Rendezvous With Wild-Dates, Palmyra Trees, Jamun….

Come summer, schools were closed for holidays…. and the days were our own—none to question us: where we were, what we were doing were no longer the concern of the elders in the house… simply everything became admissible… Oh! Such was the fun ….that was the joy we have had as the school going children….

There was a certain thrill in the mornings of the summer holidays—as it dawned, at the caressing of the cool breeze from the south we would simply jump out of the beds and rush to the wild-date grooves on the canal bunds to the west of the town or beyond the orchards on the southern end… Some boys—the heroes for those of us who could not climb the tall date trees— would climb the date trees and literally shake their long pendulous stems with a number of bunches of clustered fruits of round or oblong shape, hard and green in color when unripe but orange-yellow or brown when ripe, to let those brown colored ripe fruits to drop down…

And we, the underlings standing around the tree with craned necks, no sooner had the ripe fruits dropped down would rush out to pick them up well before they rolled down into the canal water… This game would go on for an hour or two … or till the heroes got tired of climbing any more trees… And once the elder boys climbed down the trees, they would distribute the booty among the gang… and we were off to our homes… Of course, returning home with those dates was a big challenge, for, my father considered such games as not fit for well-meaning students. Yeah! It was big challenge to conceal from him and the more the success in concealing from him, the more was the thrill being enjoyed… 

On some days, our farmhand treated us with a few such fruit-bunches with well-built and ready to ripe fruits that he had cut from the trees and brought home for us to ripen them at home. And for us the children subjecting those unripe fruits to the ripening process was one of our great entertainments of the summer holidays. Pick up a basket with all the enthusiasm in the world and first pad it with paddy straw—bottom and on all the sides—and then place date bunches in the center… then cover them with straw to the brim of the basket and over it keep a big flat stone hoping that all this would create the required warmness that would ultimately hasten up the ripening of the fruits. So long this stuff remained in the basket, we used to get up early in the morning and the first thing we did was to lift the stone and look if the dates were ripe......

In the afternoons, as the Sun was blazing relentlessly, it was the turn of the palm fruits—tall palm trees standing majestically with bunches of round, tan colored hard shell-like fruits hanging around their crown enticed the fun-seeking school-going children from a height unreachable by them.  Yes, yet our Macho farmhand, Subbadu, used to defy their Olympian heights …. He used to climb these tall forbidding trees with the help of a noose made of rope that was placed around his feet. With its aid, acquiring a tight grip over the trunk and with that support, clasping the trunk with both the arms and applying upward pressure, alternately in tandem then he managed to propel himself up. Having thus reached the crown of the tree—mind you, while climbing he held the blunt-end of the sickle between the teeth—and placing himself securely on the crown … cut the stems of the fruit bunches with sickle…. Lo! the bunches would fall on the ground with a great thud… As we ran to collect those rolling out fruits, elders would scream from behind: “Don’t go! You will get hit, he may drop another bunch…”   Once the cutting of bunches was over … collect them from all corners of the yard… and heap them in one corner of the cattle shed … all in a zippy....

And then would begin the onslaught … here I never allowed my Subbadu to dominate me…

for I had the skill of slashing the fruit with the sickle and neatly expose the kernels… if not with a single chop… with of course three to four chops and then slit the tan-colored peel with my thumb, drink up the sweet water without of course letting it slip on shirts, for it leaves an indelible mark on the dress...  then eat the jelly-like fruit—ice apple—by fishing it out with the thumb … in the same vein lap up  the remaining two kernels and take another fruit for chopping. And so goes on the ride …

And when it came to girls, most of them found it difficult to handle the fruit thus…all by themselves and hence needed to be helped out… And meeting this need, obviously, thrilled the boy who was good at chopping these fruits. They would skilfully fish out all the three kernels …of course, intact with water… with the aid of sickle and place it on a plate which the girls used to merrily gulp one after the other…   

There was one danger in all this eating: if you ate too many and particularly, hard and matured fruits you had it: you were sure to end up in hell—terrible stomach ache the whole night… .

Then in the late evenings, as the lazy summer breeze blowing through the fronds of Palmyra trees greeted us with its own melody …we used to wind up our dinner with a mango fruit— Banganapalle … pedda rasalu, china rasalu…its paper thin peel, fragrance, juicy pulp …everything tasted so sweet… that you ended up sleeping so contentedly under the star-studded sky, recalling the day’s playful outings…

And as the harsh summer was waning out, there came Jamun… (black plum) early in the morning we used to rush to these trees located far away from our homes and search for the droppings in the bushy terrain under the tree. Eyes got brightened when you noticed a bright black plum under the withered canopy and feet jumped at once towards it for gleefully pocketing it…. Oh! Those  days…. collect all those lying on the ground and not being content with it, stone the tree from all the sides and if any fruit drops, jump at it as though pocketing it immediately is a great accomplishment … 

Naturally-stained tongues, soiled palms, stained pockets … scolding from amma and with all that summer holidays would come to an end … and walking back to the school would start… a new year and a new beginning … all brimming with new joy… new teachers, new lessons… new challenges and newer thrills… What a beautiful life it was!