Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Wild gooseberries!

As I mentioned, one of the nice things about travelling by private car is being able to stop and look at people selling fruit and veg by the roadside. It also gives one the opportunity to stop and pick fruit growing in the middle of nowhere.

And it so happened that we chanced upon a lonely gooseberry tree on a hill. Technically, these are 'Indian gooseberries', though most people here just call them 'gooseberries', or amla, the Assamese word for them [correction: the amla is the Hindi word for them and amlokhi the Assamese word]. In Sumi they're called kholethi if I'm not mistaken. In Assam and Nagaland, I've seen posters advertising their high Vitamin C content and how they're good for your health etc etc.

Wild gooseberries, Nagaland

This particular tree was just bursting with fruit. Our driver Huto ended up climbing up to shake and break off branches, which we then picked up from the ground.

Harvesting wild gooseberries

The first time I had Indian gooseberries was 3 years ago on my first trip to Nagaland. Some kind person offered them to me as we set off in a shared Sumo from Zunheboto to Kohima. Completely unsure of what to expect, I found the berries both bitter and sour (and given my general preference for sweet things, my gustatory sense was offended twofold.)

The thing I didn't realise about these gooseberries, is that when you first bite into them, they're very sour. But if you drink water right after eating them, the water tastes sweet. Even if I don't drink water, I find my saliva starts tasting sweet too.

There's a story I've heard about gooseberries from both my Sumi and Ao friends (it's probably a tale shared by most tribes in Nagaland).

It goes something like this: in olden times, a group of not-too-bright people from some village trek down to the plains to barter for salt and other things not available in the hills. On their way back, they find some gooseberries next to a spring and eat them. After eating the gooseberries, they drink the water from the spring. Finding the water sweet, they decide to lug the newly discovered 'sweet water' back to their village. I think in some versions they even leave behind some of the goods they've bartered for.

In any case, it's one of those folktales about a group of not-very-bright people said to exist somewhere.

And on that note, here's a pretty picture I took that morning we picked gooseberries.
On the road to Zunheboto

3 comments:

  1. Beautiful pictures! You are both a good narrator as well as a photographer.
    Btw, in Assamese it is not called 'amla', but 'amlokhi'. In Hindi it is called 'amla'. Amlokhi is so good for health that in Assamese we say, one amlokhi is equal to 3 apples. So, try eating one gooseberry everyday and stay happy n gay keeping all disease away :)

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  2. I should've known, but a few of my friends just say it's an Assamese word because that's what they call it in Nagamese (which uses a lot of Hindi and Bengali words, though people may not always be able to tell which languages the words were originally borrowed from). Thanks for correcting that!

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  3. I have mentioned about you and your blog to my friend, who has the site itsmynortheast.com. He would contact you soon. Couldn't find your e mail id.

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