When it comes to fruits, this writer avoids figs (anjeer) like the plague. The fleshy fruit has never tickled our taste buds. It’s only perhaps the anjeer barfis and pedas that we find tolerable.  

But, if Dr Devesh Tewari’s study is anything to go by, the fruit is the balm that our body really needs. Tewari, a research lead and assistant professor at the Department of Pharmacognosy, School of Pharmaceutical sciences at Lovely Professional University (LPU) in Jalandhar, has spent the last three years studying a fig variety endemic to the Himalayan region in India.