A road where the fruit is free

The road bends between two walls of green. On one side is a protected forest; on the other, a rubber plantation. Along the asphalt, fruit trees rise from both shoulders.

There are guavas and hog plums, mangoes and jackfruits, pomelos, java plums, jujubes, elephant apples, wood apples, karondas and almonds. In season, the branches grow heavy.

There is no fence and there is no guard. There is no one collecting money as well.

A traveller can stop, reach up and pick a guava. A worker can sit in the shade and eat one. A child can take fruit home. Monkeys emerge from the forest, climb into the branches and feed before retreating into the trees. Parakeets and bulbuls come and go.

Nobody is asked to leave the fruit alone. This is what Ayub Ali wanted.

Ayub, 52, is a farmer from Santoshpur, in Naogaon Union of Mymensingh’s Fulbaria upazila. Beginning in 2014, he planted nearly 5,000 fruit saplings with his own money along both sides of roughly four kilometres of road.

The larger road runs about seven kilometres, from Santoshpur Kandur Bazar to the Madhupur Baganbari intersection. A decade after Ayub began planting, part of it has become something unusual in rural Bangladesh: an orchard without an owner at harvest time.

The land is not Ayub’s. The fruit is not marked for sale. Anyone passing through can take some.

Fruits for everyone

On a recent afternoon, several labourers returning from a pineapple plantation stopped beneath one of the trees. One man climbed up and picked several guavas, passing them down to the others. They ate while resting in the shade.

Farther along, near the rubber plantation, two women stood beneath another tree with a child. A man accompanying them climbed up to pick guavas. The women took fruit from branches within reach.

No one looked around for permission.

The road lies about 18 kilometres from Fulbaria town, in a part of Mymensingh where agriculture and plantation work are woven into everyday life. Ayub’s own life has followed much the same course.

He passed his Secondary School Certificate examination in 1992. But his family needed money, and further education was not an option. He began farming.

Fruit trees eventually became both an interest and a livelihood. In 2009, Ayub planted local and foreign fruit varieties on 40 decimals of land around his home. He learned grafting and began producing saplings for sale.

In 2013, he rented 1.5 acres near his house and established a nursery. He later cultivated another four acres with Malta oranges, lychees, dragon fruit and pineapples. Those fruits have a price. He grows them to sell. 

Talking with Daily Waadaa, Ayub said by that time, he had already developed another habit. Much of the fruit from the trees around his home went to his neighbours.

Then the roadside trees grew out of that idea, he said.

In 2014, he began planting along the stretch between Santoshpur Kandur Bazar and Santoshpur West Para. Over two years, nearly 5,000 saplings went into the ground: mango, jackfruit, guava, pomelo, jujube, hog plum, java plum, elephant apple, wood apple, karonda, star gooseberry, bakul, chambal, Malta orange and almond.

Planting them was the easier part, said Ayub.

For years, Ayub tended the trees himself and paid workers to help. When saplings died, he replaced them. Weeds had to be cleared. Soil was placed around the roots. Branches needed pruning.

“There was no quick return. Many of the trees took years to mature,” he said, adding that for the past four or five years, however, a large number have been producing fruit regularly.

For a farmer who makes his living from fruit, that presents an obvious possibility. Ayub could sell it but he decided not to.

Why free fruits

“Travellers who cannot afford to buy fruit can eat from these trees,” he told Waadaa, “The animals and birds can eat, too.”

The distinction is important to him. Fruit from his commercial orchards is part of his livelihood. Fruit from the roadside trees has a different purpose.

For several years now, he has watched people stop beneath them. Some eat a piece of fruit and continue on their way. Others take a few home. Monkeys and birds claim their share.

“It makes me happy to see it,” Ayub said.

He does not try to regulate the arrangement. There is no limit on how many guavas a traveller may pick, no distinction between a villager and a visitor, and no attempt to keep the animals away.

Rubel Mia, who travelled from Bhaluka to visit Santoshpur, was struck by that absence of rules.

The trees were full of guavas and hog plums, he said. Birds and monkeys arrived in groups to feed. Passers-by stopped and picked fruit for themselves. Some ate beside the road; others carried it away.

“No one stops them,” Rubel told Waadaa.

Abu Kawsar, a local resident, has a simpler reason for liking the trees. “There is a different pleasure and taste in picking a fruit with your own hands,” he said.

Along the road, there is little to indicate who planted the trees or who has spent years caring for them. Travellers stop, eat and move on. Ayub does not keep count.

He planted the trees. The harvest is left to whoever comes along.

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