At the outskirts of Bangalore, many small-scale vendors try to beat the middlemen by selling direct-to-consumer….
First one sees one basket of custard apples…
Then a few..
Then a few more…
And if one takes the larger view, one can see that it is definitely custard apple season now, all down the road!
I wonder..when the baskets are arrayed in serried ranks like that…is there a cartel that dictates the minimum price? How can the sellers hope to get a reasonable margin on their fruit?
And an interesting point about those baskets is, they seem to be made from lantana twigs…surely a good use of a plant that is assuming pest-type proportions here, crowding out, as it does, all other vegetation where it grows.
Custard apples, anyone? Or Seeta phal, to give it the local name?
I was asked to name the road…the presence of the Forest Resort should id it as the Bangalore-Mysore highway.