My grandfather sat on his jute weaved bed under a mango tree, an ice bucket full of mangoes underneath, a sharp rectangular knife in his hand. It was as if he waited for someone to arrive so he could serve them mangoes, from the tree that he sowed when no one lived in the town and the very first bricks of his house where being laid.
I remember him running his knife through the mango's skin so neatly, there wasn't even a a mistakable bit of flesh left on it. He never let anyone stop at one, there would be seconds, thirds and fourth. When one would eat no longer, he would propose them to try another variety of mango that he had planted a few years ago.
As we played around his garden, he would call and give us a thick chewy slice of a mango fruit leather as our 'candy'. As the lunch time rolled, grandmother would get our thali (food plate) to the bed - a simple meal of stir fried okra, roti and aam ras (sweetened mango pulp with a dash of milk or water). And despite our over dose of mangoes, we ate most of the roti in the aamras. Almost through his lunch, nanaji as we fondly called him would call out to grandma to get some aam ka acchar (mango pickle) for the last few bites of his roti. The pickle that's made from the raw green mangoes he plucks himself when his beloved tree begins to fruit, he would say with pride.
A dark brown kernel that's collected from the inside of mango seeds, sun dried for weeks is then handed to us an aftermeal mouth freshener and digestion aid. A hard tasteless candy that you chewy into, but the cooling and refreshing effect is felt once you sip water after it.
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