The Alien Fruit

Joshitha Balamurugan

“No…my wife and I shop here all the time…”
I rolled my eyes as my father tried to negotiate in his forced American voice; still, his Indian accent was prominent. “There was a discount on the site.” 

“Final price. If you don’t want it, put it back,” the shopkeeper responded, doubling down on her original bargain. After a few more exchanges, the woman ignored him to service another customer.  

The shopkeeper’s demeanor immediately changed, her disrespect dissipating as a white customer inquired about any available coupons on dish cloths. A look of defeat crossed my father’s face, and I couldn’t do anything but look away. A twinge of second-hand embarrassment irked me. 

Just pay full price, and let’s leave, God… 

Instead, he went after the shopkeeper, asking for the same dish-cloth coupons. An expression of rage crumpled the woman’s face, and I left my father to deal with her bigotry. 

 Struggling to find the specific onions my mother asked me to buy, I looked around at the various exotic imports on display: dragon fruit, starfruit, jackfruit – a myriad of childhood favorites lured me into their vast wooden crates. Customers wove through the narrow walkway, bumping into each other with sugarcane juice in one hand, a basket of fresh vegetables in the other. The tapestry draped above the market watched the blithe chaos, its shadow dancing as the wind pulled its strings one way, then another. 

At that moment, a seed of melancholy planted itself embryonically in my palm. And I did not know it then, but this speck of time would define me over the years; the day I got a taste of something so familiar, it was alien. 

My attention landed on this enormously spiked sphere, strategically placed next to the dead fish. Inching closer, I quickly discovered why the shopkeeper separated this particular fruit from the others. My nose twitched as a garbage scent wafted in with the aroma of bludgeoned catfish.  

“This is called durian.” Startled, my head whipped around to my dad’s voice; he was carrying a crate of food he must have haggled the shopkeeper for. “Thirty-nine dollars?! It cost too much here. I want it still – ask an employee if there is a discount.” 

So expensive for something that smells like rat dung? No way it’s worth that much… 

My father nudged me on the shoulder. I turned to look at him.  

“I can get you McDonald’s on the way back.” Instantly, my eight-year old self beamed with joy. “One condition: you have to try durian with me.”  

Is this another one of his attempts to make me less American and more like him?  

I could have cried at the thought of eating something so nasty…yet, the promise of chicken nuggets became my tempter.  

“Fine.” 

“Pick a place to eat for your sixteenth birthday. Your dinner must be special!” my mother exclaimed, more excited about the day than I was.  

“Hm,” I murmured, too engrossed watching the movie playing in our living room to focus on the conversation. My reply seemed to satisfy her, though, as she went off to make lunch. 

I typically only watched critically acclaimed English film—or, on occasion, an exotically Asian drama. Though, when folks say Asian, they really just mean Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. And even then, the movies are written through a faux-authentic lens filtered by a Western aesthetic. And, like any brown teenager desperate to rid herself of any trace of culture, I happily devoured this media.  

Today was different; I was challenging myself to sit through a Tamil film. Without subtitles. It truly would be difficult – not that I couldn’t understand Tamil, but I hadn’t been to India in eight years. My only knowledge of the language was through my mother forcing me to attend proper classes. 

Oh, Tamil school…four years of Hell on Earth. 

Still, I knew enough to somewhat make out what was going on in the film. Though I had cried every Saturday, begging my parents not to attend, I was truly thankful that I retained the information years later.  

Now that brown was beautiful, I regretted those days of skin and personality bleaching.  I treated the melanin on my skin like dirt, scrubbing to no avail. And once the skin had peeled, layer after layer, I mourned the lost pigment too late.  

Then, as I sat there with a coconut hair mask and turmeric facial, eating mangoes and watching English Vinglish on screen, I couldn’t help but feel confused. Was I Indian? Or was I like the daughter in the film—cold and refusing to understand my immigrant parents? 

The TV shined brightly as Sridevi struggled to order coffee, and I saw my father through her. Educated, inquisitive, kind—but never respected. Their broken English determined their worth, and I resented how I had begun to measure my own value in internal whiteness.  

Once the credits started to fade, and my tears had dried, I felt something nudge my shoulder. Or, more accurately, someone.  

“No crying on your birthday, thangakutti,” my father teased, calling me by my childhood nickname meaning gold. “Here, I got you your favorite food.” 

I could have guessed what it was by the smell alone, but it made me giggle nevertheless. In a small bowl, he had tackled the tedious undertaking of getting me the ripest durian seeds. 

And we ate them together happily.  

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Joshitha Balamurugan is a young writer who, despite learning English later in life, fell in love with the language and formed a passion to tell stories. Her inspiration and role model is her father, to whom she credits her work to.