The mangoes have arrived!

The Mangoes are here!

It was a challenge thrown to the audience of one of those famous circus troupes of yore. The challenger was a massive man with just not an eight pack body but several packs from top to toe. He took out a lemon fruit and squeezed out all the juice without cutting it with all his might. He then offered a thousand rupees to anyone in the audience who could extract an extra drop of juice from the fruit. A fat man with nothing but a huge belly accepted the challenge, came on to the arena and took the fruit from the massive challenger. To everyone’s surprise, he squeezed out with ease not one but three drops of juice. The massive challenger was dumbfounded and quietly handed over the thousand rupees. When the stunned audience wanted to know who he was, he replied that he was a moneylender! From this joke, we can understand how ruthless the moneylenders were in those days. Youw ould recall the ruthlessness of moneylenders in all time great movies like Mother India and Do Bigha Zamin. I too can go on and on but unfortunately I am bound for elsewhere and so my little reminiscence about the loan sharks must end here.

Coming back to that lemon squeezing episode, I merely wanted to tell you how fruit eating style could reveal a person’s character. This being the start of mango season, we’ll take that divine fruit as an example for our research. I call it divine because Lord Muruga would not have deserted His Parents and settled down in the Palani Hills but for the Mango fruit.

You may ask me why mango and not the jack fruit which is also a summer fruit. In the case of jack, the eater and ‘peeler’ are usually two different people. By the time the peeler finishes off his/her job, his/her hands get so sticky that it would be a time consuming process to bring the hands back to as nearly normal as possible by which time, the eater would have finished off all the fruits of the peeler’s labour!

The most incredible way of eating a mango can be seen in Andhra. My second daughter is married to a family from West Godavari District and my first visit to that place brought me face to face with this incredible way of eating a mango. They just make a hole on the top of the fruit and suck the entire contents of the fruit in one single breath and when the job is done so neatly, it doesn’t look as though it has been already cleaned up inside. For an untrained eye, it may even look fresh and juicy!

There are people who labour hard on the fruit de-skinning and cutting it to some attractive shapes. They also serve it so attractively that no one would feel enthused to eat the beautifully chiselled pieces. They’ll at best go round it in awe. These people are extremely superficial and boastful. They are only out to impress people! And there are others who deal such deathly blows to the fruit that with their very first bite, the fruit becomes lifeless. Then starts the proverbial ‘flogging the dead horse’. They keep biting and clawing it until the veins on the seed start becoming visible. These are the people who will have what they want no matter what damage they cause. The people who go into a trance when they are in the process of consuming the fruit are the true connoisseurs of the fruit. Until the fruit is fully consumed, they will dead to the world. These are the self motivated perfectionists who labour for the sheer joy of it.

Mirza Ghalib, the renowned Urdu poet, had a greater passion for mangoes than for writing poetry. He was reported to have tasted more than 4000 varieties of mangoes. When the mango season arrived, he wrote to his friends all over the country to send him baskets of the fruit! The mango has been cultivated in India for over 4,000 years and is so much a part of the Indian heritage and culture that it is almost an object of veneration in Hindu households. The records of Hieun Tsang, the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim who visited India during Harshavardhan's reign in the 6th century B.C., contain references to the attentive cultivation of the mango in the country. The Mughal emperors also evinced keen interest in the mango's systematic cultivation and Emperor Akbar is credited with having planted genetically superior mangoes in an orchard known as Lakh Bakhsh, north of Agra.

Talking of mangoes, have you read the book ‘Eat mango naked’ by Sark? A great one! Here is an excerpt from the book:
“Pleasure can be so elusive, momentary and serendipitous. We can chase it away by trying to plan it, grab it, clutch it or orchestrate it.
Let's live more in pleasure and bring pleasure to others. Pleasure can escort us safely through difficult times and give our spirits a place to replenish.
We so often try to present our ideal or best selves to the world. Let me invite you into the pleasure of sharing your fragile, wrinkled, dented, tiniest self! I assure you, it's what people find most endearing about you!”

 

Dear Roopa
Thanks a lot for your first FB! A hearty welcome to my ramblings!
I agree that a true lover of mangoes will hardly bother about what damage is caused to his dresses by his clumpsy handling of the golden fruit. Just as Sara has written and which I have quoted in the end, true joy cannot be planned or structured. It will break through all barriers!
Sri

 

Dear Padmini
First things first.
I am not and I don't want to be a lion here. I would rather love to be a lamb! Even if I am a lion, how can we forget the Aesop's fable of the Lion and the Mouse? The lion needed the mouse for its freedom from the hunters in the end. Did not the mouse prove stronger than the lion in that story?

I myself did not know that there were 4000 varieties of mangoes. In Chennai, we are all predominantly Banganapalle eaters. They come to market after getting forced to become ripe with some chemicals and taste awful. The one I love most is the Imam Pasand variety that is grown in Thathachari Garden of Trichy. Excellent stuff.

That saying suits the money lenders very well. They are called 'Kandhuvatti' chaps. They charge interest daily and I have seen all these fruit and vegetable vendors borrow from them. Really pathetic!
Sri