Days of juicy jamuns, ice-lollies at India Gate

We picked the ripe jamuns for free from the wayside and rolled them in our mouths with joy, often staining our uniforms and getting scolded by our mothers

My mother was furious when she saw a purple stain on my white school shirt.

Visitors trying to pluck jamun fruit. One can’t resist the taste of this tropical fruit that also goes by the name of Java plum or Malabar plum and a complicated botanical name, Syzygium cumini. (HT file photo)

“There you go picking jamuns from the pavements on your way back from school. Now how am I going to remove this purple blob from your uniform? There is a jamun tree right outside our home. You can come back and have your fill. No more jamun feasts on your way back from school, I tell you!” She would scold me and try to cleanse the mark with unboiled milk.

In spite of the scolding and the fear of staining clothes, one could not resist the taste of this tropical fruit that also goes by the name of Java plum or Malabar plum and a complicated botanical name, Syzygium cumini.

What she has managed to do by sloganeering thus is take me back in time to that one year of Class 6 way back in 1966 in the environs of India Gate and bring back a flood of memories and the mouth watering for the jamun fruit. Those trees then were just a little over 50 and now they are over a century old, staking a claim to heritage rights.

Now these protestors have little sense of mythology. It is said that the fruit that ardent devotee Shabri offered Lord Rama was not ber (berry) but jamun. It is also believed that the Lord lived on the jamun fruit in the forests during his exile from the kingdom of Ayodhya.

Another supportive myth for the jamun, which is now known as the diabetic fruit because of its healing power in defeating rising sugar levels, is that Lord Krishna is also believed to have four symbols of the Jamun on his right foot.

Even Lord Megha, the Lord of the Clouds, came down to the earth in the form of a jamun fruit. Perhaps, this myth-rich heritage of the dark-skinned fruit compelled a Union minister to cry out that no jamun tree has been cut and only a few will be transplanted. Transplanting trees over a century old is no mean task.

Anyway, forgetting protest, politics and myths, I just want to relive the joy of long ago when one ate ice-lollies for just 25 paise sitting on the lawns surrounding India Gate and savoured the taste of the purple fruit. And look back with love as we schoolgirls, returning from the Mater Dei Convent on Tilak Lane to the Wellesley Road Hostel for army officers, picked the ripe jamuns for free from the wayside and rolled them in our mouths with joy, often staining our uniforms and getting scolded by our mothers. nirudutt@gmail.com

The writer is a senior journalist at HT, Chandigarh