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It is true that I never saw Kashmiri Apples in our 1950s Muthukur.
But we had plenty of these other apples.
There was a tree of Custard Apple. I recall custard apples came in two species (Sita Phalam and Rama Phalam). I don't know which of them we had in our backyard.
That tree was of modest height. And its green raw fruit suddenly turned whitish. And they had to be plucked soon. They had a corrugated sewed-up skin much like our footballs.
They were more custard than apple. I don't remember having tasted any fruit as sugary as them.
But they were a mess to eat.
And then there were these Wood Apples (వెలగ పండ్లు...लकड़ी सेब). Plenty of them were sold in the market during Ganesh Puja season...they too were hung down with strings over Ganeshji's elephant-head.
There is this adage that when a solid wood apple passes through the frontend of an elephant's alimentary canal, and gets digested, it emerges duly through its backend whole but hollow...I haven't seen it happen but can trust...all about semi-permeable membranes maybe.
Raw wood apples were sour and made for good chutneys. When ripe they revealed a blackish gooey stuff that was sweet with a typical flavor.
And we had an abundance of neem trees. And in April-May they used to shed hundreds of tiny yellow neem fruit on the sand below. We used to collect, wash and eat them. Ripe neem fruit are delicious. They had a disproportionately large seed though.
Once my Shakespeare Uncle brought from Vizagh what he called "Gulab Jamun Fruit". I didn't believe him...'Gulab Jamun' being a dark brown sweet dish that I heard of.
But I see it has an entry in Wiki under its common name 'Gulab Jamun Fruit':
"Syzygium cumini, commonly known as Malabar plum,[3] Java plum,[3] black plum, jamun or jambolan...Jambolan fruits have a sweet or slightly acidic flavor, are eaten raw, and may be made into sauces or jam.[4] Inferior fruits may be made into juice, jelly, sorbet, syrup, or fruit salad. ..."
They are mostly water (83%)...
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And then we had plenty of slender and delicate trees that carried big బొప్పాయ (Papaya, पपीता) fruit. When raw they were green and went into curries, dal and sambar.
When ripe they turned yellow and their slices were moderately sweet.
Papaya is supposed to be good for the tummy.
We also had big trees of Bel ( మారేడు; बेल) fruit in Temples of Shivjee especially. Their leaves were treated sacred and used for puja during Rudrabhishekam.
But we never ate their fruit...we were ignoramuses...in Bengal, Bel trees are grown in almost every backyard; and their fruit are scooped out and their pulp made for a delicious sherbet. They are considered medicinal.
Bengal is a civilized place despite lethal attacks on our poor Didi.
It was in Bengal again, at the ripe age of 50, that I saw Litchi Fruit. One of my friends brought them from his home town of Suri in Birbhum District.
They were tiny with a reddish ridged skin which, when peeled, revealed whitish flesh that was truly exotic.
I now see that Tropicana has a Litchi Juice.
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That about covers most of the fruit I tasted in my long life (glad?).
I had this pleasant experience in our Second Year Chemistry Lab at Waltair...otherwise a stinky place with Hydrogen Sulphide fumes ever leaking out of the Kipp's Apparatus.
It was called the "Fruity Odor Test"
Take a test tube, pour some liquid from a bottle, and add some more from another bottle.
And you get fumes of vapor smelling like familiar fruits.
Those fumes were of what are called esters that emerge when an alcohol is added to an acid!
Here is the Wiki List:
(My favorites are Octyl acetate & Propyl isobutyrate)
It was a completely demystifying experience...almost soulless...
Of course I knew that our body is 90% chemistry and 10% physics.
This was horribly confirmed by my psychiatrist when he said:
"Oh! It is Retirement Depression. It is just due to a Biochemical Imbalance in your brain"
That was terrible news.
I didn't mind the depression so much...what I minded was that what I considered my high class mind is all mindless chemistry!
And he said that it would be easily reset with SSRIs.
I then came to know that those SSRIs are "Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors"
Apparently the hormone Serotonin is 'good' for my brain...it induces happiness and sleep (both of which were missing).
During blood circulation I guess some nasty cells 'reuptake' this hormone without releasing and passing it on to my brain.
And then unhappiness and sleeplessness results.
And this drug is supposed to "Inhibit" their frivolous "Reuptake".
It didn't...no way...for over an agonizing month...
And then my psycho had to change the drug to "Olanzapine":
Olanzapine belongs to a drug class known as atypical antipsychotics. Other members of this class include clozapine (Clozaril), risperidone (Risperdal), aripiprazole (Abilify) and ziprasidone (Geodon). The exact mechanism of action of olanzapine is not known. It may work by blocking receptors for several neurotransmitters (chemicals that nerves use to communicate with each other) in the brain. It binds to alpha-1, dopamine, histamine H-1, muscarinic, and serotonin type 2 (5-HT2) receptors. Olanzapine was approved by the FDA in 1996.
Very very lucid!
ThanQ Doc! ThanQ Wiki!
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To be continued
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