I can’t do the melon thing.
You know, pick up a melon and shake it, and percuss it to see if it is good. I don’t know how. And I can’t tell if fruits are going to be sweet, or if the cauliflowers have insects in them.
I’m more of the ‘go to the supermarket and ask the guy who’s got a “May I Assist You” badge on him in which aisle I can find produce’ kind.
I prefer buying cartons of juice to actual fruit, and those readymade soups to actual vegetables. In fact, for a period of about a month when I lived absolutely by myself, I ate maggi every night, out of the saucepan in which I cooked it.

I hate maggi now.

In fact, unlike most young men my age I have never actually gone to the market to buy stuff. I hate haggling.
But there is one area in which I have the theoretical knowledge necessary to buy things: Fish.

First you look at the gills to see if it is well vascularised, and if it is wet. Then you look at the eyes, because apparently, hypoxia makes the nictitating membrane go opaque. And there are a thousand other things that tell you if the fish is fresh.

Now you must bear in mind that I have actually never gone to a fish market, and quite frankly never intend to. This is just stuff I have imbibed over the years.

Maybe this is some sort of mystical knowledge that is passed down through the generations from Bengali father to son: the genetic ability to tell if fish is fresh; a sort of bio-cultural adaptation, necessary to the people of a riverine civilisation.

I am sure if I ever have a son, and if there is a nuclear explosion that selectively destroys supermarkets, then, in this post-apocalyptic, supermarket-less world, my son would be able to tell if the fish is really fresh.