My friend Ranjona refuses to eat apples that have not been home grown. ‘Home’, as in the larger sense of the word, as in ‘India’, as in native produce. I, on the other hand, revel in any apple from anywhere, but only if it is hard and sweet and juicy. So the Chinese apples that we get here, large, pinky-tinged and wrapped nicely in a foamy muffler in a brighter pink synthetic mesh, make me very happy indeed. They are crisp and somehow always cool, with sweet juice spurting with every bite. Best of all, they have a cute little label stuck on the side - unfortunately with the most persistent of glue - that I can occasionally peel off and add to my fruit label collection.
It’s funny what people collect these days. In my day, when I collected things rather than characters, I had boxes full of bus tickets. They piled up all over the place, in boxes, in plastic bags, in storage cupboards (well, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, since I really did not have THAT many). And, at the end of it, I was bored with it. I had no idea what I was doing with that many bits of paper and, as they gently yellowed or floated into the rain whenever there was a storm and someone left the windows open, I didn’t really honestly, genuinely care. Finally, most of them were thrown away. The rest, which did not fit into the garbage can, were given to a friend who really did need to collect something…anything.
Then I started a new collection, one that was far healthier and much less voluminous. It started long ago on a bright and sunny summer’s day. We were in a small garden that belonged to an auberge somewhere in Switzerland, just at the edge of a lake. I cannot, at this time and distance, be sure which lake it was, but it was a beautiful lake and a gorgeous day. The sun beat down, but there was a distinct chill in the air – every pore along my bare back and shoulders recognised that winter was not too far away. As we finished a leisurely and assuredly delicious lunch, a large bowl of fruit was set on the table. In the company of a few apples, a couple of peaches and a very large nectarine or two, was a conglomerate of bananas. They sat against the rim of the serving dish, happy, fat and very yellow. And the one that faced me and beamed sunnily had a neat little label pressed nattily on its side.
That was the serendipitous moment. That stunning instant of revelation. I knew what I was going to be collecting for the next so many years and I henceforth, as they said in good English novels, went about doing it with a certain dedication. In the process, I ate a vast number more of bananas than I actually liked – but it did detox my system and balance my electrolytes excellently – just to collect the labels, from Chiquita to Dole to Del Monte to the more mundane ‘Product of India’ (which I am most proud of, to be frank). I stuck them all carefully into a notebook that went everywhere with me, in which I scribbled notes for the school play, short stories that I was inspired to write when I was in a bathtub eating spring rolls and more than one vaguely libellous thought about what to do to a particularly repellent set of clothes if I ever got the chance.
Today I cannot find that notebook. I also have no idea what I would do with all the labels if I still had the extensive collection. But that has not stopped me sort-of-peeling-off the labels on fruit if I see them. For now, I waver between kiwi and apples, preferring to collect rather than consume.
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