tomorrow? All stupid questions, stupid concerns about future, about meeting deadlines. We waste our precious times today while preparing ourselves for tomorrow and yet we are never ready because when we will be ready, we will die. We will fall out of life just as a fruit falls from the tree when it is ripe, when nourishment is no longer required, when the fruit itself can nourish the seeds lying within it to help seeds become a tree.

That is the purpose of a fruit, to protect the seed. The tree is not concerned with the fruit but with the seeds lying inside the fruit. Fruit is created to nourish the seeds. And what is required for a tree to reach at such stage where it can protect and nourish the fruits? It requires nourishment itself, it requires watering the roots. Don’t wander around watering the leaves, water the roots, the root is tree’s being. Leaves, branches and fruits will take care of themselves if you take care of the roots.

If roots are watered, there will be many branches and limbs. Birds will come and make their nests, children will play in its shade, fruits will grow, the hunger and thirst of the hungry and the thirsty will be fulfilled. All this will happen by only watering the roots properly.

So, are you watering the roots? Are you taking care of your fruit so it can take care of its seeds?