Purple Berry & The Sweet Orange Coloured Fruit

We folded our big shirt’s front flap upward and tied both ends into a tight knot at our lower back. That was how we made a kangaroo pouch in which we throw wild kemunting berries harvested from its shrubs that sprawled nearby our wooden house. We were surrounded by ocean of tall grass blades – the metropolis of dreadful snakes and trolls and goblins. The Savannah turned golden in the sweltering heat of Sura Tengoh summer. The creaks of coconut palm leaf that criquer far above our heads correlated with the fervour of South China Sea wind that blew landward from nearby beach. We picked kemunting berries and more kemunting berries a twig to another until our small palms turned purple, our pouch got bigger, and we looked like pregnant ladies craving for wild sweets.

Kemunting steals some of blackberry’s features – the shape, colour. In between my thumb and index finger where the freshly picked kemunting was pinched softly, my sweaty fingers left dark purple mark over its dry and dusty skin. Its slightly coarse surface reminded me of velvet that made up our school theatre’s stage drape.

We feel we have enough berries for today, ma'am and sir. Let’s go home! Be careful not to step on snakes, alright?

At home, by the main staircase that led us to the living room, we would kneel down on the floor and untie the knot. With that kemunting avalanche was triggered. They rolled downhill into a netted bucket stolen from Mother’s kitchen. After that, the berries were washed thoroughly with tap water to remove impurities. Underneath the purple velvet skin of the kemunting were tiny seeds the size of sesames coated with sweet purple jellies. This was the part of the berries that we sucked in the overcast Dungun evening. 

Buoh ulat bulu was another type of wild fruit that added a lurid Dungun sunset image onto my memory canvas. Shaped like an almost perfect pumpkin, its resplendent orange skin stood out among its younger green siblings who came out to the world from a network of hairy liana plants that climbed up everything in reaching for the sun. It occupied our neighbour’s fence like a vineyard. The fruit’s skin surface was waxy like a betel leaf and soft like turtle eggs shell. To eat buoh ulat bulu, well, you can take this orange one. Now, carefully you tear open the skin. You see these jelly coated seeds? You see it? Remember how you ate kemunting together with me? Suck them all. Sluurrppp. M’schuh. Aaah. It is sweet, isn’t it? You want some more? Here. Don't worry, we still have more at Pok Cik Rohing’s fence.