Sunday, March 17, 2002		Article

The lure of lemon gathering
K.K. Khullar

"TIME was when the Punjabi moustaches could hold a lemon, today they cannot sustain even a grain of mustard": thus bemoans a Punjabi proverb of the pre-Partition days. Even otherwise, the size of the lemon has shrunk and the moustaches have simply disappeared from the upper lip, except of course in rare cases.

And that takes me back to the autumn of those days when lemon-gathering was an elaborate ritual. It was different from Jamun-gathering and very different from mango-gathering. Whereas the mango and the Jamun fall down unable to bear their own weight, in the case of lemon you have to pluck it, not rudely but with gentle grace, as you pluck a litchi or a strawberry or that purple-coloured tiny fruit called glass.

You could smell autumn from a distance when there is commotion among the leaves. A wind appears from one corner and takes them away. Another wind appears from another corner and brings them back. As in a musical chair game, some leaves are left behind but their murmuring, in fact their rustling continues to add to the benediction of the air. It is in this atmosphere that lemon-gathering took place, filling the long-lost gaps and bringing new fellowships into being; an extra-ordinary spectacle so sadly missed by our writers, film-makers and media-men.

That was the time when there was lassitude on the trees, langour in the leaves. Wick-lamps and orange-lanterns governed the night. Those were the days when lemons were not sold. They were grown in every house whose courtyard had a lemon-tree. The preparation for the lemon-ritual were made long before the event. My mother would stitch three different sheets (Chaddars) of three different colours: pale-yellow, deep-yellow for collection and saffron. Pale-yellow lemons were for pickles, deep-yellow for drinks and beverages and the king-size saffron were for a special drink called kanji mixed with carrots and rye. Mother’s home-made lemon squash was meant for VIP’s.

Unlike the cotton-gathering and the tea-gathering which is an all-female affair, lemon-gathering was a man’s worlds men with moustaches with long sticks in their hands chasing a cavalcade of lemons till the trees are white dust. Lemon-trees do not need any watering. They grow of their own accord and in their own right. According to a Sindhi proverb, they can grow even in a desert. Punnu of the Sassi-Punnu fame lived on lemons when water was scarce. In the hills a lemon is a luxury when the woods are bare and no birds sing. In the prairies lemons grow apropos of nothing.

Come Partition and the era of ‘free’ lemons was over. Everyone had to buy his own lemons. In Delhi’s Subzi Mandi they are sold in heaps, in Connaught place they are sold by the dozen, in the Boat-Club they are sold in heeps, in Connaught place they are sold but weight and yet are the cheapest. You open the briefcase of any babu, you won’t find any wads of notes, instead there are lemons. They are in ladies’ purses, in satchels of school children. In Agra, during the hot months, they are kept underneath the turbans of the rickshaw-pullers to avoid heat-stroke. The neo-rich, however, crush the lemons under the tyres of the newly purchased car. For truck drivers, a lemon an hour acts like a shower.

I do not have to buy lemons even in Delhi. Being a traditionalist and for old time’s sake I have grown a lemon-tree in the backyard of my DDA flat in Vasant Kunj — much to the contempt of my neighbours. I have doneso just to revive an old practice of my forefathers and keep their memory alive. In the bargain I am often lemonish.

Lemon was Gandhi’s favourite, even though no historian or biographer has listed the number of lemons that Gandhi took every day. Without lemon, his food and his fasts were incomplete. When Louiss Fischer, his illustrious biographer who spent a week with him asked Gandhi for spice for his lime-water, the Mahatma pushed forward a whole plate of salt saying ‘You can have plenty of it’.

"Do you want to kill my taste’ Fischer asked.

"If that is the only thing people killed, I won’t mind": replied Gandhi.

"You are so non-violent", commented Fischer, "that you do not want to kill my even taste".

The effect of lemon and the advice of elders, it is said, is realised only after it is tasted. So when a lemon fell from my tree on my clean-shaven upper lip, the other day, I felt it had a message. As it rolled on, the message became loud and clear. I must grow moustaches and keep the dignity of the lemon.