Aam sutra The sharp edge of the peeler was slowly gliding through the curved contours, coiling out the golden yellow coloured skin carvings at the same speed, in a single uninterrupted continuous motion from the head (the stem end) to the bottom tip, as the Banganappalli mango was getting skinned alive until it was fully shaved off to expose its glistening pulpy nakedness. While I was slicing and dicing one of its fat cheeks into equal cubes of juicy chunkiness, my thoughts were racing back. If there is one fruit that captures our childhood memories in its every form, shape, size and taste, it has to be mango. From the raw baby mangoes that are felled by throwing stones on the way to school or the long semi-ripe ones that are eaten with salt and chilly powder sprinkled on it, to God-knows-how-many varieties of ripe juicy ones, our childhood memories are filled with mangoes in their dashavatar, from pulp to pickles. The mango variety that I associate my childhood with most, is called Vellayani. This is a bit more reddish orange in colour than the usual ones and is very juicy and fibrous inside. The skin is thicker than the normal ones and is often spotted with a few black dalmatian dots for the very ripe ones. We used to bite and peel off the skin and scrape off its inside until it becomes a big mess to remove the fibres stuck in the gaps of our teeth. Then we delve into its bare cheek that is ridged due to the wild and brutal skinning, unlike the smooth one by the peeler or knife, with one big bite that makes it squirt the juices through the openings between our fingers and from the edges of our mouth as we scramble to lap up every drop of it from all over, while balancing to hold the slippery gooey mess of what was once a mango until the last of its juice and pulp are extracted and devoured leaving the dead fibre around its seed in a dishevelled state that gives it a look of an uncombed lion-tailed macaques face. The sticky stains of the shreds and drops of juice remaining around the mouth start to pull the facial skin as they dry up by when we reluctantly discard the lifeless bearded seed to clean ourselves. The fun of wolfing down the mango like that was so unique, thinking of which tempted me to delve again into a bite, off the other cheek, once I finished dicing the first one. Not in that mauling spree as in those childhood days, but more like a loving small bite this time, as I did not want to finish this off so soon, being the end of this season of mangoes and a long wait until next summer for another indulgence.
Posted on: Sun, 27 Jul 2014 09:58:30 +0000