New Delhi, July 11 -- Since I first encountered the jackfruit at age 3 in my grandmother's garden in Chennai, I've been intrigued by the ungainly monsters. Until then, in the UK, trees I'd come across tended to be well-behaved and strait-laced with a predictable canopy on top, but here were trees with massive fruit sprouting untidily from everywhere, all the way to the base of the trunk, spiky fruit that seemed to poke me back when I curiously jabbed them. My mother would tell a story (in hindsight, much embellished) about the time she and her grandparents were stranded-and overcome by the fruit's creeping, overpowering smell-in Panruti in Tamil Nadu when their car hit a stray jackfruit on the road and got a flat. This fruit, delicious to...