MAA’NGO MANGO MORE

Khaliqur Rahman

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.

Tukhmi 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 Brazilian mango while I was in Edinburgh. 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 Punjab in Pakistan.

I remember from my childhood days, summer time and mango season, my Khala’s Saas (mother- in-law of my mother’s sister), who we affectionately called Dadi. At night, she used to keep a small bucket filled with water by the side of her bed with a lantern and a stick as she pretended to go to sleep at the far end of the aa’ngan (courtyard), nearest to the tall tukhmi aam ka darakht (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 (Nani) 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 lakdi ki kholi 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 pyjamas!

Maa’ngo, maa’ngo, more mango maa’ngo!