Brinjal

 

It is one of my favourite vegetable.

 

I had pictures and literature on all the varieties of Brinjal grown in India. I need to search for them.

 

Brinjal, also called egg plant, is as universal as potatoes in terms of varieties and availability. Though it is said to have originated with many authentic proofs, it  has many varieties in West African countries like Morocco, Senegal, Ivory Coast. In Europe Turkey is a huge cultivator and consumer of Brinjal.

 

One common factor is that though it can be grown in any place, it grows more near coastal area and the brinjal varieties grown near coastal area seem to have easily ingestible amino acids like fish oil. People allergic to  fish and have been reported to be allergic to brinjal as well.

 

I am not a scientist but my urge to read books on science has always been as intense as those on philosophy. I can, perhaps, haughtily claim to have read more books on science and nature than many students of those streams out of sheer awe and admiration to know properly the mystery behind the splendours in nature. Latest one I am reading is available on net, “Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures”, purely for the sheer poetic writing of the author Merlin Sheldrake.

 

This got me into friendship with some good scientists and among them one a very senior internationally renowned person Dr.V.T. Sundaramurthy [former Director of cotton research Institute who resigned by telling the then PM Rajiv Gandhi at a meeting don’t ruin nature through your ignorance].

 

We both took it upon us silently, to block the patenting of curcumin by US through back door methods. We both wrote post card in those days and connected with more than 2000 plus scientists and the issue was taken up in parliament by Guldeep Singh ex Judge of SC. Then in 2009 we decided to block GMO in Brinjal because of its nature , not that we were against GMOs totally. There was no necessity in India. He kept writing in The Hindu and to Ministers [ I told him to do the writing to MPs because seeing his background  the bureaucrats had to reply]. He was equally generous in appreciating ministers cutting across party lines when they do something useful.

 

Later on , he supplied me lots of materials on several controversial issues knowing that I am neither and never will be a stupid activist nor a blind advocate or passive recipient of damage to nature and he was appreciative of my diplomatic way of putting it across to top bureaucrats and trapping them unawares in committing.

 

So, at that time I remember reading some 20 plus books on brinjal both In English and Tamil. Similarly, he gave me scripts of most of the international conferences on Cotton pre-2000. He used to say, just with cotton alone we can revolutionise the economy.

Then once I asked me to write in FB and in my blog about what happened to GMO in 2009. I am giving the link below where he has posted in the comments his letter to the minister then.

 

He used to write in The Hindu also on controversial topics.

 

https://contentwriteups.blogspot.com/2010/02/beware-of-bt-brinjals.html