BY: Paromita Kar
There comes a time when the average food lover is almost consumed by mangoes. Come season and the green and yellow chunks of goodness seem to define delight for everyone. Then there are the flavoured face pack, sandesh, ice cream, condom and so on. Surprising how the mighty fruit can be pressed into the service of anything and everything. That season of unadulterated plenty is just around the corner, and then not a single day – lazy or laborious – shall reach completion without the sweet pulp of summer’s kindness.
For some, however, the essence of mangoes isn’t what it used to be. Per-haps it’s an intangible presence from the past that shapes the idea of “mango-ness”. Ripeness isn’t all, despite what the poet said.
If you have lived and played around mango trees, and been with the fruit right from its birth, through its adolescence and maturity – till the time the desiccated stone is pried open by a strong little sapling – you would have tasted one long story of mellow fruitfulness.
My own such narrative played out over thirty and five years ago, at a time when we were living far away from the city. It was an annual engagement, with an auspicious beginning, spanning several months. On Saraswati Puja one year, I sampled the flower at a neighbour’s house – a little something amidst an assortment of chopped fruits, soaked legumes and sweets. ” Aam-er mukul (mango blossom),” said my friend’s father, indulgently, “It has to be offered to Ma…” I do not know if it’s still the practice, but the moment remained.
There were nine or ten trees in all – in my house of blue mangoes. As I discovered over the years, each had a unique structure, in trunk and canopy, and character. But all displayed a certain stateliness, which I secretly felt the guava trees or even the huge ber (Indian gooseberry) tree couldn’t match up to. Even before winter had waned, they would erupt in fluorescence, one after the other, as if in a hurry to show what they held in store. Finding a neat little stem with five or seven leaves arranged in a whorl – aam pallab, a must for Thursday’s Lakshmi Puja – would then be a little difficult.
Otherwise, the blooms never mattered to me much, unlike to the birds and bees, as long as their contours were changing every day. It only meant the button-like bitter-sour fruits were not far behind.
The real action took place after the baby mangoes had grown to a respectable size, which was anywhere close to a rupee coin. Every kalbaisakhi was like a battle between the forces – raging storm vs magnificent trees. The giant breaths of the Nor’wester spelt glorious anticipation, leaving in their trail, as they did, veritable thrill. Sifting through the soggy leaf litter and twigs, I gathered fistfuls of raw mangoes, but was always generous enough to leave the lesser ones for the ants and millipedes.
One such occasion, though, was not pleasurable at all. I had ventured into the storm, more ambitious than usual, so the children in the neighbourhood didn’t get the prize before I did. Suddenly, something hit me on the head, with an instant flash of light. The gods were merciful – the jolt was from a falling fruit, and not lightning as I had assumed in my stunned state.
The best mangoes came from a tree to the right of the house, and which I could keep an eye on from my room. It was also the largest and bore the maximum fruit. Or maybe we thought it produced the most, as no one could thieve from it. The others trees were accessible to all and sundry, and targets of much stone throwing. In retrospect, I wish I had tasted the pleasure of stealing mangoes from another’s garden.
We also ate mangoes after they had ripened. We ate them every which way you can imagine. We sliced them for breakfast, we sliced them for dessert, offered them to visitors, made jars of jam and pickle. Bite a hole into the skin and slowly sip the pulp, my mother taught me one hot afternoon.
Many years later, I saw a film called Kairee – the Marathi word for raw mango. The narrative was different, but the term just right. The house of blue mangoes continues to appear in my dreams. And perhaps the trees still give more than just fruit.
Courtesy www.telegraphindia.com
