Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “adverb.” Start your post with any adverb and just run with it. Have fun!
Slowly we sucked and absorbed the juice of the wild mangoes at our table. These mangoes grow in our village in the yard of our house. This tree is a grafted one. The original is in a field a little away. Three generations of children have enjoyed the fruits of the original tree. My husband does not know if it was planted or whether it came up on its own. Some bird or animal must have got the seed to that field. About fifteen years ago it showed signs of dying and a relative grafted its branch with the mango tree in the front yard. The tree is very tall now and we get fruits every year during this time. The taste is just like that of the original. This mango is called ‘sakkare maavinahannu’ in Kannada which literally means ‘sugar mango’.
My husband grew up in a joint family. During summer vacations there were a lot of people in the house. The grandchildren used to come home to spend the summer vacations. And it was mango season too. The children used to regain their energy sucking the wild mangoes and eating other varieties too. Even now, when the cousins who are now grandparents meet, talk about those carefree childhood days when playing and eating was all that they thought about. Vacations were meant only for that. When I see children of today I feel they have no free time. It is school and tuitions and summer camps during vacations, always learning and doing something. Maybe they do not feel so. They must be having fun. I do not know.
Our children too used to spend summer vacations with my parents or with my father-in-law in the village. My mother-in-law passed away at young age in 1980, before our marriage. Our children used to enjoy these mangoes. And my father-in-law used to enjoy looking at them slowly savouring the taste of sugar mangoes. They were from the original tree.
There are many varieties of wild mangoes but most of them are sweet and sour in taste. Some are just sweet. These we eat raw, the others we use to make some dishes. In these dishes the sour taste is necessary. In a way they teach us a lot. What would life be like if there were no differences? I am sure it would be boring or maybe we would accept the sameness not knowing that there are differences in life too. This thought came to mind because I am reading Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder. 😊
