Karachi is the country's cornucopia, full to overflowing with fruit from all over Pakistan, from neighbouring countries, and distant lands. Besides fresh fruit we have plenty of tinned varieties both local and imported. However, in this fruit paradise there is a snake. It is called Money, which few of us have. Fruit is so expensive that most of the time we can just look admiringly and longingly at them, but never afford to taste them.
It is not just the imported fresh fruit and tins which are beyond one's reach. Even fruit like bananas, guavas and ber (I think it is called Indian plum), once affordable by everybody are fruit we have to think twice before purchasing any one of them.
That Urdu joke about a man wearing a pair of shabby shorts, sitting in a tree eating ber, today falls flat. His sarcastic description of ber as high quality fruit will not produce laughter because, price wise, the ber is elevated in status in the social order of fruit. Since they have grown up to go to market contemporary wage-earners have bought ber at a high price. Gone are the days when children used to sneake out of the school gate to buy a pocketful of ber. It was forbidden fruit; teachers did not like you to eat it because it caused sore throat. Who cared? The ban in fact acted like a goad to send us sneaking outside to buy ber. Something of childhood has been lost.
In short, the high price has taken the fun out of eating humble fruit like bananas, guavas and ber. Gone also are the days when these fruits were grown in people's gardens, if not your own than one of your neighbour's. Nearly all of us elders recall sneaking into other people's gardens to steal a guava, mango, or throw stones to make ber fall off branches hanging outside the boundary wall. What an adventure it was to pluck a fruit and run while the mali chased you.
Every year the variety of fruit available in Karachi increases. Once unknown in Pakistan , we can now find kiwi fruit and avocado. One small kiwi fruit, just slightly larger than a ping pong ball, cost Rs 80. My advise to all who can afford it is to buy, because demand encourages local fruit farmers to grow the fruit.
In Pakistan we have managed to grow many fruit once unavailable from local farms. Such as strawberries and leechies. Today you can buy them off loaded pushcarts. Those of us who cannot afford kiwi fruit at present will have to wait till they are sold on pushcarts, but that will happen only if the affluent people create the demand for the fruit. Towards the end of last year, there was a sudden glut of apples and the prices too were reduced. The reason, I was told, was that a large consignment exported to one of the Middle East countries was returned because the fruit was not up to the mark in quality. That must have been true because apples that were sold in the glut though good, and fresh, did not look like export quality.
The best year for fruit export was 2010, reaching an all-time high at 687,000 tonnes. Last year it was 493,000 tonnes. There are several reasons why fruit export is falling. But these do not affect local consumption or demand for fruit. It is only the price of fruit that matters. It is irritating that we do not, normally get export quality fruit, so why is it that local fruit supply costs as if its price was calculated in dollars?
Despite the high price Karachi's fruit shops are full, which means people buy the fruit no matter what the price. That is true, but do they buy as much as they wish? For the middle class it means being stingly selective. These days such a vast variety of fruit is available: apples, bananas, guavas, ber, strawberries, oranges, malta (blood oranges), sharifa (custard apples), sugarcane, chekoo, kiwi, pineapple, coconut, Kinno, avocado, and, ofcourse, dryfruit.
If you want to enjoy all the fruit variety, the best way to go about it is first, make friends with some affluent people, second get invited to dinner. This way you can have a taste of every fruit. Another trick is to cut down on essential foods like rice, atta, meat, vegetables and use the money thus saved on fruit. A third option is to rob a bank. A fourth is to borrow a gun and hold up a fruit seller. That ought not to be difficult, since Karachi is said to have the highest number of weapons in the country.