Social Short Story – THE MANGO ORCHARD
Photo credit: szafirek from morguefile.com
The big mango tree in the garden of our house at Santiniketan. There are about four-five of them in all in our compound. I had heard and had learnt about this variety of this seasonal fruit after our dream – our abode – was built. ‘Amrapali’ – not the danseuse who broke Buddha’s meditative séance , but a most delectable variety of the mango tree. The mango, in all its variety, would taste as sweet. But there are certain species within themselves, which are sweeter than the others. The mango is, rightly so, considered the king of fruits. The mango blossoms when they do appear , are the most godliest things that nature could ever gift man.
We had planted the mango trees as soon as our house was constructed, on the outskirts of the main campus area at Santiniketan .
” I had a dream that I would study at Vishwa – Bharati University one day. But the lack of monetary funds (those were the days of the Great Bengal Famine) prevented me from applying and also for my family to give consent to my studying in the lap of a residential university,” my father had once said, rather had confided to me.
He passed away many years back. But memories are like the solid block of brick , cement and mortar of which houses are built. Rock-solid, sterner stuff. A host of childhood and early girlhood memories resides behind the lattices of the large grandfather windows interlacing the red mosaic stairs of our old house. [ We have shifted to a new flat]. Generations have resided in this building of the colonial era, and I was the third residing in it. And the rent? Believe it or not, it’s a thousand ( for years it had been merely five hundred).
But that was sheer deviation. The mango trees in our garden at our house at Tagore’s abode of peace, had borne fruit year after year. These were variants of ‘bonsai’ plants. Not so small, yet not too huge. Yet with promises of fruition at a ripe time. Among the other trees that bear fruit regularly are papaya, guava and jackfruit trees. Baba used to love all of them. I can still recall the days when we used to catch the train from Bolpur to Howrah with bags made of jute and plastic packets laden with fruits from our garden. Even the mango blossoms have a very sweet scent.
In the summers, when the evening breeze used to blow and all of us would be sitting in the verandah, the coolness of the night air would often carry with it the promises of full fruition. Bab a had taught me how to smell and savour a ripe mango blossom.
“ Just crush it between your fingers and smell the fruit when it is still unripe”,
Baba had said when we were strolling in the garden and I was gaping in wonder at the first blossoms in our mango trees. Being born and brought up in a city like Kolkata, I never had had the opportunity to savour the sight of mango blossoms on trees.
When me and my mother had been to Kerala during the fag end of last year, I had seen wild cheery blossoms on huge trees around the area surrounding Mattupettu dam and the Kundale Lake. These were wild pink ones growing around the hill station, Munnar, which was one of the most popular British settlements in our country. But the mango blossoms on trees are in a class of their own. They emanate a highly localised flavour and orientation. They are God’s gift to mankind and especially those who are fond of and connoisseurs of this juicy and delectable variety.
Our mango trees had always borne fruit ever since our house at Santiniketan was built. These were huge trees which had overshadowed the one-storey arches of our ‘nest’. Rising skywards in all their god-given glory, they resembled a maiden’s lustrous crowning glory when their leaves swayed to the gusts of wind that is the particular natural feature in the landscape of Birbhum district, within which the Tagorean abode lies. Isn’t it the quirk of nature that in the hot sweltering summer months, when our throats and entire bodies lie parched, it gives us the manna from heaven , as if it were the end of man’s spiritual quest – the nectar and the coolness offered b the mango fruit. The mango is the national tree of our neighbouring country , Bangladesh. Aam panna or aam pora shorbet is the ideal coolant in the hot sultry, summer months.
Going back to where I began, Amrapali, the legendary beautiful disciple of Lord Buddha, is also one of the most sought after variety of mangoes. That year our garden had yielded a bounteous crop. The small refrigerator in the adjacent room was filled to the brim with ripe mangoes, of various sizes. Some were small, so as to have and consume whole. As soon as one took a bite into any of these, the juices would just trickle out of the mouth and the hand would go all sticky due to the sugar content latent in the fruit itself. Birds ( and there were hordes of them), would peck on these ripe fruits when the latter were still attached to their mother trees and I have often seen squirrels nibbling on fallen fruits strewn in our garden.
WE call squirrels , ‘kath berali’ in Bengali dialect. They are simply a delight to watch. Me and ma have often noticed ‘kath beralis’ scampering past or climbing quite dexterously the large ‘kadam’ tree beside our Lansdowne Terrace flat in the city. Our garden-house at Santiniketan was one of Babab’s dream projects. Ever since early childhood, we used to travel there on a short holiday and also during the festivals. The Dol Utsav or ‘Holi’ is a ceremonious affair among the ashramites in Santiniketan. So is the Pous Mela. Hordes of ‘bauls’ (folk singers of Bengal) gather at the fair ground during the latter festival. The mangoes, they get ripe, during the hot sultry, summer months. That is , around the months of mid-
April to mid-June. After that, it is the waning of the mango fruit. It so happened that just the year before the one in which Baba died, our mango orchard had yielded a bounteous crop. When we reached our house at Santiniketan, by the Santiniketan Express( it was to be the last spring of my father’s life), our caretaker there had loaded our refrigerator with mountains of fruit. There were also huge baskets tucked away under our beds. There were the delectable mangoes of all shapes and varieties – the ‘ Himsagar’ , ‘Amrapali’, ‘Chausa’ etcetera.
During the shradh ceremony of my father, the mango orchard had again reaped a bounteous harvest. Our caretaker, Bablu, had come with bagfuls of the fruit , to our new flat in the southern part of the city of Kolkata. For many, many years after that day, our mango trees just refused to bear fruit . Many acquaintances and older residents of Santiniketan, suggested various treatments t be done over the soil of the plants. But our mango orchard had refused to yield. Perhaps, just as myself and ma had experienced and have only recently come to terms with a loss that was Baba , these trees also must have felt the absence of the figure who used roam amidst our garden , morning to night, tending to the care of them. Even though these trees were laden with green leafy foliage, but for the past four years our mango trees lay barren.
Isn’t it a paradox or a quirk of fate that what heaven giveth and endoweth, it takes them back at the right moment? Don’t we have lessons to learn from the laws of Nature? That if we go against its laws, we are only inviting and courting natural disasters and calamities? The number of such catastrophes are escalating day-by day and all because, man is impinging on and trying to overrule the natural laws of co-habitation. Natural jungles are things of rarity and concrete jungles are more the order of the day. Nature and man are hardly opposite forces. They complement each other. I had learnt to study nature and the cycles of it first and foremost in and through our house at Santiniketan, “ Teen Bandhu”.
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