JOIN USOne of my first experiences of pure awe in Seychelles was when my employer drove me straight from the airport through a lush tropical fruit orchard and parked in front of an oh-so-cute cottage. “Your digs, I believe, Gilbert?” I enquired politely. “No, as a matter of fact, it’s yours!” The sound of my jaw thudding into my knees was ear-shattering.
I was floating on grass for weeks after that. I made customary ‘hello-hi’s’ with Guenther, my German landlord — a rotund, greying but jovial old chap who I barely ever saw with a shirt on. Much later he told me why he left his dear Dresden in East Germany and settled in Seychelles 26 years ago — he hated the snow there! His topless dress code was his sweet revenge on years of bone-freezing European chill.
His orchard, though, was a world in its own. Rich, thick, green and amazingly diverse. The air would be a heady cocktail of fruity aromas. I felt truly blessed to wake up every morning in such idyllic surroundings. Throw in the amazing aquamarine ocean of Seychelles two minutes from home and you get the picture — pure jannat!
As I explored his orchard, I discovered fruits I hadn’t seen or heard of before. Exotic, luscious tropical fruits with even more exotic names like jamalac and carambole. We then passed a nondescript eight-feet-tall tree. I saw no fruit on it, so the obvious question: “What’s this one, Guenther?” “Oh, this? It’s chickoo!” he answered uninterestedly. My favourite fruit growing right in my front yard? Wow! He, on the other hand, seemed not one bit bothered.
“So, don’t you like it?” “Only if the bloody mynahs let me have it,” he quipped. His orchard was a veritable showcase of biodiversity. A gaggle of noisy mynahs used to systematically demolish all of the chickoos. He had never tasted one.
I then lay upon him our desi home-grown tip. Pluck them when they are hard but full-grown, wrap in large dry leaves and bury them in a rice jar for a few days, and presto, you have them ripe, I told him. “But we don’t eat rice, you see,” he said. Ah ha! So I have to teach yet another desi tip to the German. “You must try it for change. Better than bread every day, no?”
Days went by. The chickoos had started to fruit, so I used to survey it every morning, longingly. But a couple of weeks later, they were all gone! The next weekend, Guenther was busy mowing the lawn. “Mynahs still at it, huh, Guenther?” I yelled over the racket of the machine, gesturing to the chickoo tree. “Mynahs... What mynahs? We ate every single one of them. Thanks, though,” he shouted back.
That’s one fruit less in my lunch box, I rued. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him fishing and you feed him for a lifetime, they say...