Bhagwandas Bherumal is one of the best stores for exotic fruit in Crawford Market, Mumbai.
They get varieties others don’t, much of it imported though occasionally they get wonderful local fruits, like passion fruit from Pune or cherries from Himachal that taste far better than what you can find in other shops (they are very vague when I ask them for details about their sources).
All this fruit is seriously pricey, so I try to avert bankruptcy by avoiding the shop. But at times it is impossible, especially now in the late monsoon when stone fruits like apricots, cherries, peaches and plums are at their best. This always feels a bit odd, since stone fruits are the essence of warm summers, but it simply reflects how our south-west monsoon comes as temperate zones further north are enjoying the best of summer and their native stone fruits.
It was fresh apricots from Afghanistan, delicately sweet and creamy textured, that had lured me to the shop and I was handing over huge wads of cash when I saw something new inside a chill cabinet. Those squat yellow shapes with a dusty pink-red blush had to be doughnut peaches, a wonderful new variety I had come across in London earlier this year. They are also called Saturn peaches, saucer peaches or just flat peaches, all names describing their fat, stunted appearance.
BRANDING BRILLIANCE
These peaches have apparently been grown in China for a long time, but have only just begun to get known outside.
And when people try them they nearly always have the same reaction: every other peach I have ever tried or ever will is going to fall come short of this. They are so juicy they seem to defy the laws of physics in containing so much juice in such a small form, they are really sweet where most peaches, in India at least, are just acid, their aroma is lovely and their texture is lusciously smooth.
The vendor at Bhagwandas Bherumal told me the peaches had come as samples from Jordan and they only had a couple of boxes. The price was so heart-stopping I almost didn’t buy it, but finally decided they were too good to pass up, and as soon as I tried them I had no regrets. In fact, the next day I was back at Crawford Market for more, but the vendor told me sadly they were sold out. And every time I went back for the next couple of weeks, they had the same story.
Until this Monday, when the guy broke into a big grin as he saw me approaching the shop: “Woh jalebi peaches aa gaya!” he said. I don’t know if this was his improvised term, or if someone else had come up with it (his boss called them doughnut peaches), but I was floored by the sheer branding brilliance. The peaches were flat like jalebis (OK, maybe more like imartis), also orangeish and similarly full of sweet, rich juice; it was the perfect term to convey their qualities and desirability to Indian consumers.
In fact, this may be second best Indian food renaming I have heard. The first, of course, forever remains the work of the unknown genius who saw the weird lumpy fruits of the Annona family that had come to in India from South America and named them after figures in Indian mythology. What was extra cool was the potential this had for extending the series: not only is there Ramphal and Sitaphal, but there are now new varieties like Hanumanphal and Laxmanphal.
KIWI SHOWS SEA-BASS THE WAY
This sort of food renaming happens all the time across the world. The most famous example is probably a green fleshed fruit that a missionary from New Zealand had found in China.
She brought some home and it got called Chinese gooseberry for its green colour and tart flavour. But after World War II when growers tried exporting it, they didn’t find takers perhaps because the name was doubly unattractive — gooseberries weren’t popular, and neither were the communist Chinese at that time. Then one grower, Jack Turner, had a brainwave. Noted that its hairy brown coat was like that of New Zeal-
and’s kiwi birds, he suggested calling it kiwifruit, and the rest is history (I have to admit I find this a pity since I am no fan of its insipid taste and the way it pops up as food decoration everywhere).
A similar story is happening now with a variety of long mulberry first developed in Pakistan, but now being grown in India. They are really delicious with a caramellysweet taste, but are clearly not going to sell much as Pakistan mulberries, so are now being called Himalayan mulberries.
Some name changes happen because the original name takes on unpleasant new meanings. Rapeseed has nothing to do with sexual violence, but comes from a plant variant of the turnip, which is known as rapa in Latin. Rapeseed is an ancient term and is a useful source of edible oil, but one can understand why when Canadian scientists bred a new version particularly suited for mass cultivation, it was decided in 1978 to call the oil that comes from it canola, patriotically derived from Canada.
Around the same time, a Californian fish merchant named Lee Lantz found a deep sea fish in Chile that was so delicious he was sure it would be a hit in restaurants — but not under its usual name, Patagonian toothfish. He renamed it Chilean sea-bass and it went on to become hugely popular around the world, with disastrous effects on its population in the sea. But salvation might come from new renamed fish like Asian sea-bass, a variety we in India know as bekti, and which can be farmed and might, with the right branding and marketing, create a sustainable new market for fish.
LET’S GO LOCAL
There is one other place where I think this sort of marketing really needs to happen. Every time I shell out for expensive imported fruit at Bhagwandas Bherumal, I think rather bitterly about the excellent varieties of such fruits that are probably growing in India, but are languishing for lack of proper marketing and distribution.
Some years back in Uttaranchal, a manager at a local NGO told me how there were excellent local apple varieties originally planted by the British, which now had heirloom status back in the UK and were much prized there.
But these simply found no takers in India because consumers were just fixated on imported varieties like Fujis and Red Delicious. Some of these imported varieties, especially Red Delicious, have become so bad under the pressures of mass cultivation that they are almost inedible, and yet they sell while much better apples rot in Uttaranchal.
I recently wrote a column wondering if the same was the reason why we get such poor plums and I lamented the lack of the wonderful varieties you get in Europe, like the greengage, a plum that remains deceptively green-yellow even when ripe.
Almost immediately I got a reply from Siddharth Kak, the well-known TV presenter, who told me that wonderful greengages were available in Kashmir, but never made it out of the Valley. This is truly something that needs to be remedied, perhaps by savvy merchants like the Crawford Market ones, or maybe the big new gourmet food stores that need to show they are really interested in good food rather than just selling us pricey imports.
And perhaps some renaming would help — I can just imagine how well rossogulla plums might go alongside jalebi peaches!
