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On a recent visit to Yercaud, we met a couple who had an orchard. I asked, ‘What do you do to make trees flower?’ He went through the usual – watering and fertilizing. And then his demeanour became more serious and he suggested that when all else fails, I ought to beat and scold the tree. A jack tree in his garden wasn’t flowering for many years. One night, when his neighbours couldn’t see him, he whacked the tree with an old broom while berating it for not flowering. ‘You have to do it seriously, angrily. You cannot laugh,’ he cautioned. ‘And it worked,’ he summed up triumphantly.
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