Strawberry Tales

Kerala, the southernmost state of India, is one place that enjoys tropical climate throughout the year. While I grew up in Kerala in 80s, it was quite normal for the backyard of many houses to have fruits such as pineapple, papaya, mango, jackfruit and even passion fruit. Many years later it was a pleasant surprise to me while travelling to some of the famous beach destinations, people over there referred to these fruits as exotic!

Having said that, one of the fruits that eluded our taste buds was strawberry. In fact, I would assume none of the people in my small town of Changanacherry had even seen one in their lifetime till then, unless they were among the minority who travelled to places across the globe where strawberries grew naturally.

That was when my dad started a business to sell ice creams, the first of its kind and scale in our hometown till then. Among the many flavours we received from Lazza, the ice cream brand produced in Kochi, strawberry was one. While the ice cream had a beautiful baby pink colour, the only connection it had with strawberry was probably the flavour. After a few months of opening of the shop, one day when the new stock of ice creams arrived, we had a surprise!

There was a new flavour called fresh strawberry. Unlike the usual flavour, this one boasted of having actual strawberries in the ice cream. It was true! While not as fresh as you could get, the ice cream indeed had pieces of strawberries in it. It was a moment of truth for all of us in our area that day! History was made where we could see and taste a new fruit for the first time ever in our life! Strawberries! Year 1993.

It took many more years for me to experience a real fresh strawberry. In fact, I had to cross the Atlantic and land in the US soil to gift my tastebuds the real feeling of a fresh strawberry fruit. I was in Atlanta, working for the client SITA. The cafeteria at SITA's office was where I got to see my first real fresh strawberry. Year 2009.

But even with this I was yet to see an actual strawberry plant and pick a strawberry fruit from the plant directly. It was meant to happen many years later. Another decade and a half it took for me to experience something so refreshing as to see strawberries hanging from its plant and plucking them and experience the real taste of strawberry as fresh as it could get. Ruby and I was on our family vacation trip then, along with our little ones. We were on a road trip from London to Scotland and had stopped enroute at a strawberry farm named Cairns. A very special sight awaited us where thousands of strawberries hanging from the stems of the plants in a greenhouse environment, beckoning us to be picked and enjoy the real taste of the fruit. And we did exactly that! Year 2024.

You may ask, what is the big deal about this? It is just another story about someone getting to try some fruit. There is a little more to this than what eyes could fathom. 

We all crave for many things in our life. Some of these will happen as soon as we wish for it but there are others that you may have to wait for the right time. Trust me, when the time comes it will turn out to be exactly how it was meant to be. Anything before that would have been nothing short of an unwanted experience which you may even want to forget in your life. 

So, if something has not happened yet for you, just wait for the right moment, and never lose hope. Good things do happen to good people. 

God bless!