Fruits, Juices and Salads - 9

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And when I was wailing for my oranges like Coleridge's "woman for her demon-lover", my son took pity on me and suggested:

"Why don't you drink Orange Juice?"

"Is it available in the market?"

"Oh! Yes!"

"What is it called?"

"Tropicana (one-liter cans best before six months). And you can store them in the fridge and drink them cold"

"Get me four cans"

And that is how I got addicted to Tropicana. Heavenly. No shortages. No peeling. No munching. No spewing. No hassle. Just gulp.

But then I got this pneumonia-typhoid combo (nothing to do with orange juice). 

And the doctor asked me to switch over to Tropicana cans of Cranberry Juice.

Not bad...it goes on...

Never saw cranberries though...

Nor raspberries...

By the way there is this idiom: "give him the raspberry" meaning "reject him"....I don't know why...

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And one day six years ago my son gave me the passing rage: "Pass Pass Pulse". It was a candy like no other candy I saw or tasted before.

It looked greenish and glassy. Nothing gooey about it. It stayed in the mouth. As I sucked it, slowly and surely, it melted and melted, and was about to vanish.

And then without any warning it sort of exploded, blowing a puff of आम चूर (Mango Powder). Such a pleasant surprise that it hit me on the head.

And I got addicted to it duly.

When, in winter months, Professor JK Sharma would be here, we loved to go round in my ancient jalopy for a pleasant drive of a sunny morning.

We would halt at the Tea Shop, have our Hyderabadi Chai, and buy pocketful of Pulse Candy.

Sucking them, we would travel to Dipthishri Nagar, do a little bit of shopping for fun, and, on our way home, we would stop at a street-side outlet of Green Coconuts. And, since my throat would dry and tongue would parch due to incessant gabbing, we would gobble coconut water vended by the gent or lady...from Amalapuram mostly...

Great quencher of thirst...

It was 15 years back when I was new to Hyderabad that my son took me to the street-corner shop of green coconuts in Amir Pet. The coconuts then were dead cheap @ Rs 6 or 7.

And there would be a competition between my son and me and we would end up drinking half a dozen nuts between us .

Nowadays in my locality of Chandanagar each coconut costs between Rs 30 and 40. And they say they are "Bangalore Nuts" (Bangalore is truly nuts).

But the trouble with coconuts is they can't be cooled...in summer they are hot. No way six of them can be stored in a fridge however roomy.

Drinking hot coconut water is a punishment.

Nowadays I see vendors store flimsy plastic bottles (free), and pour into them water from two or three coconuts as demanded by the unwitting customer and deliver the filled bottles @ Rs 80 per liter.

Trouble is that coconut water has to be imbibed instantly. It tends to be useless if it gets stale (however much stored in the fridge). Something to do with their healthy antioxidants evaporating fast, I am told...don't know more about them.

There is a popular fallacy that green coconut water is good for the tummy. I say 'fallacy' because I have heard a doctor (lady) warning her patient of diarrhea NOT to drink coconut water.

Anyway, my son occasionally asks me to fetch four green coconuts home whenever someone in the household falls ill.

And it is a punishment for me.

The vendor would shave the nut with his sickle to expose (but not puncture) its three 'eyes'. And then sew pairs of them up together (like husband and wife) with a needle using a sharp and stringy and strong plastic wire. 

Carrying them in the hand would always hurt my delicate fingers...I am borderline hemophilic and have to be careful.

And they are too heavy to carry upstairs even with both the hands.

And when asked for their water in a tumbler I never can do it well.

First finding a screw driver to puncture the holes...one hole wouldn't do...minimum two...some physics there.

And I can never pour the contents into the tumbler without the water sticking to the shell and draining to the floor.

Only qualified chemists like my son can do a neat job of the poor devil.

20 years ago when I was cooking in our kitchen while my wife was away on a holiday for a family wedding, my son once came in to assist me. He was then in his 3rd year Industrial Chemistry at IIT KGP.

And watching me he exclaimed:

"Daddy! Cooking is nothing but Chemistry Lab!"

He is now a famous cook...

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Here is that weird enchanting poem of Coleridge (I had to mug it up in my second year at Andhra University, Waltair):

Kubla Khan

BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

   Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round;

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty fountain momently was forced:

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:

And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,

Then reached the caverns measureless to man,

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;

And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war!

   The shadow of the dome of pleasure

   Floated midway on the waves;

   Where was heard the mingled measure

   From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

   A damsel with a dulcimer

   In a vision once I saw:

   It was an Abyssinian maid

   And on her dulcimer she played,

   Singing of Mount Abora.

   Could I revive within me

   Her symphony and song,

   To such a deep delight ’twould win me,

That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

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To be continued...

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