Plum, peach, cherry, loquat, pear, apple, even walnut. Take your pick. No need to buy. I don’t know whether this is a carefully planned exercise (everything in Switzerland is thought through thoroughly), fruit trees abound anywhere, roadsides, along lakes, rivers, hills, plains, valleys. And, summer is the season when the trees are laden with fruit that one can just pluck and chew, fresh, crunchy and juicy with no monkeys to contend. 

Children on their way back from school laze in the shade, climb (some, as skilled as monkeys), eat at will. Can an afternoon be more fulfilling and idyllic, than time spent under a tree with a group of school mates, chatting and fruiting, away from gadgets and Netflix? Also, so much more pleasure than buying, masked, from a cold supermarket. Left to themselves, children do like fruit, not when parents keep telling them to like fruit. 

I never liked pears. The ones straight from the trees, with a flush of red and pink on their skin, are so good that I have started loving pears. Back home in Delhi/Gurgaon, where I have lived most of my life, local fruit varieties such as mulberry, berries, guava, lychee have given way to real estate, urbanisation and construction activity. 

While there have been efforts to re-forest, destruction of fruit trees has affected resident monkeys the most. Hungry and aggressive simians are a menace, raiding houses foraging for food, causing damage to property and attacking humans. Development at the cost of balance of nature and environment is never a good idea anywhere in the world.