Tale of Musang King
This is a fictional short story. Characters, story and events are based purely on creation.
Who can forget the sweet and
succulent taste of Durian? A thorny fruit that’s hard to pry open, which fits
that analogy of ‘good things are hard to get’. I remembered my Ustaz used to
tell the same thing about why a female Muslim, called Muslimah, are bound to
wear veil to cover their head above the hairline. Its because they serve to
protect something ‘precious and beautiful’ . Anyways, sorry for the
distraction. A Durian simply cannot be worn over the head. But its sweet
succulent taste simply cannot get off your head at times.
Another name for Durian would be
The King of Fruits. Although structurally it doesn’t have a crown like a
pineapple, people hail it the king of fruits.It doesn’t spot the royal colour
of yellow like mangosteen or apricots, but the thorny fruit spots a
militaristic dark brown-green colour. Albeit, Durian must be a King after all –
it’s normal for Kings of any monarchy to send their children for military
training in, say… West Point in The US or Sandhurst in UK perhaps in Dehradun,
India. The King befits Durian after all, as you pry to reveal the treasured
fruits situated inside the crevices, it spots the bright royal yellow colour.
Ah! Kings, uncanny outer strength and should have heart of gold inner beauty
Fruits sits snugly within the
crevice. They lined up in groups of three to fours. Four tops, the rest may be
littler fruits without seed. Much suitable for the kids if anybody had fear
their children might get choked up upon introduction to this glorious Kings of fruit.
Indeed, the durian seeds can be large and slippery would choke an adult to
death. Only skilled tongues of season Durian eaters are able to separate durian
sweet and creamy meat and slippery hydrophobic fruit seed. Upon spitting, Some
seeds has the tendency to have remains of meats undetached. Out of manners,
someone has to look left and right to scrape off the remaining meat with
rabbit-like efficacy.
As you dip your teeth in Durian, The
fruits can vary from thick skin with powdery meat and small almost flat oval
seeds. Another could be Thin fibrous skin with moisture rich meat on golf-ball
sized seed. Both are unsatisfying, I might say. A perfect durian fruit should
be a glossy water tight skin to lock in whatever moisture contained by the
meat, yet not too thick that the teeth might slip a few centimetres before
penetrating it. The meat maintains ideal moisture , this, to prevent easy
dilution or splatter like a tomatoes when the skin gave out– its supposed to be
creamy, sweet amd as layman says ‘melts in your mouth’. In its core, the seed
bonded with easy to peel it apart and never brings along too many meat.. For
decades in modern durian history, Hantu
Durian ( Durian ghosts or Durian enthusiast ) had devised methods to
measure a good Durian before prying them open.
Some method includes spinning a
durian upon flat ground. The longer it spins, the better density of the fruits
spread upon the different crevices. This method is somewhat flawed As an axis
of durian is hard to determine due to organic nature of durian growth. Durians
can be bulging sideways, or some crevices might looms larger thus the outer
skin corresponded to stretch larger. To spin it just drives it out of control
and cause foot injury to unlucky curious onlookers that stood nearby.
Another method is light tossing.
While standing, a hantu durian, with or
without gloves would toss the durian allowing it to roll mid air. Similar to
the first described method, its done to determine a well grown great tasting
durian. A few toss and self-employed testers would give its approval. If its
not going to taste well, testers would put the fruit down and grabs another one
for similar light tossing test. This goes on until a suitable durian is ‘forecasted’
and prying would ensued. The tester credibility can be at stake if the pried
durian return to be bad, but since there is no empirical studies to determine
testing method nor there is no established or charted body for Durian testers,
these method served as placebo for prospect durian buyer.
If all else fails, incision would
be the last resort. A little incision be made and testers would pinch with their
bare fingers to taste the fruit sweetness and texture. This, much or less, may
not be accurate to estimate the taste of durian because a single sample is
taken from single crevice. Another crevices may yield bad fruit. Worst, rotten
or ridden with sweet toothed bug digging their way into the fruits as deep as
the seed itself.
To take the guessing game out,
Science is here to the rescue. Studies are made to identify the best traits of
various Durian species. Like humans, the studies of Eugenics precluded that the
best of the best shall be allowed to breed which the imperfections be gradually
removed as generation passes by. The time is now. From the rugged orchard, Durian
landed itself in sterile labs and its gene are being unclothed and its bare
bodies peeped through high-magnifying telescopic scopes by people in all-white
robes with Western-bound qualifications and professorships.
Thus, the D24 is born. It
fulfills most of hantu durian craving for sweet tasting meat. It shunned most
of durian critics that scientific research can introduce a durian only the
brain can ever emulate and trick the tongue. D24 is the catchphrase for the mid
90s , hantu durian would be looking
for durian of this breed. Planters flocked the agriculture fair and place their
biddings for the finest D24 seed. Buyers from as far as Hong Kong would charter
a flight just to transport the fruit back to the tiny colony island.
Due to tremendous demand, the
price for D24 can skyrocket. There is a market for much economical durian , yet
there is a missing Durian product to fill those gap. Realizing this, the D10 is
the answer. Perhaps, just a few notches below the god-like D24 but at fraction
of cost. People are still left satisfied, but yearn for D24. After all, The D24
sets a new benchmark for Durian since the invention of wheels and sliced bread.
Further market segmentation
brings in D7, D101, D88 and many other D’s. The flooding of D’s blurred the
differential lines and brings confusion for customer. Its hard to differentiate
the much superior but numerically inferior D24 to the lower tiered but
bombastically named D101 . Later variants moved to animal naming scheme instead.
Udang Merah ( Prawn Red ), a significantly sweeter, smaller prawn
like meat with prawn-like hues. The skin is much fibrous to accommodate longer
munching time. Longer munching brings possibilities of fruit be eaten with
glutinous rice or bread or turned into a meal like tempoyak (fermented durian gravy), nothing but good tasting
variants ensued tweaked by local growers to fit certain tastebuds. Then came
along Kucing Tidur, loosely
translated sleeping cat. A strong resemblance of sleeping cat that usually
curls up its body when it sleeps. The durian curls nicely within the crevices
with longer seedless fruits entraining like a cats tail. It has a fat middle
members so to speak like a fat cat abdomen.
Then there is a lull in Durian
market, for a moment people are beginning to lose interest. Perhaps, the
economy or the fruit just lost its shine. Hotels starts to have strict ruling
forbade the entry of these fruits in their compound. Durian is known to be only
fruit to contain considerably high amount of cholesterol. Either its bad or
good cholesterol, the name cholesterol strike fears to the hearts of many
people especially the elders, which whom had high concerns over their health. Cartoons
showed the Durian fruit characterized as a strong unpleasant smelling fruit,
portrayed as baddies wrecking nostril mayhem before being kick-assed by
superheroes. For a generation, Durian seems to be stigmatized and future is
dimmed, yet it remained the local favourite.
Out of sudden, a new breed of
Durian cropped out and its phenomenal. Meet Musang King ( Civet King ), the
term used is to refer to the logic of civet loved to crawl out its nest during
the night to grab sweet fruits, the nocturnal animal is known to be astonishingly
picky. The phenomenon was reaching fever pitch that D24 automatically demoted
to fill the budget corner or all-you-can-eat corner. Musang King stole the
limelight with thin layer of easy crumbling skin followed succulent wholesome meat
and smaller forgiving seed that wouldn’t hug much of that wonderful meat. Yum
yum. Who can forget the taste of Musang King? Only one or two slice of the
fruit is enough to leave its eater satisfied. Musang King, the only fruit that
can bring together people of differing background, idealogical, knowledge and
political background to a single table and agree on one thing without much
deliberation that Musang King is voted the best and had fulfilled its promises
to be the King of the Kings!
