Persona non manga
Held in terror by Don Alphonso and Salim Langda
Pray heed the plight of the Person Who Doesn't Like Mangos. Other minorities know naught of our marginalisation, discrimination, the looks ranging from sheer pity to sneer contempt. We are the pariahs of polite company – sliced, cubed, pulped, if not skinned alive and stoned.
As the first basket of blushing Lalbagh lifts its hay veil, as the first Gulabkhas spreads its fragrance, the rest of the country awakes to life and salivation. I sink into inescapable hell. Soon the Don himself swaggers through the street, his flag-bearer trumpeting his arrival, 'Haaa- poos!' He overpowers every mall foodhall and street stall, establishing his dominance. His eager followers, nay worshippers, are swept up in the fervour of ecstasy. I get swept into the corners of ridicule. 'You don't like mangos?! What's wrong with you?! Are you anti-national, or wot?!!!
Actually, I'm just hungry. There's nothing else on the menu. Especially if you are Gujju. Forget omnipresent aam ras. Even the skin isn't spared but is lavished with the rye-hing no vaghar bestowed on everything from bheenda to teenda. We Parsis seem to have adopted this mangi-ficent obsession along with the language and dress conditions for settling in Jadi Rana's Gujarat fiefdom millennia ago. We cook the ripe mango with mutton like we do everything from tomatoes to turiya. We uniquely pickle it whole, steamed and steeped in a mustard-spiked vinegar, earning brownie points or bucks with this Bafenu achar. Invited anywhere, I sit sullenly sucking my resentment while the rest of the table is spaced out sucking skin and stone.
In humble Mumbai bhojanalay or hi-fly Bombabe restaurant, everything else gets its just desserts. Last week, it even drove un-evictable caramel custard off a toff Club's menu; actually, in an 'I kissed thee ere I killed thee' act, it smothered poor pudding to desecration and death. Mango may be the 'food of love' but no one seems to 'sicken and so die' of its 'surfeit'.
My old aunt used to clear a shelf of her Godrej almirah for this summer visitor, pacing up and down her balcony awaiting the guy with crate and cry. She's gone to the great orchard in the sky where the aambrosial cup never runs dry, and where no keri appears perfect and ready to eat but turns out rotten at the core. That is 'the most unkindest cut-open of all.'
Not just foods, everything bows-out to the 'King'. In my small, local readymades shop, you can't see the tees for this Dawood. I kid you not. Salim Langda, Malda Mastan, Lala Chausa will strut their hour about the state. Accompanied by molls: Don's own Pairi, Neelam, Dusseri, Badami or any aamrapalli as sweet by other name.
Right through their stranglehold, we, disgruntled dishonourables, must remain silent. Bound by the 'Aamerta' code.
***
Alec Smart said: 'MP mantri's Col Sofiya apology was just naam ke vastey. Just as his slur was naam ke liye. As is Prof Mahmudabad's absurd arrest.'
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