Our Mango Tree

My grandfather had purchased an old house in 1950 at Devaparthiva Road, renting the ancestral Lakshmipuram house and moved after repairs. The 6 tall coconut trees and the big jackfruit tree here were likely to be planted by the first owner, may be around 1910 after constructing the house.  There were also guava, rose apple and mango in my time. 

One day, may be 1951-2, children had eaten mangoes. Among them was my grandfather's young nephew Sathya.  He had discarded a seed of his mango in a particular spot in the backyard.  It sprouted and grew.  Till Sathya lived [up to 81], he had clear memory of this.  He would take a peek at the well-grown tree each time he visited decades later. Lucky are those that grow up in a house with some fruit trees around it.  

All the pictures in this were taken in 2007-8 just before our 'ownership' of this beautiful old plot ceased.  Click on them for enlarged view.

The mango tree had grown and established itself without any extra care at all. This is where it stood, providing plenty of fruit to us. Rose-ringed parakeets, bats and monkeys had their good share too!! Monkeys feared my slingshot.  Chasing them away was fun as they were capable of rampage!   

Bunches of dangling mangoes was quite a pleasing sight! So it was when the whole tree bloomed.  We were unable to find out which variety of mango this was.  Because of its juiciness, someone suggested it to be Raspuri, but its correct identity remained a mystery. Not Raspuri, Badami or Alphonso but something probably very special.  It deserves some eulogizing.  The ripened fruit was green with a light washing of red to look at, lovely non-stringy pulp, flavourful, sweetly juicy and highly delicious to savour.  Actually it defies a proper description.  When green, it had just the right amount of sourness for pickling.

Ceramic pickle jars which were filled with diced green mangoes and stored with their necks tied with cotton cloth. Plenty of people in the family and hence, big jars!  Grandmother and mother would dice them. 

Mischievous boys would throw stones at the green mangoes dangling from the overhanging branches from the conservancy. Stones that missed their target would fall on the asbestos roof of the out house or zinc roof of the latrines and the sound would alert us.  Before we opened the backdoor and peeked into the conservancy, their swift legs would have made them 'disappear'! Now my friends boldly recall how they tried to steal our mangoes! 

View from the terrace. 

 I would pluck them by hand or with the mango plucker pole with net, either from the latrine roof or by climbing half the tree on to an easy-for-me branch if some green mangoes were needed for small-scale pickling or to prepare something like 'gojju', 'tokku', 'chitra-anna' or to give a few to some guest.  

When good-enough-for-ripening mangoes were seen in large numbers mango 'pluckers' who came by asking.  Mother would do tariff bargaining ['per hundred mangoes' plucked].  We kept track and an eye when they counted the harvested mangoes in the end.  Then we would shift them to the warmth and coziness of the store room where a bed of dry straw supplied by our kind milkman was readied to keep the fruits for ripening.

It was virtually a mango-feast.  At times during good yield, 500, 600!  But we would keep only as much as we could and all the rest went for distribution among the streetfolk, who waited eagerly. Yield of mangoes dipped every alternate year.

The penultimate year before we got to see the tree, a pair of pluckers had been called in. This is how they did.  One would drop the plucked mangoes one by one.  The other person used a gunny bag to 'catch' and absorb the force to softly drop-slide them down to the ground to prevent the slightest damage to the fruit. See combo pictures above. 

Murali [click for], a poor young boy, who also climbed the tall coconut trees, came to pluck.  He slipped and fell once, luckily on the latrine roof with very minor injuries and we were reluctant to hire him thereafter as he was epileptic.

[Jackfruit tree in the background. Photo by cousin Santosh]

Imagine me sitting on those steps that faced the mango tree savouring whole juicy mangoes.  A careful bite at the beak opened for stripping the skin further.  I sometimes ate the skin if it was good. Then, I buried the front teeth into the pulp to pick up piece by piece till the kernel was completely scraped making it white!  The excited bites were to such an extent that little fibres would get caught between the teeth and trying to remove them later was tricky!   It was also not unusual for the juice to trickle down to my elbow to stain my pyjamas and a few drops would escape the mouth unnoticed and stain the shirt!  So juicy were these mangoes, ripened the traditional way!  Have eaten tens of them each season often sitting there, swishing away fruit flies that hovered around the eyes as they were also in proliferation in summer. 

When many ripened at the same time, 'Seekarnay' would be prepared [mashed pulp, milk and some sugar].  Mango leaves for auspicious occasions were readily available, esp. for flagging the doorframe. 

During strong storms tens of mangoes fell away, but not wasted.  When a hailstorm came about, that would mean fruits would rot during ripening.  

Old house being torn down by new owner.  Mango tree seen at the back. 2012.

New owner's bungalow under construction, 2016

The only occasions when we ate 'purchased mangoes' during our tenure there were during seasons of low yield.  Mr. Salar Masood [a paint merchant and old client of my grandfather] would supply a basket of mangoes upon request by my grandfather.  We never knew how much he used to pay for them. 

An unusual thing happened after we left this house [Devaparthiva Road]. People observed that there was no flowering and no mangoes the following season!  Tests have proved that trees and plants can bond and feel the human care-takers' emotions.  Was our beloved mango tree also feeling the absence and its chemistry temporarily altered and showed its suffering in that manner? Not once had this happened before. When the new owner dug for foundation very close to the tree for his new bungalow a few years later, it is likely that its roots were severely damaged. 

Henceforth, no longer could the neighbourhood get the taste of those mangoes and they felt as sad seeing the tree slowly dying as us looking in that direction as we passed by. People said they tried to save it, but it was futile. The loss is theirs. 

What remain with us are sweetest memories of our beloved mango tree and the most delightful fragrance of the sap filling the air when the dangling fruit was pulled from the stalk.

I consider myself lucky to have grown up in that house with such useful trees and shrubs in the yard.

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There was a mango tree in the ancestral Lakshmipuram house [half razed in the picture] also where we moved. The tree's reputation was so so, but it did bloom profusely only once and gave some fruit, as if to welcome us.  Thereafter, hardly 4-5 or none!  It was an ordinary variety. The new owner of that divided portion now has chopped all trees to make way for his new structure. 

Now, our own mango plucker pole was idle laying in the open shed.  Our Red Whiskered Bulbuls found it a suitable place for nesting!  It has used the same nest 6-7 times, renovating it each time, making babies. Many little ones fledged while many eggs were feasted by the Mynas.

"King of fruits"

We have to content ourselves to buying mangoes.  Artificial ripening using calcium carbide [health hazard] has become so rampant in recent years so much so that one must exercise caution in choosing the outlets selling naturally ripened fruits. 

It is no surprise that my fondness for eating mangoes is as great as it was drawing a mango and colouring it during childhood, like this, with a prominent 'beak'!

..mangomangomangomangom..