Whether it be plants, trees, birds, or insects, I can never be insensible to anything that on some occasion or other I have heard about and remembered because it moved or fascinated me.
- Sei Shonagon
Pomelo, pummelo, shaddock. When I was 12 and 13, in Rangoon, our maid Dolly would peel one every day and leave it for me in the refigerator so it would be chilled when I came home from school. I would sit down at the dining table or on the couch and devour the segments slowly, breaking them apart with my fingers and tongue.
Citrus maximus, citrus grandis. A good pomelo tastes pink. Not the pink of Florida grapefruit or the too-sweet, artificially colored grapefruit juice that you can buy in bottles at the gas station, but pink like the early morning sunlight over Inle Lake in an interval between thundershowers, before the rainy season heat becomes unbearable. Not as sweet as an orange, not nearly as tart as a lemon, refreshing without being so juicy that you're forced to mop your chin after each bite. The outer skin varies from bright yellow to dark green, and the tree that produces it can grow to over 50 feet. The white pith within is thick and spongy, rich in bioflavinoids, and bitter. Dolly would strip every fiber carefully from the sweet inner flesh. Now I do the job with my hands and teeth.
Chinese grapefruit, Lusho fruit, jabong. Cultivated from the Phillipines to South Africa to Cuba, whenever I tear one open, my nostrils fill with scent molecules that recall steaming streets, the sewing machine sounds of tuktuks, the skin of my arms browner than it has ever been or ever will be. Anglo-Saxons are better in the tropics, they chant in 'The Year of Living Dangerously,' and it's because of all that pink sunlight, the proliferation of green, the coffee hues of skin and of curry, the feeling of being on permanent holiday, the privilege. Law! wot do they understand? / I've a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land! I was just another spoiled child of post-colonial privilege, an Anglo-Saxon-Cherokee-Mexican acting like he was better in the tropics. Now, when I buy pomelo at Whole Foods, it comes from California.
Jeruk bali. Day trips to Cimaja, weekend trips to the Pulau Seribu and Kuta. One afternoon at the Bogor Botanical Gardens with my parents, our guide caught a flying fox for us and held its wings open so that we could pet it. It whimpered and licked my finger with a long tongue. A puppy with wings, with a fondness for pomelo and other fruits.
Limau besar. Pompelmous. In Thailand, pomelo is used in salads; in Vietnam, fish dishes. The rind can be candied or used to flavor soups. My favorite way to eat it remains the simplest: cut it in half, tear the peel off, strip away as much of the pith as possible. Hook my teeth into the seam of the carpel and pull at the membrane to reveal the juice-filled locules glistening within. Bite eagerly into the moist ovarian flesh. Hold pink sunlight on my tongue.
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