A Very Cashew Affair

Join Us As We Go On A Cashew Trail In Goa…

- Preeti Verma Lal

Anacardium occidentale. That’s the name. I stood under that tree in Goa. Anacardium occidentale? That’s the botanical name of the cashew tree. The tree laden with fruits. Countless fruits. Red. Yellow. Green. Burnished orange. A few scattered and bruised on the ground. Each fruit with one nut dressed in a charcoal sheath. Hard shell with resinous filling. There is nothing true about the Anacardium occidentale fruit. It is a false fruit – not a fruit but a swollen stalk with the nut dangling precariously outside. In the Tivim cashew farm of Cedric and Mac Vaz, vintage cars had lined up to mark the beginning of the Cashew Trail, an eight-day annual festival by Park Hyatt Goa Resort & Spa that harks back to the old legend of cashew.