In Bloom
You forget after being on the dusty roads that you're actually in the tropics and not the desert here. The blazing hot weather makes this place perfect for most anything green. I was a bit shocked when the tree outside the office started shedding small mangos. They're not ripe yet, they look like extra large lima beans. In the next few months full fledged mangos will begin falling off the trees. Of course, they wont be laying on the street becuase the fruit-wallahs will get them first
The fruit-wallahs
I guess we had this in the U.S. too, my parents seem to remember 'green-grocers', who peddled their fruits and veggies on push carts. But not in my lifetime, in brooklyn theclosest you got to this was the Korean grocery store.
When I go downtown the fruit guys try to hawk their goods:
"Hey baba, hey baba.....oranges!"
Who's 'baba'? me?
No I don't want your little green oranges, or your little funny bannanas.
But then I saw this one fruit-wallah with somehting truly bizzarre.
"Kya yah hei?" ( What that is?)
No name followed, but a quick listing of prices did (again by kilos...)
And a free sample...
Oooh ...free food from a gen-u-ine Indian street vendor.
I can hear my doctor yelling now. But if it were up to him I would'nt eat the cornflakes unless they had been washed in boiled water. Geez, live a little...besides, I've got cipro (a.k.a kind of antibiotics) on hand.
It's a fruit about the size of your torso...it looked like a pineapple about 3 feet high, minus the leaves on top. Anyway ,they hack this monstrosity open with a machete, not the most sanitary method but that's not the part you eat.
Inside are all these palm sized yellow things. They look like small shriveled bell peppers. You take them out, squeze out the pit out (the pit is smooth, slightly smaller than a walnut ,and just the right size to lodge in your windpipe if you don't know it's there), and eat the fruit. The taste is somewhere between a mango and a bannana, but the texture is closser to a bell pepper...absolutley wild, and tasty.
And we know it's not poisionous because it's been two days and I'm still alive and not halucinating (but how do you know you're halucinating? that's a metaphysical can of worms).
I tried to get the name for it:
My buddy the elevator guy was real helpful.
"Kya yah hei?"
(I showed him the bag and offered him a few)
"fruit!....(then more hindi i didn't get, probably some story about the fruit)"
The kid at the stand ( the one with the machete) kept repeating what sounded like 'jerk-fruit'.
It's calle jackfruit...they're tremendous, and I don't think you find them much
outside of Asia:
The fruit-wallahs
I guess we had this in the U.S. too, my parents seem to remember 'green-grocers', who peddled their fruits and veggies on push carts. But not in my lifetime, in brooklyn theclosest you got to this was the Korean grocery store.
When I go downtown the fruit guys try to hawk their goods:
"Hey baba, hey baba.....oranges!"
Who's 'baba'? me?
No I don't want your little green oranges, or your little funny bannanas.
But then I saw this one fruit-wallah with somehting truly bizzarre.
"Kya yah hei?" ( What that is?)
No name followed, but a quick listing of prices did (again by kilos...)
And a free sample...
Oooh ...free food from a gen-u-ine Indian street vendor.
I can hear my doctor yelling now. But if it were up to him I would'nt eat the cornflakes unless they had been washed in boiled water. Geez, live a little...besides, I've got cipro (a.k.a kind of antibiotics) on hand.
It's a fruit about the size of your torso...it looked like a pineapple about 3 feet high, minus the leaves on top. Anyway ,they hack this monstrosity open with a machete, not the most sanitary method but that's not the part you eat.
Inside are all these palm sized yellow things. They look like small shriveled bell peppers. You take them out, squeze out the pit out (the pit is smooth, slightly smaller than a walnut ,and just the right size to lodge in your windpipe if you don't know it's there), and eat the fruit. The taste is somewhere between a mango and a bannana, but the texture is closser to a bell pepper...absolutley wild, and tasty.
And we know it's not poisionous because it's been two days and I'm still alive and not halucinating (but how do you know you're halucinating? that's a metaphysical can of worms).
I tried to get the name for it:
My buddy the elevator guy was real helpful.
"Kya yah hei?"
(I showed him the bag and offered him a few)
"fruit!....(then more hindi i didn't get, probably some story about the fruit)"
The kid at the stand ( the one with the machete) kept repeating what sounded like 'jerk-fruit'.
It's calle jackfruit...they're tremendous, and I don't think you find them much
outside of Asia:
