Fruits of Memory

'Associative memory' is a tricky thing. As I popped in a black seedless grape a few minutes ago, a big chunk of long forgotten memories rushed into my head. Memories that just bore fruit- and how!

As a school kid, lunch time was always fun. We seldom ate our own lunches as we preferred to dig right into our best friend’s ‘Tiffin’. 'She' always got a side of seedless green grapes for lunch- all of which I happily devoured as she lovingly bit into sandwiches, noodles or rice that waited for her inside my yellow lunch box.

Plums, pears and peaches bear testament to the period in time when I was at my athletic best. Years when I’d climb trees and hand-pick the fruits of my choice!

Oranges somehow always remind me of my granny and the winter afternoons in Pedong when she would skin and painstakingly de-seed them before feeding me- the juiciest and tastiest citrus fruit I have ever had. Or at least that is what my brain tells me now.

Still in the lap of the Himalayas, I remember chewing onto diced bits of sugarcane before spitting them out. Strange as it sounds, these sugary slices of goodness always take me to the countryside where I spent a great deal of my childhood years. One would think it should bring to my mind the plains and hot weather, but they certainly do not!

Mangoes, on the other hand, do just that! They bring back memories of Guwahati and the sweltering summer heat. Humid, rainy and hot, the summer months were when I feasted on crates of mangoes, never seeming to get enough of them. It also reminds me of a mango tree I had once planted in Shillong- stunted, pale and one that stopped growing after a few years of its conception.

Short lived but sumptuous, my mind associates Leechies specifically to those years in  my life when Daddy was posted in Tezpur and an uncle of mine worked in Muzzafarpur. Yes, the 'Leechie Capitals' of India and maybe even the world! I remember my days of gluttony (strictly with respect to Leechies) when I consumed them to the point of terrible belly aches!  

Funnily enough, watermelons bring to mind an advertisement for a particular brand of refrigerator. Was it Kelvinator or Godrej? I honestly cannot recollect!

Apples are synonymous with orchards in Shimla and my friend in Delhi who’d bring me a crate full of them every time she went home! That is about it- the journey abruptly comes to an end here.

As for the ‘exotic variety’- the earliest memories of which come from weddings and parties hosted by the ‘well to dos’- I simply remember them as  'The Gourmet Fruits': names of which I still do not know.