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IT IS DIFFICULT not to equate descriptions of phalsa (or falsa, shukri, Indian sharbat berry; scientific name: Grewia asiatica) with the all-too-fleeting beauty or pleasures of life itself.
When people speak of the fruit, it is invariably through the lens of nostalgia, of the liminal spaces that are one’s childhood summers, hearing the hawker’s call cutting through the drowsy heat of the day… “Kaale-kaale phalse, sharbat wale phalse, thande-meethe phalse, bade raseele phalse”.
Academic descriptions of the phalsa too emphasise its ephemeral existence: the fruit is seen in the markets for barely a few weeks in May and early June. Even within this window, it is available in limited quantities — phalsa is highly perishable (the fruit may last two days at best, without refrigeration), and ripens on the plant in small batches.
There is little of the actual phalsa to eat — a drupe with a large central seed and fairly thin pulp, the centimetre-wide fruit has the appearance of a puckered berry. The ripe berries have a dark blackish-purplish hue. The unripe ones are a pale red; unpicked, they are green. When you buy a handful of these jewel-toned fruits from a vendor, with a liberal sprinkling of kaala namak, you can never quite tell the flavour that will come to the fore:
This is because the phalsa is often sour, sometimes sweet, and always tangy. To relive its taste is to feel the tart notes on your tongue, knowing your face is scrunching up in the way that only the perfect combination of sweet-and-sour flavours can induce. The pulp disappears in minutes, but children love rolling the pits in their mouths, until even the last traces of sourness are but a memory.
The phalsa is said to have a host of nutritional and medicinal benefits; experts believe it could very well be positioned as a superfood for these reasons. Perhaps its best-known avatar is as a summer cooler: the berries are macerated with sugar (or simply pulped, then strained) and made into a sherbet. Contemporary recipes even incorporate the fruit into cocktails, compotes, popsicles, chutneys and pickles, jams and desserts. The roots, bark and leaves of the plant are also put to various uses.
Despite its fragile fruit, the Grewia asiatica itself is a hardy shrub, in a sense: it can grow well in drought-prone areas, is resistant to several types of infestations, and needs only a modicum of care. Part of a family of some 150 plants, it is the only edible one amongst them. But its cultivation isn’t an organised affair in India: the low yield makes it unattractive to farmers, so it is mainly seen as a filler in mango or wood-apple (bael) orchards. Buddhist monks are said to have first encountered the plant in Gaya, from where they took it to Varanasi, and then other parts of the world. In Australia and the Philippines, it is considered a weed.
Much like life, the phalsa bears fruit in the places where we least expect it. The bounties it offers us are plentiful, but transient. They must be savoured in the moment, before they fade away. The tang they impart to our memories though, coded into our taste-buds — those last years, if not a lifetime.
