Taste of Life: Sweet success of Europe’s crown fruit in Mahabaleshwar

The ladies of Mahabaleshwar,

Have strawberries for tea,

And as for cream and sugar

They add them lavishly:

But Poona! Oh, in Poona,

Their hearts are like to break,

For while the butter’s melting

The flies eat up the cake.

Strawberry was a much-prized fruit among the Europeans. Being one of the most highly perishable fruits, it rarely appeared in the markets on the plains in the mid-nineteenth century. By its appealing colour and delicate flavour, the strawberry made a very attractive table fruit, besides lending itself for the preparation of jams of exquisite quality. One of the most expensive of fruits, strawberry was essentially a rich man’s delight, its value being hardly known to Indians.

The produce of strawberries in India was often very poor. European horticulturists occasionally cultivated some fine-flavoured, handsome fruit, not anything, however, like as large or well flavoured as were ordinarily met in Europe. This was owed partly to indifferent cultivation, partly to climate, and largely to the character and variety of the plants themselves; but leaving the modes of cultivation out of the question, it was certain that in the late nineteenth century, strawberry was grown in some parts of India much more satisfactorily than in others.

In Meerut and Saharanpore, the fruit was produced most abundantly. Captain Hollings, the man behind the largest strawberry farms in Saharanpore, stated that “the Strawberries produced at Lucknow are very fine, attaining to the weight of nearly a tolah each”.

The neighbourhood of Calcutta, on the other hand, appeared far from favourable to the growth of the delicious fruit. Bangalore produced fairly good fruit, in one or two varieties, from January till April. The varieties, viz. James Veitch, Garibaldi, and Keen’s seedling were imported from Europe. Keen’s seedling was also planted at Saharanpore. Mr Gollan, who took the variety to Saharanpore from Bangalore, wrote in 1905, that “it has not in the last degenerated although established at Saharanpore for 35 to 40 years”.

Thomas Firminger, the great horticulturist whose “Manual of Gardening for India” is considered one of the most exhaustive treatises on horticulture in India, raised the Alpine strawberry from seed and cultivated it in his garden at Chinsurah. He found it exceedingly vigorous in growth, and much more productive than the other kinds, to which, however, it was unquestionably very inferior. But the long, sugar-loaf-formed fruit was preferred for jams.

It was Firminger who brought the variety to Mahabaleshwar.

Mahabaleshwar then was the main hill station of the Bombay Presidency. By the end of the nineteenth century, the strawberries grown there had started getting attention from all over the country. Their only serious fault was that they were rather watery and did not stand long transit. Firminger tried to eliminate this fault by taking the Alpine variety to Mahabaleshwar.

The history of the introduction of strawberries to Mahabaleshwar is a bit obscure. About 1830, Chinese and Malay convicts were accommodated in a makeshift jail in the Poona cantonment. They stayed there for more than six months when a small commotion broke out over the issue of contaminated food. The convicts tried to stage a coup in the jail. As a result, they were shifted to Mahabaleshwar in 1832.

Some of these inmates were allowed to grow fruits and vegetables. There is no absolutely authentic statement that strawberry cultivation originated with them, but this is the common report and is probably correct.

The Chinese left Mahabaleshwar in the 1850s. The local cultivators seem to have learned a lot from the Chinese.

The original berries were small and not very juicy. In the wet famine year about 1896, the strawberries were all washed away. In October of the same year, a public subscription was raised to restock the beds, and runners were first ordered from Saharanpore, but did not stand the journey. Some of the cultivators then went personally to Bangalore from where they brought back the ancestors of the present race of berries in Mahabaleshwar. The still more remote origin of the Bangalore plants is unknown.

Flowering and fruiting of the species went on steadily until the rains broke. Every morning before 7:30 am, the berries that were ready were picked and were either taken off to be hawked in Mahabaleshwar, or packed for transport to Poona or Bombay. The hawkers carried the berries in shallow baskets slung at the end of a pole carried over the shoulder.

There was no fixed price for the berries in any of these places, but the rate was more or less the result of private haggling. Around the year 1900, in April and May, the price of the berries in Mahabaleshwar was about 4 annas per hundred, in Poona about a rupee per hundred, and in Bombay as high as 6 annas a dozen for first class berries and 4 annas for second class.

For transport to Bombay and Poona, the berries were gathered while still unripe, with the yellow colour visible and the consistency still hard. They were packed in baskets called “karandis”, which contained 14 to 16 fruits.

In Poona, the berries were hawked from door to door by the friends of the growers, and in Bombay, the berries scarcely appeared in the public market but were sold by the hawkers at railways stations.

The demand was much larger than the supply and the government realised that there was an excellent future, especially in Poona and Bombay, if the supply was increased and delivered.

The Agricultural Department then established a small research and development unit at Poona in the first decade of the twentieth century. This station was given the task of carrying out experiments at Mahabaleshwar, Panchgani, and Poona and coming up with the best methods to cultivate a satisfactory yield of strawberries. The department also opened a kitchen to manufacture jams and jellies.

It was due to these efforts that strawberries from Mahabaleshwar soon rivalled those from Coonoor and Saharanpore, and Mahabaleshwar emerged as one of the foremost centres for the cultivation of strawberries.

Chinmay Damle is a research scientist and food enthusiast. He writes here on Pune’s food culture. He can be contacted at chinmay.damle@gmail.com