The Guava Fruit

We harvested the guava fruits from our ‘garden’ recently. The ‘harvest’ was five fruits. I mean, five was the total number of guavas that we counted on our tree once. In our eagerness to taste our own fruit, we plucked two, when they were still raw. Having realized our mistake, we allowed the next one to remain on the tree longer. It got over ripe, fell down on it’s own and got partly spoilt. The fourth, we got just right. The fifth one is still on the tree. So, till date our harvest has yielded one proper fruit. This was removed from the tree and brought in to the house in a procession, offered to the gods, (because we were sure that they will not deprive us of our fruit) was ceremoniously cut and eaten. We even thought of sharing it with few of our friends from whom we have received gifts of home grown mangoes, bananas, jack fruit etc, but gave up the thought because we felt that 1/8th of a guava fruit may not be appreciated much. The fruit is of good quality. The seeds are not very hard, they are concentrated at the centre of the fruit and there is a thick layer of pulp next to the skin, devoid of seeds. Compared to my ‘gold standard’ in guava fruits - the fruits from the tree we had in our house at Bangalore- these fruits lack only in size.


Whenever I see a guava fruit, or talk about them I can’t help remember the Bangalore tree. That tree is not there anymore and I am trying to get used to the picture of the house without it. We spent a lot of time around it. I used to climb on to the tree for fun and have practiced pull ups and hanging upside down on it’s branches. I have cut and used them for preparing ‘gilli- danda’. We even tried ‘mara –koti’ (a sort of ‘catch me if you can’ played on the tree) but the tree was not very big and the ‘koti’ did not get much space to move around.

The tree branched out very low and at very convenient levels and positions and so, we could climb it like a ladder. We plucked many of the fruits when they were very tender. We spat out the outer skin which used to be tasteless and ate the inner core. The young seeds were still very soft and the pulp, sour. The tree yielded plenty of fruits and in spite of our indiscriminate harvesting, many of them grew to full size and ripened.

Our house was on a busy street and the tree was very next to the compound wall. Almost all the school boys who passed in front of our house and the urchins from the shanties behind our house, had our tree in focus and were our competitors. We tried to guard it as much as possible from these predators but were not always successful. They were experts in climbing the tree noiselessly but our ears were also tuned to the faintest rustle of the leaves and branches. The moment we heard the sound we ran into our veranda shouting “hey, who’s that”? If the boy on the tree was much younger than us, we continued our run into the compound shouting “wait, I will break your legs” or some such expletive. If we found someone our size, we halted and shouted from within the door “hey, what are you doing there?” Since most of them had a feeling of guilt about the theft, they usually jumped down on hearing our voice and ran away. But some tough boys stayed put on the branches and some even challenged us saying “come out of the house and see”. They were all street fighters and we had seen them fight amongst themselves. We believed in “discretion is the better form of valour “, (that’s the saying is it not?) and ran into the house calling “papa look at these boys “ or some such thing, never to come out again. We peeped through one of the inner windows and ventured out only after the coast was clear. A broken ego healed faster than broken limbs.

As I have said, those fruits were gold standard in guava fruits. I enjoyed them but had a hell of a time taking out the seeds from my cavities. To save myself the unnecessary trouble, I developed the habit of cutting the fruits, removing the core containing the seeds and eating the remaining part. (Getting the teeth filled was not even thought off). Now, even with all my teeth filled and in reasonably good condition, I do the same. If the seeds are dispersed all over the fruit, it is useless for me. The fruit which we get from our tree, suits me and I am very happy about it. I had purchased four fruit trees from the horticulture department. I hope that we have similar luck with chikoo, mango and coconut too.