The Communal Durian Feast

Eating durians as a child meant I accompanied my uncle and mother or father out to the roadside stall nearby. It was usually a makeshift stall set up when durians were in season and they were generally from Segamat, Malaysia or some other place in Malaysia. There were some fruits from further afield from Thailand. Selection depended on one's ability to tell and the fruit vender's willingness to open and let you try before selling it to you. One of my elders would usually do the bargining and tasting and after a bit of haggling, there'd be a sackful of durians to haul back home. Fortunately we had a car, otherwise, we'd all have had to troop out to eat by the roadside stall.

Durians for the uninitiated, are a tropical fruit, with a thick, spiky husk in which are pockets of seeds covered by creamy flesh that ranges in colour from a pale to dark yellow. It has a pungent smell and for those who hate it, it smells like something rotting in a drain. For those who love it, it just smells like durian, a strong, rich smell. Fortunately in my house, the entire family loved durians so we had no qualms bringing back the entire fruit and my brothers and father would have to get the wedge out and start breaking open the durians. There would be newspapers on the patio and all of us squatting around, digging our fingers into the rich, yellow creamy flesh with delight. We'd eat and eat until we were sated and in those days, I could pack away an entire durian by myself or even two if they were small. But the pleasure was also in sampling the different varieties from the sweet and creamy to the slightly alcoholic and more stringy ones.

A young Malaysian guy gave us the chance to relive that childhood past the other day when he came a-knocking on our door asking if we wanted to buy durians from his kampong home and he'd carted them over in the boot of his beat up Proton Saga. We did, and I promptly hauled my young nephews over to come feast with us. I then was confronted with the thick husked spiky fruit and my mother pointed out that while the seller had cut each open near the stem to show me the fruit was good, I should have asked him to wedge them from the base, where one normally opened them from.

Oops.

I'd always relied on my father or brothers or uncles to do this, but now, it was just city slicker me since my brother was overseas and my father not as able as before. Hmmmm....I grabbed the wedge and under my mother's direction, discovered the faultline and forced the wedge along the faultline from the base of the durian. It opened reasonably easily so I could then teach my nephews. Easier than I thought. A darn sight easier than opening a coconut anyway which I still can't do.

The reward: a happy set of nephews who now if marooned on a tropical island during the durian season would not starve. And two large bowlfuls of durian seeds covered in scrumptious yellow flesh. I had durian for dinner that night!