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In the 1950s, in our seaside village Muthukur, tribal belles used to roam about the streets vending baskets of cashew fruit in their season.
And we would call them home and buy them by the dozen...ours was a large family.
The fruit were reddish yellow and looked inviting like solidified puja bells.
And we would try and taste one or two and give up...the fruit left an itchy-bitchy feeling in the throat.
But mother would cut them into two pieces each and cook them in the sambar adding a pinch of jaggery. The tamarind and jaggery would wipe out their itchy glitch and make them sweetly sour...and they would melt in the mouth...we would fight for them.
I haven't seen them in Hyderabad. I guess cashew groves and orchards flourish only in seaside villages.
Panruti in the Cuddalore District of Tamilnadu is famous for cashew nuts. One of our distant relatives had an orchard there and he used to send us bags of cashew nuts.
Also Palasa in the Srikakulam District of AP.
In our days at Andhra University, Waltair, there were many cashew trees by the side of CR Reddy Bhavan. They were low-hanging and evergreen (most trees are evergreen in South India where there is hardly any fall season). And we used to picnic under those trees once in a while.
Cashew fruit wouldn't keep for more than a day or two. They would rot quickly. And so they were dead cheap.
I am told landlords of cashew groves would invite tribal women and girls into their gardens and ask them to pluck as many of the fruit as they can, for free, and take them away (but leave the cashew seeds at the gate).
Win-Win for all :)
Once in a while cashew fruit would come with occasional seeds clinging to them (by oversight). We kids would collect and roast them in a backyard fire of dry sticks and leaves. The seed would emit a pungent oil before turning black. And we would cool them and split them and peel them to get golden brown cashew nuts. And they tasted rich very unlike the machine-processed sold in the markets.
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During the Ganesh Chaturthi season we also used to get pears in the markets.
Pears are poor cousins of apples and equally starchy.
But they made good-looking hangings from the Roof-of-Ganeshji's home (పాలవెల్లి)...never apples...
In the early 1960s, when novel artificial satellites were roaming our skies, we used to get the first few rudimentary 'images' of Mother Earth.
And there was this 'Breaking News' that Mother Earth is neither a sphere, nor an oblate nor a prolate spheroid, but 'pear-shaped'.
I see that it still retains its pear-shape:
Many people think that the Earth is perfectly round; however, it is actually pear shaped! The top pushes in while the bottom bulges out. The southern hemisphere is slightly larger than the northern hemisphere, giving the odd pear shape. The poles are also slightly flattened.
Well, how does Mother Earth's shape matter for an old man about to quit it for Mother-in-Law's Heaven soon?
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There were red berry trees in Muthukur aplenty. But they were full of thorns and not worth the trouble.
On the other hand there were also huge blackberry trees, one or two.
They bore shiny black fruit in the season of Krishnashtami. And so folks used to say that they were special offerings for Lord Krishna who loved them to distraction.
There is this charming story about blackberries:
One day Sage Avvaiyar was resting under a blackberry tree. And she looked up and wished a few berries would drop down so she could eat them and feel good.
But they didn't...till she saw an urchin sitting on the tree gorging on them.
And then she asked the urchin to drop a few berries to her.
And he asked her whether she would like them cold or hot.
And she chided him not to be naughty...how can berries be hot?
And the kid shook a branch, and dozens of berries landed in the sand below.
And Avvaiyyar took one cheerful berry in her hand and blew over it to get rid of the sand sticking to it.
And the urchin laughed and taunted:
"Avva! Has it cooled enough?"
And then she knew that the naughty boy was Lord Krishna himself.
Crazy tale...but anything goes :)
Actually blackberries of Muthukur were more violet than black. And they stained the mouth like the blood-red Bengali jarda paan.
By the way, whatever happened to the Blackberry Phones that were a rage a decade back...a decade is a long time these days...
Strawberries I first saw in Hyderabad sold in plastic pouches...Ishani is fond of them.
And gooseberries (what a name!) are nothing but Amla fruit...very sour...and healthy in Chyavanaprash.
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There was this mantra in our childhood:
"When a kid swallows a coin by mistake, feed him an over-ripe banana"
I don't know if it really works. Gold smugglers ought to know.
I am told that our kings and queens of yester-years used to wear diamond rings always...so that if they were captured by barbarians they could swallow the diamonds in them and die instantly.
Maybe there is some truth in it...after all diamond is the hardest in the Moh's Scale and could puncture the entrails.
I think I watched this trick performed in a Hindi Movie...maybe: चौदहवीं का चाँद
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As the Upanishads are fond of saying often:
"And there is also this:"
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