Serendipity : Musings of an Islander

Bilimbi (Irumban Puli / Chemmeen Puli): A Lesser Known Sour Fruit of the Tropics By Debkumar Bhadra Following the encouraging readership and feedback on my earlier article on Passion Fruit , I am tempted to write about another locally available, lesser-known, under-exploited fruit — Bilimbi. Commonly found in coastal India including the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Bilimbi (Averrhoa bilimbi) is a tropical fruit known for its intensely sour taste. It is widely used in cooking, pickling, and traditional home remedies, valued for its sharp flavour and everyday utility. In the islands, Bilimbi grows almost unnoticed—clustered along slender trunks in backyards and by the roadside. This article explains what Bilimbi is, how it tastes, its medicinal properties, culinary uses, simple recipes for Bilimbi squash and its understated presence in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The fruit belongs to the family Oxalidaceae and is a close relative of the carambola (star fruit), widely cultiv...

Summer vacation is on, the sun is shining overhead and the children have declared they are going to make this vacation a memorable one. Everybody is out there on the playground with their cricketing gear chasing the passionate dream of emulating Sachin Tendulkar and nothing is going to stop them from achieving it this summer, not even the scorching sun. Passion fruit vine While dad feels proud seeing his kid shaping in right direction, mom is getting tense for the fear that her child may get dehydrated. She did add a bottle full of nourishing drink fortified with glucose, vitamins and essential salts to the kit bag, but her  Sachin in the making  seldom drinks it because he does not like the same drink everyday. Though he enjoys playing cricket everyday, but would not gulp the same drink daily. At the end of the day her child returns home all exhausted. A refreshing drink would charge him up, but how could mom find a new drink every day! If t...