Sheela Jaywant
Botanists call the tree Garcinia indica. In Maharashtra, the fruit is called kokum, by which name it is now sold in health-conscious stores, to make ‘a refreshing organic drink.’ When coconut-milk is added to the extract and seasoned with mustard seeds and curry-leaves, or garlic-paste, it becomes soal-kadhi, which is had with steamed rice and fried fish. At crowded, tarpaulinroofed tin-sheds near petrol-pumps, the highly sweetened, syrupy liquid extract is sold in half-litre plastic jerry-cans. The labels suggest that a diluted version of its contents can ‘naturally’ cure indigestion,infertility, baldness, cancer, paralysis, and others.
Vijaya, who speaks only Konkani, calls the fruit birndam sollam (pronounced bir-hin-dam sohw-lam where the ‘m’ at the end of both words is silent. It indicates the nasal sound to the preceding syllables). The short-form of the fresh fruit is birndam. The short-form of the sun-dried version is soallam. Vijaya sells the soallam by the roadside in the months of May and June at the Friday Market and at the Purmentam-che-Fest or the premonsoon, annual bazaar at Mapusa. Vijaya sources birndam from the hillocks that run parallel to the Chogm Road in Sangolda, a small village in between Porvorim and Saligao, about 6 kms from the tourist infested Calangute-Candolim beach-belt. Few know that Chogm stands for Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. The narrow road that was built in 1984 to link the airport via Panaji to the Taj, where the heads of state stayed, is now broad, lined with fancy shops, and accident-prone. Family after family in the neighbourhoods of Porvorim, Pilerne and Saligao have sold ancestral homes, mango-orchards and rice-fields to builders. Estate agents have earned as much in commission on a single deal as their parents made in a lifetime. Bhaille or non-Goans from outside the State outnumber the locals here; the local language is pidgin- Hindi, not Konkani.
Vijaya isn’t bothered about those things. “They’ve cut so many of the tall brindam trees in the jungle on the hill,’ she tells her invalid husband. ‘Where will I get the fruit from?’ She voices another worry: “Our boys are finding it difficult to repay the loans they’ve taken to buy taxis. I’m afraid we will sink from being poor to being very poor.” Her daughters-in-law have jobs in local shops as sales-girls. They keep the choola burning. There are squabbles, fisticuffs even, in the mud-walled, two-room hut that they live in, over medicine bills; sometimes, even over the kind of fish bought. (He bought four bangde for a hundred rupees; he could have bargained or got ten tarle instead.) Once, Vijaya’s eldest son beat her up because she wouldn’t part with the small bundle of rupees she had on her. The others intervened; the son and his family walked out, vowing never to return. She was relieved: ‘Fewer mouths to feed.’ So far, the family has kept starvation at bay, worn new clothes at Chavat, the Ganapati festival, and bought school-uniforms and textbooks for their children.
She persuades her 11-year-old grandson, Mayank, to accompany her into the jungle up the slope. It takes them a couple of false starts and ten minutes to cross through the unending traffic on Chogm Road. There are no pavements. The road’s edges fall steeply to the sides and are covered with loose gravel. Vijaya and Mayank walk through the shrubs carrying six black, crumpled but sturdy polythene bags and a long wooden stick, keeping their eyes down to watch out for human faeces along the way. The workers from Bihar, Orissa, Uttar-Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka and the states from the North East, who rent rooms without toilets in Sangolda, are compelled to use this forested area to answer nature’s call. Women like Vijaya too relieve themselves in the fields, under cover of darkness, for their homes don’t have toilets. On holiday mornings, there are open-air ‘community bowel-moving-get-togethers,’ where men exchange news. By eight, Vijaya and Mayank reach the ridge. It’s hot and humid; the two share a small bottle of a soft-drink they had bought on the way for 10 rupees, from the little tin-shed shop opposite the panchayat. They take two small sips each, saving the rest for later. ‘Even four years ago,” she tells him, “I could fetch six bucketfuls a day of the plucked fruit. Last year, I got just one bucket.” She looks around and points to a conical tree about three storeys high. Hundreds of crimson fruit dangle from its branches like baubles on a Christmas tree. She helps Mayank to climb up. Once he’s gone as high as he can, she hands him the stick. He stands resting against the trunk, his feet firm on an angular joint. He hits the branches hard with the stick.
“Hit harder,” Vijaya coaxes him. “Climb higher.” Encouraged, Mayank climbs a few feet more. He wriggles and flays the stick in all directions. Suddenly, he drops the stick and yells. “Ants?” Vijaya asks. “Ai-ai-ai,” he squeals. “Why didn’t you rub the ash before you climbed? Rub it now.”
He balances himself, wraps an arm around a branch, all the while jerking his feet, rubbing the toes of one leg on the calves of the other to get rid of the ants crawling up his bare legs. With the free hand, he takes out of his shirt pocket a paper packet.
It contains wood-ash which he rubs over himself. He lowers himself a little and bends to reach out for the stick Vijaya hands him.
For a couple of minutes, he hits the branches as much and as hard as he can. A shower of leaves, twigs and fruit litter the ground. Most of the fallen fruit are ripe and red, a few still hard and green.
Descending, he scrapes a bare thigh and groans. “Don’t fuss,” Vijaya tells him. “A little bit of hurt harms no one.” Mayank whimpers and vows never to come with her again. ‘None of my friends do this. I won’t do it.’ He shouts as he jumps to the ground, scratching his body wherever it’s itching. She offers him another sip of the aerated drink and a banana that she’s brought along. Caressing his head and running her fingernails over the insect bites on his body, she tells him how brave he is, how precious, how useful to her in her old age. “Put,”she calls him, “apurbayecho put mozo (my precious little boy), you will grow big and strong doing this work.” Mayank is not convinced, but he enjoys her tender strokes on his back.
For a few minutes, the two stand in the shade, enjoying the breeze; silent. “Get up,” says Vijaya, opening one of the plastic bags, ‘we must hurry, otherwise we’ll be late for lunch.’ They gather the fallen fruit, discarding those chewed by bats and civet cats, and infested with maggots. They segregate mature ones from the raw, big from small and accordingly put them into different bags. Then, carefully tying the bags at the mouth, around the middle and lengthwise, they stack them on their heads and make their way back home. The next harvest will be after a year; if the trees aren’t cut, that is. ‘Wash your hands and feet,’ she tells him, ‘before entering the house.’ They spread a newspaper on the floor and sit on it; dented steel taats before them. They are served by Mayank’s mother. Rice, ground-coconut curry, boiled bhaji and a piece of salty, dried fish. After the meal, they rest for a while; then, the entire family gets ready to work on the birndams. In the common space outside their front-door, they sit on their haunches in a loose circle.
Neighbours, who share the same open space, come to watch, help or chat. Vijay and her daughters-in-law deftly remove the hilum, break the outer skin and thumb out the flesh within. The peels are broken into small bits and kept in a bucket. The blood-red liquid-flesh ” aagull ” is dumped in a flat wooden vessel. By the time they finish, it is time to put the chickens in the coop and cook dinner: rice-gruel, coconut-curry and spicy chutney on the side.
Next morning, a little after dawn, everyone pitches in to spread the birndam sollam on plastic sheets. By evening, under the merciless May sun, the fruits shrivel to half their size. The aagull in the wooden vessels is hand-crushed and kept to evaporate. The seeds, with the aagull squeezed out of the fibres, to which they are still attached, are spread out to dry on another plastic sheet. From the seeds, sold at ten rupees a kilo, oil will be extracted. This oil is solid at normal temperature and has medicinal properties.
Another day of sunning, and the peels are dried crisp. Then they are rolled in the now-viscous aagull and dried again. This dippingsoaking- drying is repeated over three days. The brindam sollam are cooled and packed in small plastic pouches, ready to be sold. The pouches are stored in a large sack.
On a hot Friday morning, Vijaya and Mayank lug the sack to the bus-stop. The first bus arrives at seven. Mayank helps her load the sack on to it. Vijaya spends the day sitting on a plastic sheet spread on a pavement, outside one of the shops near the Mapusa bus-stand, between two Gujarati-tribal women who are selling beaded jewellery. She endures the day on very sweet tea brought in small glasses by urchins who, she believes, steal a packet or two if she’s not alert. If she leaves her place for a few minutes, to answer nature’s call, someone will occupy it. So she doesn’t.
By afternoon, she has sold more than half her stock at 500 per kilo, and made about 2,000 rupees. She must sell the remaining two kilos; can’t afford to spend another day and more bus fare on the same harvest. The afternoon is a lull. Around four, a woman comes by looking for ‘cockem’ and is guided to Vijaya. She’s wearing knee-length pants, a flowery-print blouse, dark glasses and a wide-rimmed hat. Her earrings, fair skin, demeanour and language indicate that she’s not Goan. Her companion is just like her.
‘Yey cockem hai?’she asks Vijaya. ‘Hai, bhai,’Vijaya gives her staccato replies.
‘Kitne ka?’ ‘Paanchshi kilo-chey.’ ‘500? That’s too much, yaar,’the companion says.
‘Doh-soh mein de doh.’(Make that 200.) Vijaya is puzzled. Two hundred for all that effort? This money must last her till she can earn from the vegetables planted in the field, harvested at the end of the monsoons in September.
‘Nah, bhai,’she says firmly. Says the woman to her companion, “They were so humble, so nice when we came here from Delhi two years ago. I could buy the stuff for half of what she’s quoting. Now she’s not willing to budge. It’s gone to their heads, I tell you, this tourism and all …”
Their conversation veers towards how the prices have gone up in Goa: of food, land, houses, everything. “But, you know, it was worthwhile shifting here to a nice gated-colony. The fish, the local bhendi, the clear air, the slow pace, so-o good for the health.” They turn to bargain once more.
Meanwhile, Vijaya has sold the lot to someone else. She gathers her plastic sheet and bags, tucks the money into her blouse and goes home satisfied. The two women, used to getting their way, sulk. In a few years, Garcinia indica won’t be available for even five times the current rate. Neither Vijaya nor the other women are aware of this.
( The story was awarded runner-up at Joao Roque Literary Journal awards for Best in Fiction 2018)
