Nature, Nurture, and Ladyfingers

There is a wonderful FB Community called Assamese Cuisine and Recipes, where someone posted a photo of pink Ladyfingers or Okra as it is called outside India. My blogger friend Sangeeta Khanna  who is a botanist gardener commented on it along with her friend Nirupama , and I learned a lot about this variety.

Got me thinking about Nature and Nurture. We so called cerebral-cortex enabled folks keep inserting an OR between them. When actually we should be inserting an AND.

And learning from Nature.....

(photo by Marlee Basumatary)

Little broadbeans,
growing amidst
and learning
to find their way
to a sliver of sunlight
amidst
tall sugarcanes,
pick up a bit of sweetness
and even
a purplish blush.

Ladyfingers Okra,
cheeks all pinkish red
in the high altitudes
nippy air
of Assam,,
having possibly
grown up
amidst the beets
under the tutelage of
the dowager pumpkins.
and they revert
to their old color
in warmer climes....

Some roses too,
amidst
colorful colleagues,
picking up
a fine tinge of each,
avoiding extra thorns, 
but keeping
their own scent intact...

Unlike us,
smart bipeds,
they,
the cerebral-cortexless ones,
know
intrinsically,
how
to pick up the good,
and avoid
the doubtful and bad.

Something
for us to learn,
as we  constantly
seek distinctions between
bloods,
without realizing
that for
young ones to soak up
the good,
they must see
some good,
in the easy big bad
world around them.


And
We argue and discuss
so much
about Nature and Nurture,
without undertsanding
that
they are never separate,
and that
Nature always Nurtures


If we only looked.
And learned.