Tale of Musang King

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!