God’s own fruit

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Aam meethe hon aur bahut se hon,” said Ghalib while describing this succulent fruit. As children we never understood why we gorged on them just once a year, but were happy to be able to pounce on them. The aromatic alphonsos, the green dasheris, the luscious chausas and the golden-skinned langdas, sparkling in their red, yellow and dark green tones, had a magical spell on us.
During summers there was seldom a day when we did not have a mango. This irresistible fruit not only makes hot summer days tolerable, but also stirs in a whole lot of memories. Mangoes are here today, gone tomorrow. So mom found ways to keep them as long as she could. Though I have forgotten the names of endless dishes she used to make, the taste lingers.
Decades later, mango still has such a charismatic hold. To get that heavenly juice spurting all over one’s chin reminds one of carefree childhood days. One of my mango memories includes the endless wait for a gush of wind to waggle the branches laden with mangoes — with the hope that one would fall near me, of aiming a slingshot at a neighbour’s mango-laden tree, of climbing trees and throwing down the fruit, of wounds received from toppling down the branches and being chased by an irate ‘mali’. The enticing fruit had such a hold on our psyche that it turned even a goody two-shoe like me into a mango thief.
It is entwined with our country for centuries. People have always enjoyed ripe and raw mangoes alike and perhaps no other fruit, when unripe serves us so much as mango does. Even Amir Khusro, the greatest of poets, in his Persian verse called it ‘the choicest fruit of Hindustan’, and declared, “For garden pride the mango is sought. Ere ripe, other fruits to cut we ban, but mango serves, ripe or not.” And for a full-blooded Indian like me, any time is mango time and a dollop of aam ka achaar enhances my meals.
Don’t we know stories of kings and nobles who sent their friends gifts of choicest mangoes? Even our PM and the Pakistani President forget about Kashmir once a year and exchange baskets of the delectable alphonsos. Its beautiful paisley shape has found its way into everything from ethnic jewellery to Kashmiri shawls and even into ancient Indian literature.
What is life without the king of fruits? I am going to miss the sinful delight, as it is that time of the year when the fruit is on its way out. And the days are not too far when the dasheris, langdas, safedas, chausas, alphonsos, totapuris, sindhooris and fazlis will start teasing me in my dreams. Can’t it be summer all the time, if it means eating mangoes round the year?


(http://www.tribuneindia.com/2010/20100814/edit.htm#5) Published in the 'Middle' section of The Tribune, Chandigarh
(Pic: The Hindu)

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