BERRIES FOR GOPAL
Gopal paused to take in the smell and scene around him as he walked down the street. He often took this route after school, but did not remember seeing the creepers that covered the bushes near the road. He supposed they might have always been there, but the recent rains had probably made them bigger and healthier for they had grown larger and longer. Now, the creepers seemed to cover everything and bunches of dark berries could be seen among the deep green leaves. The berries looked delicious, small and red though some were larger and yellowish.
Gopal watched the creepers spread and grow everyday on his way to and back from school and finally one day he decided to taste the abundant tiny fruit. However, first he wanted to be sure they were edible and took some home to his grandmother who said they were a kind of gooseberry. Later that day, Gopal checked on the internet to correctly identify the plant. He found that there were whole pages dedicated to edible wild fruits and plants, as well as imposter
plants that looked similar but were actually bad for you.
After much research, he decided the berries were safe to eat. He put one into his mouth and tasted the sharp, tangy flesh. Little black seeds were at the centre of the fruit. He carefully, savoured the tartness of the wild gooseberry.
Then he began waiting an hour to see if there was any sort of reaction, just in case he'd made a mistake. After a while, when he found that he had no stomach pains or any other reaction, he ate a few more and then got a bag and collected all the berries he could find. He rinsed them and ate a few more, but he crushed most of them to make juice. The juice did not need sugar and tasted sweet and natural. This is how Gopal became interested in plants and learned about them from school and on the internet.
