The other day while walking down Parliament Street for evening prayers, a jamun fell on my foot. Then another fell just where I was about to step, forcing me to look further ahead than usual. The sandstone pavement was dotted with jamuns, fresh and crushed, giving the floor a uniquely violet colour. Not wanting to step on an eatable, I literally tip-toed my way through, negotiating the fruity challenge with a mixture of care and nimble feet. Walking alongside were a couple of office-going women, one of whom remarked, “Here the jamuns are all over the road but you go to the market, they sell at Rs 20 per 100 grams.”
That set me thinking: every year, the roads in New Delhi are ‘berry berry’ colourful; most wear a distinctly violet colour, some a tinge of green thanks to raw mulberries which are felled by monkeys. Every year, it is quite usual to see fruit-sellers literally spread a sheet of cloth under a jamun tree even as another one shakes its branches before they both walk away with the goodies collected to be sold in the market. Every year, it is pretty common to find the same sellers offering the stuff they procured for free in the morning in a card box to buyers for something like Rs.200 per kg.
Yes, this is the time when Delhi actually comes alive with fruits of all kinds, not just the more popular ones like apples and mangoes or even watermelons which make for a perfect picture. There are falsey – grewia asiatica – there are shahtoot – mulberries – some sweet, others sour. Then there are grapefruits or chakotras which make a fleeting appearance in INA Market and some select shops in the Walled City. Often keeping them company are bael fruits which might take up to a year to ripen but grace our markets for a couple of weeks only.
Then of course, there are blackberries. For a generation that is used to navigating cyber traffic on it, blackberries are jamuns by another name! Time to buy a box. Better still, just stand under a jamun tree in Lutyens’ Delhi with a sheet wide open. Prayers go up, blessings come down. Forgotten fruits of Delhi convey a joy of their own.
