Our homestay host in Sicily packed us a bag of oranges from her orchard, she said these are “Sicilian sun-ripened”. I got them home with me to India on a 15 hour long flight. I stored them in my fridge.
I would take out one orange from the bag each day and put it out in the sun for a few hours -“The Indian sun”. I could feel the warmth in my hands oozing out from the smooth skin of the Sicilian orange, I gently cupped it under my palms and rolled it on my thighs (which were also being warmed by the “Indian sun”), before pushing my thumb inside it to create an incision. to peel it. My thumb feels sticky and warm. I lick it off. The “Sicilan sun” and the “Indian sun” melt in my mouth with a gooey sweetness sticking to my tongue.
I have had many a winter sun in the shape of oranges. The ones warming in my grandmother’s coarse terrace sometime back in the early 90s to the more recent Sicilan ones in Laura’s orchard. They all taste different, the oranges I mean, the sun tasted the same each time. My grandmother’s ‘orange sun’ which are still warm inside me were tiny and sweet with bitter seeds, that I used to bite to cut out the salty sweetness.
I haven’t been on that terrace for a decades now. Does the winter sun still warm the oranges on that terrace or did my grandmother took the sun with her? I would never know. Right now as I type the sun is one side of my face, I let my hair slid to my face to block the rays. One side of my face is warm like I have gobbled up one big orange and the sun burst open all its warmth and anger inside me, while the Sicilan ornages are still inside my fridge.
Is is the same sun on my grandmother’s terrace and Laura’s orchard? Have we been touched by the same ray each day every day for billions of years everywhere?
Did I eat the same orange?
