Spilling the beans

Even vegetables have some self-respect. They hate it when perfectly normal people question their very identity and confuse them for fruits. It’s like mixing up baseball with cricket or for that matter, committing the abacharam of confusing an Iyer for an Iyengar!

The tomato was caught in one such terrible mix-up in 1893, when an American gentleman named Edward L. Hedden, threw the dictionary at it and declared that any ‘seed-bearing’ plant-part should automatically be labelled as a ‘fruit’. But the Supreme Court of the United States restored its dignity by asserting that common parlance counts a lot more than botany and if the world referred to the tomato as a vegetable, it shall be regarded so. Tomatoes have never looked back ever since.

Talking of vegetable identities, do you know that different varieties of farm produce have different names in India? For example, the cauliflower grown in Varanasi is called Kashi Kunwari (aka Varanasi Virgin)! ‘Deepali’ and ‘Snowball’ are the other cultivars.

Usually the hue of the veggie decides the name. ‘Detroit Dark Red’ and ‘Crimson Globe’ are the most common types of Beetroot in our part of the world. Similarly ‘Purple Long’, ‘Shyamala’ (the dark one), ‘Neelakant’ (blue throat), ‘Jamuni’ (blackish), and ‘Krishna’ (dark blue) are Brinjal variants. Fenugreek seeds are yellow, so the Indian type is called ‘Sonali’ (golden). Likewise the saffron shades of carrots are called ‘Kesar’. Green Chilli is ‘Harita’ (greenish) and Red Chilli is ‘Lohit’ (copper red).

The shape, texture and taste play a role too. Which is probably why, hot chillies have been billed as ‘Jwala’ (flame); the cool cucumber breed is called ‘Himangini’ (made of snow); the long necked bottle gourd is ‘Nutan’ (remember the actress?), the shapely and sweet one is ‘Madhuri’ while the watery type is ‘Ganga’; ‘Chandramukhi’ is the oblong yellow potato and ‘Swarna’, the gold-skinned spud.

Sometimes even the season has a say. The okra grown during the monsoon season is touted as ‘Sawani’, the tomato from autumn is ‘Sharad’, the spring cabbage is ‘Basant, the summer potato is ‘Surya’, and the all-season chilli is ‘Sadabahaar’.

To my knowledge, only one vegetable variety has been named after a politician - that too by accident. It’s the Indira Kundru (after Indira Gandhi). The moniker was picked as the strain of ivy gourd was developed by the Indira Gandhi Agricultural University. In my considered view, our agriculturists should be having a lot more fun in naming their creations as they are not really dealing with hot potatoes. Whaddya say?

Know your onions.

In an era when Apple is viewed as a computer, Ginger as a hotel, Onion as a satirical newspaper and Broccoli as a film maker, you do tend to forget your beets, shoots and leaves. In such moments, it’s good to pause and reflect on the salad days of vegetables.

Onions (possibly the oldest recorded vegetable) were treated like gods in Ancient Egypt. Some say they were worshipped because they provided all the energy to the slaves who built the pyramids. The Greeks used onions as a primitive form of steroids for preparing their athletes for the Olympics. In the middle ages, doctors everywhere were prescribing it for relieving coughs, curing headaches, healing snake bites, and solving infertility! The profound coexistence of many layers in one bulbous blob inspired some Romans to coin a Latin word unionem (meaning ‘the one’) which later morphed into the humble Onion.

Likewise, potatoes were the most precious things for the Incas. They fought for it, prayed with it and even buried their dead with it. In 1565, when explorer Gonzalo Jiminez de Quesada didn’t find gold, he took the potato in lieu, as he found it as treasure-worthy. If not for Sir Francis Drake’s generous act of planting the wonder tuber in Ireland, the world would never have got to taste the French Fries, the aaloo paratha, the bonda and the samosa. Curiously, the name potato (derived from the Spanish ‘batata’) was originally invented for the sweet potato!

The linguistic origins of some other vegetables are as intriguing. The cabbage draws its roots from the French word ‘caboche’ (meaning head). I suspect a Sanskrit origin as ‘kapishaka’ has identical connotations.

Carrot comes from the Greek ‘karaton’, thanks to its horn-shape. Ginger from Greek ‘gingibris’ which in turn is inspired from the Tamil ‘Inji ver’. Gooseberry from German ‘krausebeere’ or ‘crispy, curly’. Yam from the West African 'nyami' (‘to eat’). Radish from Latin for ‘root’. The big fat pumpkin from the Greek word for ‘cooked by the sun’. And zucchini from Italian for ‘little pumpkin’.

So the next time you say grace before your meal, thank the green gods from all continents.