The Avocado Baby

Rekha Jad

rekhajad1969@gmail.com

I am a conventional, rather mundane eater, with little panache for experimenting with exotic recipes. But children have a way of expanding your culinary horizons. When they come home, the breakfast table suddenly acquires a café-like sophistication—open avocado sandwiches, mashed avocado slathered with herbs, spices and assorted flavourful ingredients, spread generously over favourite bread. And breakfast is ready!

What remains is the large, round avocado seed, sitting quietly and coyly on the kitchen counter.

That was when Sonny Boy came up with the brilliant idea: “Why don’t we grow it?”

The green parent in me was instantly aroused. But growing an “angrezi” fruit in our very much desi Delhi climate sounded like a challenge. Still, the experiment began.

The seed was wrapped in a moist paper napkin, tucked into a zip pouch and deposited deep inside some forgotten recess of the closet. A few days later, my mother-in-law happened to lay her hands on the mysterious pouch and promptly assumed it was some jadu-tona material.

We almost screamed: “Don’t touch it! It’s the avocado seed!”

It had to remain undisturbed for weeks, patiently awaiting its moment of magic.

The seed began to look rather sorry from the outside. Its brown covering loosened and came off, and we concluded that our little experiment had probably withered away. But giving up was not an option. The pouch stayed exactly where it was.

And then, after nearly three weeks—Lo and behold!—a tiny shoot appeared between the two splitting halves of the seed.

The joy was disproportionate to the achievement. We smiled as though a mother had just seen her newborn emerge from the womb.

The avocado baby now deserved better accommodation.

The next habitat was a wide-mouthed glass bottle filled with water. Three toothpicks were carefully poked into the seed, creating a miniature tripod that suspended it over the water. The bottle was ceremoniously placed on Sonny’s table for continuous monitoring and supervision.

Once again, patience was put to the test.

Then came another milestone. Tiny, whitish, hair-like roots began emerging into the water. It felt almost like watching a newborn achieve the milestone of holding its head.

The bottle was respectfully moved to a shelf with access to sunlight. Watching the avocado became part of my daily routine. I would look at it with tender eyes, as if some little miracle were unfolding inside that glass bottle.

Soon, the shoot became a slender stem. Tiny green buds appeared, birthing delicate leaves. The stem leaned towards the source of light, and we would dutifully change the position of the bottle to ensure that our little one received its sunshine.

It was growing—milestone by milestone.

Our avocado baby was thriving on TLC.

For a doctor, TLC means Total Leucocyte Count. But here it meant something far more important—Tender Loving Care.

And then came the day when our tall, lean, 10-cm plant needed to be potted. Our baby required a proper home and, naturally, a nutritious diet. It was time for its Annaprashana.

Amazon promptly delivered a pristine white pot. Sonny drilled two holes at the bottom. Compost and soil were ordered for another thousand rupees—after all, the baby needed good formula feed! A shovel and an assortment of gardening paraphernalia in fluorescent orange soon arrived at the doorstep.

The baby was now thoroughly pampered.

We searched for the perfect spot on the balcony—light, but not too much; sunshine, but no harsh Delhi heat. The tender sapling was settled into its new home.

And now, tending to it every day, counting its leaves, measuring its height and looking for every tiny new shoot has become a favourite exercise. My other plants, I confess, are beginning to receive distinctly stepmotherly treatment.

But somewhere between the avocado seed, the glass bottle and the little white pot, this seemingly trivial experiment has taught me something rather profound.

Plants, babies, relationships—and perhaps even human beings in general—respond to TLC.

We doctors are accustomed to counting TLC in numbers. But life reminds us that there is another TLC that cannot be measured in a laboratory: Tender Loving Care.

Imagine if we extended that care beyond our own little circles—to people around us, irrespective of caste, colour, status, gender or social standing. Perhaps the world would be a little less harsh, a little more compassionate, and certainly a happier and healthier place to live.

The avocado seed began as something we casually discarded after breakfast.

With a little patience, resilience and a lot of TLC, it became a source of joy

Avocado trees often take many years—sometimes decades—to bear fruit, and those grown from seed may never fruit at all. I may never live to see ripe avocados hanging from its branches. But strangely, I do not feel deprived. Its graceful foliage, its quiet determination to grow, and the happiness it brings to is are harvest enough.

Perhaps that is nature’s gentlest lesson: what we nurture with love invariably finds a way of nurturing us back.

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