Scramberry or Indian Coffee Plum or better known as lololikka. The first memory I have about lololikka would be my grandfather, whom we used to call daddy( Mom called him daddy since he was her father and we followed the suit without bothering about the fact that he was our grandpa..so in short he was daddy for us 9 cousins too!) Daddy used to climb up the lololikka tree using a ladder which might fall off any moment. Everytime he goes missing, you can just look around and you will spot a ladder near the lololikka tree and him standing on top holding a basket full of lololikka with a childlike innocent smile. He will shout loudly to us kiddos. ” I got lololikka for you!” Though tangy in taste, those lololikkas always had a sweet flavour to them, maybe because daddy plucked it for us. His lololikka craze was too much that he had once fallen down from the ladder and broke his ribs during one of his lololikka plucking adventures. But, that didn’t stop him from plucking lololikkas for us! He still used to ignore the warnings of everyone and climb up the tree to get lololikkas for us. Today he is no more and today the lololikka tree stands alone with no one to pluck lololikkas from it.
The next memory of lololikka would be my father who had got fed up of his construction business and turned to farming for solace. He soon developed this craze for plucking lololikkas and used to pluck it almost daily much to the horror of my amma who used to hold her head in despair and ask, ” What am I going to do with so much lololikka?” He would go away without giving her a proper reply and again continue his lololikka collection. Since there was no one to sit and eat baskets and baskets of lololikka, my mom used to make pickles with lololikka and store it in her kitchen shelves. Those bottles will sit there waiting for me to come during the kids’ school hols. And, when I return back to Trivandrum, mom won’t forget to send all those pickled lololikkas with me. Now my father is also gone, and another lololikka tree is also abandoned. Maybe this is the last bottle of lololikka pickle I get from my mother as this was the last set of lololikka my father picked just a few days before his death. Will I crave for lololikka ever again like before? I doubt. Not that I don’t know to go pick it or make a pickle with it. But, sometimes we love it when someone picks it for us, not because we are too lazy to pick it, but because we know that they mask the tangy flavour with their sweetness a bit more. The sweetness that I lost somewhere on top of the lololikka tree- A spoonful of memories I will forever cherish!
A Spoonful Of Memories
