Bad, Ugly and Sweet (standard:travel stories, 802 words)
Author: Juggernaut	Added: May 22 2011	Views/Reads: 3128/1884	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A Story about Jack Fruit and Portugese Folly

Bad, Ugly and Sweet 

Subba Rao 

“It stinks bad,” “You eat this ugly fruit? “Derrick jumped back 

from the large fruit cut opened with a machete. 

“It smells good for me and tasty too,” Juggernaut pulled a 

slippery, glossy yellow flesh covering a large seed and placed in his 

mouth savoring its taste to full extent. The golden yellow fleshy 

covering of a large seed is the sweetest part of the fruit that can be 

eaten fresh while the large seeds are like chestnuts roasted, boiled or 

fried as chips. 

“We feed these prickly unripe green fruits to pigs on the 

island, they like it bad,” said Derrick getting up and looking at a 

tree with shiny green leaves and gigantic fruits hanging loose from its 

branches and the tree trunk. 

“What you call this tree here?” 

“We call Jackfruit tree.” 

“Do you know as early as in 250 years B.C., Emperor Ashoka the 

Great of India declared Jackfruit as we know today as the Fruit of the 

Gods and encouraged its propagation throughout the subcontinent as we 

know now as India? The Portuguese traders visiting South India in early 

1500 have mispronounced its local name ‘chakka' as ‘jaka' and the fruit 

was stuck with the name ‘Jackfruit.'   What an improbable name? The 

Jackfruit got a bad rap from Portuguese folly. The bad boy of all 

fruits, weighs up to 80 pounds deserves a better name; say ‘Bad 

Boy' ‘Sweet Heaven' or ‘Hang Loose' since these fruits hang loose from 

trunk of the tree.  Any one of these names best describe its appearance 

and taste. Now we stuck with this irrelevant name ‘Jackfruit', we can 

only hope to change it by marketing with one of those fancy names to 

make it popular.  Is it not ‘Kiwi Fruit' alias for ‘Chinese Gooseberry' 

became more popular with its alias?” 

Dumbfounded and silent, not able to digest all that 

information, Derrick looked at Juggernaut in disbelief thinking what 

triggered Juggernaut to get so emotional about a fruit that stinks. 

Juggernaut took a deep breath and got a grip on himself 

realizing that he was overtaken by the emotions on the injustice done 

to the fruit known as Jackfruit everywhere except in its native habitat.


The name ‘Jackfruit' is non starter. Unless people tasted one, 



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