When Life Hands You A Starfruit, You…
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My family was not that well-to-do during my early childhood years. Until I was 10, we lived in a house that was directly facing a road junction (which many feng shui masters will tell you is a strict no-no). I guessed that was probably one of the reasons why my father could afford to buy that house – it was the cheapest. Not to mention the house was also positioned at the bottom of a slope, so when it rained, our home would undoubtedly be flooded. Our house number was 10. So it was literally Number 10, Downing Street!

As a young child then, I did not understand what floods meant. To me, it was a time for me to fold my paper boats and set it to sail on the dark flood waters while my sister and I sat perched upon our half-immersed furniture. My parents had planted a star fruit tree at the garden of our home. The floods did not help our poor star fruit tree and almost every day, you would see our garden littered with rotten star fruits that had dropped off.

As a young child of about 6 or 7, I was given the task of picking up the rotten star fruits to be thrown away. It was not a pleasant task. The smell of the rotten star fruits was one that I could particularly remember (although most of my childhood was a state of blur). The other thing was that the rotting star fruits had also created a thriving eco-system of worms, centipedes and snails in our garden. These creatures liked to introduce themselves to me particularly when I pick up the rotten star fruits, as they were either in or on the fruit. Sometimes, they tried to make an exodus to my body while their fruit of choice was transported into the garbage bag.

So you can imagine that every time my tiny asthmatic frame was sent off to ‘labour camp’ in the garden, it was with such great fear and trembling. I was not given gloves or a spade to remove the decomposing fruit – bare hands and a plastic bag were all I had to do the job. And there were no maids around to help either, not like what the young generation has now!

So I armed myself with the fact that the job had to be done and had to be done fast. With gritted teeth and half-closed eyes, and a speed that was almost as fast as lightning, I would complete this distasteful task every morning. I was very glad that when my family moved to our new home when I was 10 years old, there were no star fruit trees planted in our garden. Our home was now on a hill slope and we never experienced floods again.

I had this flashback of the star fruit experience while I watched a documentary of children being put to work and as I reflected on my own work now in entrepreneurship. Indeed, not everything that was handed to me was something I enjoyed to do and not every proposal I sent out ended with a closed deal. Some experiences were almost like that of picking up a rotting star fruit. It left a bad aftertaste in my mouth and it was something I wished I never needed to do.

Sometimes, apart from the ordeal of the task itself, it is also facing and confronting the ‘fauna’ that comes with it. This could be the people I needed to deal with in the course of getting the job done or deal closed. Not all are beetles or butterflies. And to rub the salt in, the whole process did not seem to end, just like the litter of rotting fruits in my garden that always needed to be picked up.

But of course, we get to enjoy the ‘fruits of our labour’ – I remembered enjoying the juicy star fruits in the evening with my family. We would not be able to get to eat those fruits for free if we did not have the star fruit tree and everything that came with it. Life goes on.

~~~ About the contributor ~~~

Jeanisha Wan is the Founder and Managing Consultant of J1 Consulting. A passionate marketer, Jeanisha loves coming up with brand new, especially unconventional marketing and business ideas.

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