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The fruit my son and I gorged on in our rave party that night in Calcutta were "Darjeeling Oranges"
I never could imagine, looking at them, that one day I would get addicted to 'oranges' for which I always had an apathy...my Muthukur experience with oranges was that they were 'sick-diet'.
My friend PSKM Rao (of rural background like myself) got married to a city girl.
She told me that when, on the second day of her marriage, she asked her hubby to fetch some oranges from the market, his worried reply was:
"Why? Who is sick?"
And then she asked him:
"What would you like to have for lunch today?"
"Rice with Aavakaaya (Mango Pickle)"
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But when I peeled a Darjeeling Orange that night, lo and behold, the whole skin came off effortlessly in a single piece...Mercator would have loved it.
And when I inserted one slice into my mouth thinking I would have to munch and spew the seeds and skin, nothing of that sort happened...the whole slice went down the gullet...thin skin, no seeds, no residue...all juice.
And its taste was a tangy mixture of sweet and sour.
Splendid!
Same with all the slices of all the dozen odd oranges that went down that night.
Heavenly!
Of course there was this sore throat that did me in for a whole week as a side-effect.
But that didn't bother me...except that I forgot all about oranges as Sirens of Scylla and Charybdis for the next twenty five years.
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And then I retired and settled in Hyderabad.
It was the season of mangoes. There were cartloads of the famous Bangenapalli fruit by the streets.
The trouble I have with mango fruit is peeling their skin with a 'peeler'. Which is an art I never learned. And then the huge big seed. So I never bought them.
But one day my son brought a couple of mangoes and my wife took all the trouble of peeling the skin, and shaving the seeds, and cutting the flesh into dozens of handy pieces.
They tasted great...love's labor not lost altogether.
But the next day there was this scary news item in Deccan Chronicle that mangoes sold in Hyderabad are artificially ripened with Carbide which is carcinogenic.
(It was possibly just a chance coincidence that my wife succumbed to it)
There is a charming phrase for 'chance coincidence' in Telugu: "Kaaka Taaleeyam" (కాకతాళీయం):
Meaning: A ripe palm fruit dropping to the ground just at the moment when a crow happens to alight on the tree.
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Hyderabad is famous for seedless grapes...but not skinless. And they come in thorny bunches which it is a bore to pluck them from; and wash.
I once bought an expensive pouch of dates imported from Arabia. They looked weird and felt sticky to touch and tasted like our Muthukur tamarind...high class stupidity.
And 'Kashmiri' apples that looked and smelled great; but tasted like sweetened arrowroot.
My son and I bought half a dozen Kashmiri apples and gifted them to Sri Kandi Sankarayya Garu on his birthday in 2017.
He accepted them grimly.
A couple of months later I messaged him that my son and I were proposing to revisit him.
At once I got this warning:
"Most welcome! But DON'T bring Kashmiri apples. I don't like them. I don't eat them."
"What about పాలకోవా (Doodh Peda)?"
"👍👌"
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And then it happened.
Twenty five years after that wild night in Calcutta...
...in 2015 December, on a visit to our neighborhood Supermarket to buy a round of Nivea Soft Cold Cream.
There I saw a heap of what looked like cousins of Darjeeling Oranges. Called "Desi". Priced at a ridiculously low price of Rs 19 a kg.
I bought a couple of kilos. And finished all of them in two days and two nights. They were as good as, if not better than, those Darjeelings.
And more and more for three weeks...
And then their price went up...Rs 25, 35, 45...
And then they vanished.
And I was forlorn and looked for substitutes. There were these Kinnow Oranges priced at Rs 100 a kg. I bought them and they were so so. And then their price shot up to Rs 200, 300, 400 and they too vanished.
I went mad and asked my son to get me a fruit that is ALWAYS available in Hyderabad.
He ordered online and got me half a dozen Avocadoes.
I tasted one and gave away the rest to our maid...
She tasted one and gave away the rest to her mother-in-law...
She tasted one and gave away the rest to her cow...
She went on strike and stopped giving milk for a whole week...
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To be continued...
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