It was a Goan summer with equal measures of sunshine and monsoon rain. The thunderstorms were made to impress and inarguably dangerous. You didn’t want to be caught outdoors when the lightning bolts struck the surface in quick repeated stabs and outed the electricity so that only the celestial shafts of light were visible in the darkness. The ground vegetation looked menacing when lightning momentarily lit up the ground for nanoseconds. The rain that accompanied the spears of light pounded at the earth, flooding, creating rivers on flat lowlands, making it impassable for days on end. It created a shortage of vegetables because the road from Karnataka ,on which vegetable trucks plied, was rendered unusable. When the weather cleared between thunderstorms, a dear friend sent me the most delicious mangoes. It came via delivery from north to south, landing right on the doorstep. The mangoes were perfect. I guess it would be accurate to say they were in their prime. The sweetness was just right; the texture, immaculate. In a few days, they would bruise and become over ripe. The best time to eat them was the present. We wanted to appreciate this marvellous gift to its uttermost by not allowing any of the precious fruit to spoil. Thus was invented the mango dinner. All that was needed was a big dinner plate, a bigger cloth bib, and no cutlery besides the knife used to cut open the mangoes. The mango dinner was followed by a mango lunch and a second Mango dinner. Heavenly sessions at the dining table with servings of God’s most delectable creation. There are almost no words to describe the experience of gorging on the yellow fruit flesh of what is the indisputably most delicious of fruits while comforting oneself in the knowledge that there were many more waiting to be relished. Such a far cry from childhood when we used to share two or three Assam mangoes between the five of us, always finishing our slices mournfully for we did not know when would be the next time our parents could bring mangoes home again.
Back then, mangoes were not native to our hills, and although we had a mango tree, its efforts at bearing fruit were always truncated for unknown reasons. Actually, the reasons were not completely mysterious to us. We knew some of them. Our visitors blamed the altitude, or the soil, and most comments negatively discouraged the white mango flowers from proceeding further. The hardiest fruits grew to thumb size before giving up and falling below the tree. We tried tasting them, but so many are the years that have passed since then that I no longer remember what they tasted like. I do remember the sticky white fluid that flowed out of the premature fruit and stained our clothes and hands. That was Naga mango then. Destined by the lack of global warming to an early demise. At least, in this day and age, there are some mango trees doing well in the heat of Dimapur.
I can almost wax poetic about the mango for it would never lose its charms for me. Lines quickly come to mind from Wordsworth’s oft quoted poem,
My heart leaps up
When I behold a rainbow in the sky
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old
Or let me die!
The poem surfaced from my subconscious but my mind quickly deleted Wordsworthian rainbows. I caught myself reciting, ‘My heart leaps up when I behold a mango on a tree!’ Mango-lovers would understand. Among all the people who love the mango, a brotherhood springs up, an intuitive knowledge of the other and the conviction that if you love mangoes, you must be a decent human. If you dislike mangoes, you are immediately suspect. Who could possibly not like mangoes?Stop for a minute and imagine life without mangoes. If we had to grow up in such a world oh woe would be us! I shall be eternally grateful for those portions of our planet that support the healthy life and growth of the Mango. And for dear, dear friends who bless me with mango dinners!
