Shabari ke Ber

The story of shabari is part of the Ramayana - Shabari is an adivasi lady - adivasis known today as sheduled tribe or ST - she has been praying for long that Lord Ram will come and visit her. When Lord Ram and Lakshman visit her during their search for Sita, she offers them the choicest ber (a fruit) carefully chosen by her. She makes sure that only the sweetest of the fruit is served to the Lord by tasting a little of each that she serves. Lord Ram happily accepts them while Lakshman throws them away. Eating jhootey ber and that too from a low caste women was beyond him. These fruits have further significance in the story when Meghnad (Ravana's son) attacks the two brothers and only Lakshman becomes unconscious but Ram is saved because he had had the jhootey ber of Shabri. Hanuman then gets the sanjivani booti to rescue Lakshman.

This story has been interpreted with various metaphorical meanings attributed to it. I will just stick to the literal for even that too tells an interesting tale. Firstly I had a hard time looking for a suitable term for jhoota in english. Then I realized that this concept is probably uniquely Indian.
Notice that for Shabari there was nothing odd in the practise and she did not think twice before serving half eaten fruit. Strange that adivasi and western thinking coincides :-) Also, the story seems to be an effort to co-opt adivasis in the mainstream hindu fold, there are not many references to tribals in the epics otherwise. Till date many of them have been living aloof from rest of the society and it would have been nice if a broader attempt at assimilation had been done during the time of epics.