We are used to valorising the mango as our ‘national fruit’ and rightly so, because of its all-India profile and many delicious varieties. People even fight about which ones are better. But this week, as winter begins to nip the North and its seasonal bounty starts showing up, I realise anew that we have another fruit that is surely God’s bounty to our land—the orange. Oranges are associated the world over with prosperity and happiness. The Roman goddess Juno apparently brought oranges as her dowry when she married the god Jupiter. And we all know that the colour orange is holy in Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism.
I discovered that in the South, the orange season lasts from October through March. In the north, it’s from December to February, while Central and Western India's orange season is from November through January and again, from March through May.
The mandarin orange is apparently the most grown among citrus fruits in India. It occupies over 40 percent of the total area under citrus cultivation here. The most important commercial citrus species in India are the mandarin (Citrus reticulata), sweet orange (Citrus sinensis) and acid lime (Citrus aurantifolia) sharing 41, 23 and 23 percent respectively.
It seems oranges are grown mostly in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Orissa, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Nagaland, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh. The Nagpur mandarin is rated as one of the best in the world and if you want to grow some, you could probably try sourcing it from the Central Citrus Research Institute, Amravati Road, Nagpur.
Besides tasting great, oranges are rich in Vitamin C, A, B, and phosphorus. We can eat them fresh or as juice, jam and squash. Or in Cointreau, the orange liqueur, with which you can also make the dessert Crepes Suzette. I rate thick-cut orange marmalade as a great spread for hot, buttered toast.
As a young college student, I loved storming Pragati Maidan in Delhi for Peshawari almonds and strings of dried Afghani figs. Today, while those treats are freely found in shops and on apps, what I miss are the blood-red ‘Malta’ oranges from Gujranwala, now in Pakistan.
I’ve heard Malta oranges were first grown in Punjab in Sardar Hari Singh Nalwa’s famous orchard. Hari Singh Nalwa (1791-1837) was one of India’s legendary generals. He was the commander-in-chief of the Sikh Khalsa Fauj, the army of the Sikh Empire. He is known for his role in the conquests of Kasur, Sialkot, Attock, Multan, Kashmir, Peshawar and Jamrud. His father, Gurdial Singh, died when he was just seven in 1798 and his maternal uncle raised him.
Hari Singh earned the sobriquet 'Nalwa' after he reportedly killed a tiger at a young age. He was also called 'Bagh Maar' or tiger killer for that reason. His descendants are still very much around. That he grew oranges is a soft facet of his heroic personality as a warrior.
Maltas haven’t come my way in Delhi since my teens, which were a while ago by dental if not mental reckoning; and I only ever got to eat them again in Sicily in my feckless 20s. What you find in boring plenty now on the orange front is kinu (Kinnow), which of course is easy to peel and eat but seems to have chased out other interesting kinds, like how pigeons have exiled sparrows from Delhi.
Why should we care a fig about Malta oranges, you say? Imagine you’ve had a dusty, tiring journey. You come home, wash up and there on a snow-white quarter plate with a spoon placed invitingly by it, sits half a chilled blood-red Malta orange. Just the sight of it is so beautiful that you have to look again. And when you eat it, the glory of creation bursts on your brain in ‘sphota’ like Sanskrit writer Bhartrihari’s ‘explosion of utterance’, an instantaneous flash of recognition, though he was talking about the aesthetics of language, not fruit. Bhartrihari (circa 570 CE to 651 CE) was a philosopher and grammarian who lived in ancient Ujjain. He asserted that sphota contains "an inner energy (kratu) that seeks to burst forth into expression."
If you get your hands on enough Malta oranges to both eat fresh and cook with, you might like ‘Sauce Maltaise’, a classic French sauce. It blends the zest and juice of one blood orange with two egg yolks, salt, pepper, lemon juice and melted unsalted butter. It’s a fun upgrade for steamed or grilled broccoli and asparagus as well as sautéed potatoes. It’s even used as a topping for pan-fried fish and a variation of hollandaise sauce in the classic Eggs Benedict.
These are quick Western recipes available on the net, and easily made in Indian kitchens; there’s no need to source exotic ingredients except, of course, the Malta orange.
Plainly put, eating a Malta orange is a spiritual experience, like standing under an amaltas tree in full bloom. Emanuel Bonavia, MD, Brigade-Surgeon in the Indian Medical Service, spelt out how matters stood back in 1888 in his fascinating study, wordily but comprehensively titled ‘The Cultivated Oranges and Lemons Etc of India and Ceylon with Researches into the Origin and the Derivation of their Names and Other Useful Information with an Atlas of Illustrations’. He categorically stated, “The best of all is the blood orange of Gujranwala.”
There are so many bright, modern farmers in our land. Dear people, are you going to be left pipped or won’t you make this amazing ancient orange happen affordably at home? We’d so love you for it.
(Views are personal)
(shebaba09@gmail.com)
Renuka Narayanan