MOVE series - "horticulture and progeny"

A great agriculture specialist, once had this to say. The muslim influence in the field of horticulture in India, as perhaps music, according to him , has been immense.

The time and context were an after-dinner tete-tete, over a delicious partaking of a vanilla/cum alphonso mango dish. The topic veered round to growing of this great mango variety; If one wanted to grow, alphonsos, the obvious thing, one would imagine doing, would be to sow a alphonso seed, and wait for it to sprout, and grow into a big tree, and yield many many more alphonsoes. Right?

Wrong, he said, and continued, chances of getting a alphonso mango from a sowing of a mango seed route , as per him, were/ are next to "nil" except as an outside chance. This was a surprise. He then went on to say, that it was the muslims whose horticultural practices, had introduced the concept of "grafting" and to get exact replicas, this indeed was/continues to be the correct and reliable route. "chip of the old block" a well known cliche, is probably an offshoot of this.

I was reminded of this when, I read the pieces, from Madhuri's Gibran, to ALN's (invariably) profound observations, and of course my own lament that, in spite of my wishes, the revisits of replicas, in the form of a short poem, ( which incidentally Madhuri liked) , all in one go.

One's progeny being exact replicas, by above analogy, as also in terms of my limited knowledge of astrology, is to my belief, almost as difficult, and can only be an outside chance. The parallell to grafting is "cloning" and we have quite a lot of such instances in Mythology; Brahma wiped a sweat, and lo behold, sage vashishta was born etc etc. ( incidentally, BTW, Prahlad was born to hiranya kasibu, Duryodhana to Gaandhari) . Till cloning comes up in a big way, exact replicas seem to be a difficult thing to bring into this world, by human beings as at present.

Moreover, today, the world has become a globalised small village; A Dhruv or a Rishab, or an Apporva, has a chinese, malay, muslim, christian, friends in school, and in the neighbourhood. Parents are also quite like Gibran, not generally keen or insistent or even desire, that their children are exactly like them. What shapes one's psyche, therefore, is the social lubrication one is subjected to. Methinks strongly, that even if we wanted it, the children imitating their parents, and being replicas in todays environment seems difficult, unless their social intercourse provides this, and if they are still able to be that, it's just co-incidental or to borrow from Gulpa/CWG they are probably divine choices.

(For all I know, Apoorva, or the next in line, or Anirudh, can one day be the President of the US of A, and Dhruv can turn out to be a Zen master, with global following ..........)

It is (probably) precisely because of these undercurrents, we are constantly trying to let the gen-next to know about our mythologies, traditions, etc, and I do not for a moment think that in any way these can be intrepreted, as our wanting them to be like us............. Arun's boy as President of the USA, is too tempting an offer for him to wish a replica!!!!!!!!

Some immediate thoughts folks, and I would love responses.

Love

Vichu