Entirely besides the point. Well, not entirely.

I used to detest guavas. They're very popular in India, eaten in halves or quarters, with salt and red chilli powder rubbed on them. But I refused to partake, after my first experience.

Then, at the age of 13, I first exprienced the true horror of a camp - the National Cadet Corps camp in Pune. Two weeks of hell. (I will not describe the lavatorial arrangements for fear of offending the more delicate members here.) Food was first come first served - if we didn't get into the line early, there was not much left for the end. And what there was of it not so much inedible (after all, others ate it and lived), but unrecognisable as food.

The upshot of this was that I eked my meagre pocket-money in purchases of bananas from the vendors who hung around the fences encircling the camp. On one tragic occasion, though, there were no kelawallas around. I think the camp commandant had managed to run them off for the nonce. So I was reduced to handing out a precious charanna (4 annas - a 25 paise coin) for a cut guava.

In the state I was in, starving and homesick, it was heavenly. For the rest of that tortured fortnight I alternated banana and guava with no reservations. It helped me survive, whilst my tent-mates, in desperate straits for entertainment or stimulus, descended to trying out the seeds of the poison datura plant, in the hope of getting a high.

Once home, of course, guava lost its attraction, and I don't think I've eaten it ever again. Everyone says its a better source of Vitamin C than oranges, though. So there.

cheer

the sunshine warrior