MANGO THE KING OF FRUITS
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I
am completely overwhelmed, completely bowled over, as I relish ... and
relish... fondling long the varied tastes of mangoes. I wonder how such
different delightful tastes in inexplicable attractive shapes and sizes,
colours and textures develop from the same mother-earth to gift man
with the only option of enjoying to the full the exquisiteness of those
succulent slurps.
Any other fruit, say oranges or bananas or apples,
will taste the same and look the same. But not mangoes! And, I think
you can eat mangoes in many more ways than you can eat any other fruit.
bijju aams (the mango tree grows out of sowing seeds), smaller in size
but jucier than kalmi aams (the mango tree grows after grafting) are
best softened and sucked. But I’ve enormously enjoyed sucking over ripe
and softer dusseries and baingan pallis and langras and chausas, as
well. Otherwise, more civilized and sophisticated way of eating these
kalmi varieties is to peel them off with a knife and then either slice
them or chop them into pieces to be then eaten with spoons or
fruit-forks. I find them better when they’re sliced with the skin
intact. Now I can eat as many slices as I can digest and can raze the
skin as close as possible with my teeth so that no flesh goes awaste. I
don’t think, I’ve had opportunities to taste every variety of this
wonderful fruit but I am happy to have grabbed the varieties made
available at places I’ve lived. The only variety I haven’t had the
courage to go for was the foreign mango . I got intimidated by the
enormity of its size, extreme ugliness in its shape and brutality in the
colour and texture of its skin. I feared I’d be done in if I took it
and then ate it. But I went for dusseries there. They were simply
fantastic. They told me they were from UP
I remember from my
childhood days, summer time and mango season,one old woman in my
village used to keep a small bucket filled with water by the side of
her bed as she pretended to go to sleep at the far end of the aa’ngan
(courtyard), nearest to the tall bijju aam ka ped (mango tree). I’m
sure, she fought against sleep to wait for all the others to fall asleep
and still wait for the sound of a ‘tup’ as a mango dropped. Then she
would take the stick in one hand and the lantern in another and look for
the mango on the ground. She would pick the fruit, come back, put the
‘pick’ in the bucket and pretend to sleep one more time. Another ‘tup’,
another round! When four or five mangoes were collected thus in the
bucket, she’d sit on the charpoy with her feet down on the ground and
slurp. That’s the way to eat a mango!
I also remember those lovely
days when our grandmother bought raw mangoes in hundreds and put them
to ripen, under a pile of paddy, in the room at the back, normally used
for keeping logs of wood, used in cooking. Grand idea struck, and we,
children, decided to steal the ripe ones. We sneaked into the khaliyaani
while the ‘house’ was asleep in the afternoon. But how we were caught
while walking through Nani’s room! The fruits dropped from the other end
of our lungis
Maa’ngo, maa’ngo, more mango maa’ngo!
