A Mythical Fruit

When I used to go to primary school in a cycle rickshaw. On the way I had to cross the main market of Sambalpur, Gol Bazar. While crossing the market it was my ritual to watch this man sitting on the side of the road wearing sanyasi outfit and selling something out of the world. That thing is literally out of this world because I have never seen anything like that until now.

It looked kind of a fruit in cylindrical shape. He sat on a stool on the roadside and this fruit was on some mat. The fruit’s radius was maybe thickest at the middle. To young me the height of the fruit seemed like height of a fully grown man but now realistically thinking I think the fuit was one foot to one and half feet tall. The skin of the fruit was saffronish coloured and inside was white. Whenever any buyer came, the seller used to cut a thin sliver and give them on a sal leaf.

Big sal leaves were commonly available those days in Sambalpur. From rich to poor everyone used it for eating dry food. The plates and bowls made from the leaves were also widely used.

The seller seemed to be in zen because when there was no buyer, unlike other sellers he never used to wander away to other roadside hawkers to gossip. He used to sit in his place silently, like a sanyasi doing meditation.

The fruit used to be at different size everyday. Sometime full sized, some time half, and on some days hardly 3 inches tall. This made me to conjecture the fruit or whatever it was, does not get spoiled. The seller in sanyasi cloths took back the leftover to his home. And he got a new one only when the old one is sold out completely. Did he, his wife, and his children eat some thin sliver at night? I assumed they ate once in a while a thin layer. But not always because they didn’t want to eat away their product.

I asked around in my limited circle about the fruit but no one could tell me what it was. The easiest thing in the whole world would have been to drag my father on a Sunday to the market and compel him to buy one thin layer of the “fruit” for me.

But I guess I did not want to know what it was. In my mind it was a mythical fruit obtained by the sanyasi maybe as a special boon.

His children were hungry he wanted to feed them. One day he went to a forest near the city in search of food. There used to be big forests near our city. Forest God got happy with his zen-ness (maybe or maybe for something else) and gave him a boon. Because of which the seller could see the secret place where this fruit grows. The seller had to get only one every time or the boon would disappear and he could not see the secret place any more.

Like that my imagination used to run wild. Eating a slice of that fruit holding in my hand would have meant everything becoming real. Reality would not have left any space for magical boon and imagination.

Exactly when I stopped noticing and thinking about the seller and his fruit, I can’t remember. When I got little older (maybe in late teens) I remembered about them. But the seller and his fruit were nowhere to be found. I presumed the seller must have gone somewhere else to sell his product. The alternatives were too scary to think for me.

I again asked around but no one could understand what I was talking about. I was notorious for living in fantasyland. I was a standing and running joke among my immediate and extended family members for the absurd things I talked about. So I left pursuing the matter after all of them said I was imagining things.

Over the years I tried to convince myself the seller and his fruit were only figment of my elaborate imagination. It was difficult to get convinced though as the whole thing always seemed so real.

But thanks to Internet and social media I recently saw a video of a supposedly peculiar fruit. My heart started beating faster just reading the words “peculiar fruit”. As I started the video a sense relief washed me over followed by an ecstatic feeling.

It is the same fruit! Its Indian name is Ram KandMool.

And guess what THERE IS a myth surrounding it. Lord Ram during his 14 years of exile ate mostly Ram Kandmool. And it is mysterious as I had always known. Botanists from world over are baffled by this fruit. They can’t recognise this rare Indian fruit. It has 85% similarity with Agave sisalana. The fruit is generally available in pilgrim places of Northern India and Western India. Then from where a man in sanyasi cloths used to get regular supply of Ram KandMool in a small town of eastern India?