Lemon Detection Project

I am not much into detective films and scoop stories but since one week I am involved in a lemon- giver-detection project. It all started few days back when I found a lemon on my terrace. By lemon, I didn’t mean the frail, not-yet-ripe, tiny lemons we find in the market. The lemon that hit my leg was bright, yellow, round, inviting-you-to-taste-it kind. I looked around to see if someone on another terrace was looking for a lost lemon but found none. I scanned the surroundings to see if there was any unnoticed lemon tree in the vicinity, from where this fruit might have come flying. Illogical it might seem but one can’t take chances when viruses are believed to die with photon energy that converts to atomic energy which in turn converts to quantum energy.

When I found no trees, I searched for any naughty kid that might have used a lemon in place of a tennis ball. Again, my search was in vain. Satisfied at the results, I finally took the lemon home and had a glass of fresh lime water salted and sweetened as per taste.

It was on the next day when another big, round, yellow, juicy lemon caught my attention that I give this project a thought. When lemons are running in a shortage everywhere, it cannot be a coincidence that I get to find a lemon on my terrace every morning. Later in the day, while having salted and sweetened fresh lime water, I browsed through various news websites to see if the Government is indeed raining lemons on terraces to fight the pandemic. It is even possible that I might have missed the Prime Minister’s weekend address.

I found no reference to any such schemes, no lemon-on-terrace challenges on social media, no lemon-showering drones by political parties and no lemon-therapy asana on Bhakti channels. Confused, I continued to enjoy my lime water for a few days. But, my over thinking brain kept telling me something was not right. It could possibly be a trap. Those lemons might be drugged. China might have started a lemon-war on India. What if I get addicted to these lemons and then they get banned like TikTok?  I couldn’t take any chances.

It was then that I decided to begin this investigation. It took me one week to identify the source of my terrace lemons. When camera traps and night outs failed, I finally had to sleep on my terrace to dig the facts out. After one week, this is what I found. The lemons were flying onto my terrace as expected. But contrary to my hypothesis, they were not flying from above but from below. My lemon-giver was neither the government nor an enemy nation. It was my good hearted neighbour next door.

Early in the morning she came out with her two weeks old grand-son. In his swaddle cloth was a lemon, the size and colour I now got used to seeing every day. She made three rounds around the little one’s head with the lemon and with one clean swing, threw it in my direction and ran indoors not once looking above to see if her object reached its destination. Confused at her behaviour, I picked my lemon and went back to enjoy my now favourite fresh lime water first thing in the morning.