Wild Strawberries: Smultron

The perfumed berries are synonymous with Swedish summer!

Although Wild Strawberries evoke Scandinavian country side in our minds, the plants were brought from Persia through silk route to Europe!!

When I was first moving here and my colleagues emailed me to ask me what kind of a place would I like to live at, I had said, 'Where wild strawberries grow!!"

I don't think they got it, but I was referring to one of the famous movies that is associated with Sweden, 'Wild Strawberries'.  Called Smulstronstallet, in Swedish, literarily meaning 'Wild strawberry patch', it refers to a place that one regards nostalgically.  

While I had referred to Smultron (wild strawberries) I had never seen them, let alone tasted them.  Two years ago, someone pointed out that tiny little red berries that I saw when I opened the backdoor, or sometimes under trees by the roadside, or wild patches of wildly growing flowers, were Wild Strawberries. 

Since then I have made sure to pick them up, at least a few times every summer.  Whenever I do, I am so filled with joy, that I admire them for a while before I taste them.

They taste and feel of summer, fresh, sweet, fragrant and bright!!

Somethings that come with travel, especially this crazy travel of having lived-in different places….you know your life through the routines in that country, what you remember, what you waited for, and how you knew seasons and passage of time.

In India, I waited for flowering of the Amaltas.  The delicate yellow flowers that hung from trees lit Delhi streets every May and my heart would stop every time I looked at them, as if their blooming is what it waited for--all spring.  

In Botswana it was the Jaqueranda flowers, though common in Delhi, I never noticed much until I lived in southern Botswana.  The trees would become all purple at the top and I would just stare at them. 

In the US it was always the daffodils and tulips, when daffodils showed their bright yellow selves I knew cold'n crisp had turned to fresh'n fragrant and roads would be buzzing with the young on their skateboards.  You could buy daffodils for cheap and they would brighten your tables for days.

In Fiji, I always waited for frangipani and gulmohar to return.  In november, the bald trees of Frangipani would start flowering.  You could not make a bouquet out of them, but you smelled them when you walked under these large trees that would be covered with leaves and flowers in summers.  Both frangipani and gulmohar grow in India too.  In fact, gulmohar had been in our garden in Delhi, but years in the US made me forget what joy the tree brought every year.  When I looked at down at the trees from my friends house, who was our adjacent neighbor--two floors up-- the tree would seem like a huge bouquet.  So my joy at seeing gulmohar in bloom in Fiji was boundless.  For over three years I awaited their return.  

And in Sweden, we await green, in general, after the harshness of white that stays with us for a very long time.  But it is the smell of perfumed flowers and berries that makes it for Swedish summer.

So, with all the questioning and complaints of having to hop and move continents, there are rewards of having seen and lived with so much. Yet, the important thing is that traveling is not the same as living in one place for a long time.  It allows us connection with people, just as much as with nature.  We await seasons with anticipation, and each season, each turn ---colors us with its own special memories.

The sound, taste and images of Smultron for me, will never be without numerous other memories of winters before and autumn after the very fragrant Swedish summers.