WITERATI: Jamuns, jhoolas & joys of monsoon

Hindustan Times

13-07-2025

It is rather with reluctance that mango lovers must watch the retreat of the King of Fruits with the advent of rains. Surveying aam pheriwalas turn into a tiny trickle is so like seeing gilt-edged palanquins laden with gold and grandeur slip into the sands of time. Jamuns owe their popularity not only to being a monsoon staple but also to their medicinal benefits. (HT File)
Ah, but that's the story of the seasons. Sights and smells come and go like the seasons, like the scoreboards at Wimbledon or Lord's.
Just as many a heart begins to jump with joy at jamuns, there come tidings that indirectly revalidate the goodness of our very own Indian blackberry.
Jamuns owe their popularity not only to being a monsoon staple but also to their medicinal benefits.
For all those diabetics who overindulge taste buds to Dussehris and Chausas in summer, jamuns come as the perfect detox. For, they are rich not only in antioxidants but also regulate blood sugar levels and improve insulin function.
Speaking of stuff sugary, some sweet tidings from Mattel couldn't have come at a better time.
The maker of the world-famous Barbie has launched a version of its signature doll depicting Type 1 diabetes. Attired in a blue polka dot dress and boasting toffee-tone tresses, the new Barbie makes it fashionable to flaunt an insulin kit on her size-zero waist and a glucose monitor on her arm.
This first-of-its-kind Barbie comes dressed in the colours of inclusivity. The idea driving doll #242 is to make Barbie relatable to multitudes of children suffering from Type 1 diabetes.
Driven by a desi DNA inclined to that indigenousness called jugaad, one is struck with an idea -- how about getting 'berry' serious to add to the accessories of Barbie? What if the #242 dolls were depicted also dangling a jar of jamuns!
Mother Nature's very own cure for the condition. Jamun derivatives as jugaad for diabetes.
Adding the blackberry as Barbie's accessory could add to the awakening. By driving home this natural detox for diabetics.
A jar of jamuns could jolly well give not only an Indian twist to the tale, but also take the doll's social messaging a step further.
As Rumi rightly reminds us, 'The cure for pain is in the pain.'
Commendable the way the digital era is showing us how new-age pop icons of childhood can be marketed as mascots of social messaging.
Just jamuns
Back to the joys of jamuns.
Back to the bylanes of bachpan. Being schooled in scrambling up stuffed trees for the blackberry. The baarish of plucking and pelting. Saawan's signature sights and smells not only nudge nostalgia.
The season spurs as much the poetic pen. Monsoon nostalgia comes alive in contemporary voices thus. 'To plant some fruit trees, to harvest some, ideas smelling headily of earth and rain together,' this ode to Saawan's fruits is penned in well-known poet Sumita Misra's 'Petrichor'.
'Petrichor' alludes to the 'pleasant, distinctive smell frequently accompanying the first rain...'
Joys of jhoolas
Saawan is synonymous as much with jhoolas, as jamuns.
Jhoolas herald a flood of festivities, a flow of poetry. Poets bring to barsaat their ink, imagination and imagery.
'In the jhoola swing could be, Today's Sita, Draupadi, Kunti...But she has no wings, And the jhoola swing, is placed in the pleasure garden by his command,' thus is captured contemporary womanhood's peculiar paradox by acclaimed poet Malashri Lal in 'Swinging in Sawan Rain' from the collection, 'Mandalas of Time'.
Thus the lament looms, thus the clouds of change cast shadows over jhoolas to jamuns. For better or for verse.
Just as the digital era's doorstep brown bags of BB, Blinkit & Co have stolen the schooling that comes from scrambling and scraping, so may builder-bulldozed urbanisation, environmental degradation to deforestation, and climate change also be robbing us of Saawan's joyrides on jhoolas.
Bitter-sweet new ground realities. Like the bitter-sweet berry.
The curious case of 'There's Something About Blackberry'.