Jackfruit is the largest tree-borne fruit in the world, reaching 80 pounds in weight and up to 36 inches long and 20 inches in diameter. The exterior of the compound fruit is green or yellow when ripe. The interior consists of large edible bulbs of yellow, banana-flavored flesh (lies! they are all lies! it tastes quite terrible, I would say indescribably bad, but that's not true, I could probably describe it but that would require me eating it again, and I'm going to try to avoid that) that encloses a smooth, oval, light-brown seed.

The seed is 3/4 to 1-1/2 inches long and 1/2 to 3/4 inches thick and is white and crisp within. There may be 100 or up to 500 seeds in a single fruit, which are viable for no more than three or four days. When fully ripe, the unopened jackfruit emits a strong disagreeable odor, (this is true) resembling that of decayed onions (decaying onions sitting on top of a pile of dung), while the pulp of the opened fruit smells of pineapple and banana. (Pineapple and banana that have been left to suffer and rot in fields of decaying chipmunk bodies.)

There are two main varieties. In one, the fruits have small, fibrous, soft, mushy, but very sweet carpals with a texture somewhat akin to a raw oysters. The other variety is crisp and almost crunchy though not quite as sweet. This form is the more important commercially and is more palatable to western tastes. (I think I had this kind, it was not palatable to my western taste.)

Bangalore has a certain odiferous quality.
The city smells of exhaust fumes, human body odor, garbage, feces, urine, burning and jackfruit.

Generally all these scents work together, so that no one is overpowering and the effect is unpleasant, but not overwhelming.

Occasionally one may walk into an area of a high concentration of one scent and want to gag, but she doesn't because that may be perceived as rude.

Don't get me wrong, there are small pockets of delicious smells. Many of the women wear jasmine or other fragrant flowers in their hair. In the morning and evening the smell of frying onions all over my neighborhood is wonderful. I walked through the fancy hotel garden last night, it was lovely with the scents of fresh flowers, clean water falling from the fountains, newly laid sod . . . those are nice things . . . Jackfruit is not.

Avoid Jackfruit.