Hello monsoon, goodbye mangoes!

Published: Wednesday, Jun 1, 2011, 3:55 IST By Joanna Lobo | Place: Mumbai | Agency: DNA


While the approaching monsoons are welcome, it also means that the mango season is coming to an end.

Keeping in mind the high cost of mangoes, the homes that can afford the fruit… are either very rich, have ancestral property and accompanying mango trees in small villages, or are friends of the above two categories.

In my case, I was lucky to be born in a house in Goa that had a variety of mango trees dotting its garden. Easy to pluck and eat. We just had to stand below the tree and collect mangoes that fell outside the basket.

At that time, we had a mud-covered-with-cow dung floor in certain rooms of the house. The mangoes would be lovingly laid out on newspapers and placed on the floor, taking care to see that they do not touch each other. A full count was taken before or after depending on the quantity. Then after deciding how many had to be kept aside for relatives and certain privileged friends, we would be allowed in the sacred space.

Since the process would take considerable time, by the time we kids had permission to eat, we were hungry. Mango-hungry! There was no time to stop and take in the beauty of a near-ripe mankurad mango, the firm skin, the pale yellow-green colour and its heady aroma. The more wrinkled the skin, the tastier the mango was my policy for choosing my ‘share’. If an adult was around - and they generally were - we had to carefully wash them, cut them and eat them like civilised people at the dining table: in plates, with a separate plate for the skins and seed.

If no adult presence was there — easily arranged by eating mangoes when they were asleep — then it was all hands go.

Manners and cleanliness went for a toss. The mangoes were eaten whole, with the skin, without bothering to wash them. Face and clothes slathered in mango juice, the abundant threads of the mango sticking between our teeth, we had competitions over who could clean the seed the best. No help could be taken here, although when my grandmother or grand-aunt joined us, they would use spoons or knives to compensate for their lack of teeth.

The winner would get an extra mango, but then so would the rest, so essentially the competition did not make much sense.

It is with relish that I looked forward to every mango season. The craving increased when I moved to Mumbai. Then I began looking out for people travelling from home who could carry my precious fruit parcel.

When I heard that the mango prices in the season just gone by had crossed an unaffordable Rs500 per kg, I knew it was only mankurad mangoes from our tree that would satisfy my craving.

As if in answer to my prayers, a school friend landed up at my home last week with 25 mangoes. The season is nearly over. But the mangoes stored in my fridge and which complete a meal for me, made the whole wait, completely worthwhile.