My hands hold a red onion from the field. The outermost papery-shell is purplish-red. Peeling half the translucent shell away gives the firm globe flight with its “wings” pulled up. At its base, short, thick, dirty-white root hairs extrude from a brown iris. The first inner layer is wet underneath and onion odor clings to my hands. Next is the heart—two halves of lopsided-circle-like chambers, each having layers growing successively smaller, until the center is reached—small as a key.
A western resident who came to Meherabad* in the ‘70s, walked the distance to Meherazad*—cutting through fields rather than holding to the roads the bus now takes us on. A farmer saw her on his land and offered an onion.
Every day I pass onion fields between Arangaon and Kedgaon, able to watch each crop mature from soft, slender, green spears to delicate globes of white flowers on stems that tilt by their height.
Mounds of cut stalks in the fields are onion “houses”—protection from the sun that fades their color and from the early rain. Today, I walked across the “rectangles” in the dirt the onions were grown in to photograph a boy working to reveal an inverted “V- shaped” pile of onion “balls” in a line.
Raw, red onion slices are served first in restaurants, on a small plate. While many people say raw onion is good for the body, it’s not good for mine. I feel distressed at the thought of eating the slices, so I send them back. Our mind has two parts: the first is for thinking and the second—the heart—is for feeling. The best decisions are made by consulting both.
My realization is, “Our heart is the key to balancing thought with feeling for a holistic view.”
*The home of Avatar Meher Baba in India
*The home of the remaining mandali (disciples) of Meher Baba