Off season

Summer-time is fruit-time. And there are quite a few fruits on display here. And different varieties  of some of them, too. 

But you can easily tell this photo is not recent. How? 

What kind of a summer fruit display would ignore the National Fruit of India! Tell us now, which is your favourite variety of mango?  

Summer fruit

Yes, it did rain a bit a few days ago, but the heat is very much back in business. The mangoes are not early this year (the ones that have come so far are best left untasted) and the city dweller seems to have given up his preference for jack-fruit.

The watermelon continues to be a favourite, both as a solid and a liquid - here are a few of the fruits stacked up at the Koyambedu market!

Colourful choice

Only if you are not interested in the coconut water, that is.

Summer fruits are out there and the roadside vendors are doing pretty well for themselves. Sweet lime, musk melon, apples, oranges, pomegranates, all of them worth their juice.

Where are the mangoes, you ask? Well, they have a tendency to heat up the body, so not too many road-side juice stalls serve them - you're better off having them in a milk shake!

Fruit Shop

Footpaths on Chennai roads, if they exist, are often taken up by shops selling all kinds of things. For the most part, nobody really wants to move them away. They are useful mainly because they are everywhere, one can always manoeuvre around them - that slight inconvenience is set off by the economy of shopping at these footpath outlets.

Come summer, the number of such outlets seems to multiply rapidly. Many of them are of course seasonal, dedicated to the variety of fruits that summer brings with it. This shop on CP Ramaswamy Road is usually a small affair, just under the tree, with maybe 3 or 4 kinds of fruit. But now, it has spread itself out and has spilled onto the road. Of course the shop needs space; forget the 3 or 4 kinds - there are now some 6 kinds of mangoes alone. And then sweet lime, oranges, grapes, apples, pomegranates, sapota, bananas, musk melon.... I'm sure I've missed out on a few that fell outside the photo frame.

Colourful - and tempting!