Forbidden fruit

Sometime very early in my childhood, I learnt that one has a right to have opinions, and soon after, I learnt to hate the Apple. Every morning, Mumma filled a Golden ratio of my tiffin with neatly cut Apples to school, and I returned, smug, Apples untouched. She proceeded to give me some very curt words of advice and made me eat the Unedible, now almost brown and frightfully smelly. I felt like throwing up.

When I got old enough to have "insights", my favourite conjecture, which I liberally shared with whoever I met, was that the worst way to begin a child's introduction to English is to make it chant "A for Apple". I also decided that Mrs. Ambrose, my Std IA class teacher, was a most horrible liar, when she taught me an idiom on apples and doctors I found Absurd.

Ironically, I learnt to fear and worship that same idiom sometime around the turn of the century. You see, I fell in love with a doctor, and that changed the whole dynamics of the situation. An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away? But I Do Not, Do NOT Want My Doctor Away! Apple, Apple, Go Away! The Rebel declared, bravely, every once in a while - NO amount of Apples can keep you away from her, O Foolish One, or her from you! Grow Up! Yet an irrational fear of the unknown made me shrink at the very image of an Apple finding its way into my mouth. The Apple, already Unforgiven, now became the Forbidden Fruit.

So I diligently avoided the Apple. Come what may, I avoided it for dear life. When I visited Aunt M, she gave me Apples for breakfast; when I went to the Puja at R, I got a leaf bowl of prasad, and sure enough, Apples smiled back at me; God taunted and taunted Eve. But Eve, did not succumb. Sweating in terror, she did not succumb.

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Then, one day, I, Prodigal Sonofa, saw an Apple, a Gorgeous, Angelic Apple, and I Lusted for it. It was but a foreign Apple, not quite an Apple, yet still an Apple; I burnt with desire, and I burnt with superstitious paranoia, and desire, and paranoia.
I fought and I fought. Eve fought and fought. And Eve lost.

I tasted the Forbidden Fruit. I was tried, and acquitted. For it was but a foreign Apple, not quite an Apple.

Yet still an Apple?