Mango memories

Tulika books is holding a summer blogathon for mango lovers. Here is my entry.

Summer vacations meant a lot of things to me as a child, but most of all, it meant Mangoes with a capital M.

My native place was in a small, picturesque village, in central Maharashtra. Every year, cousins from wherever they were would zero in for a month or more of mango filled decadence. Our family owned a lot of land in the village, and there were jowar and bajra fields, peanut fields and mango orchards. Of course, for us children, it was the latter that mattered the most.

The fun began soon after reaching the village by ST as the State Transport buses were called. It was a very small place, too small to have a proper bus stand, but there was a clump of banyan trees on the tarred road that passed by the village. There, in the shade of that clump, was a 'paar,' a makeshift 'bus stand', if you could call it that. Transport to the homestead was on foot, by cycles, or on bullock carts. It was usually the bullock cart for us, as we would have luggage with us, too. Luggage, children and grown-ups (in that order) would be piled onto the carts, the adults sometimes preferring to walk along with the cart, happy to stretch their legs after the cramped journey in crowded buses.

Imagine. No motorised traffic. No pollution. A drive through mango orchards loaded with fruit, and past fields. An era much before mobile phones. The only sounds were the tinkle of bells on the bullocks, the clip-clopping of hoofs, the clickety-clack of wooden wheels. The chatter of people, the cry of the occasional baby, the hailing by someone known, working in the fields. The sound of birds, especially the koel, calling out incessantly from the trees, and the crows cawing at intervals. The gurgle of a brook running through the fields. The orchards were wonderful places for picncs that we children often went for. Cool in the shade of the sprawling trees, even at the height of summer. More than eating, we would be interested in throwing stones at the fruit to get it off the trees.

Before we knew it, we would be at the homestead. I keep calling it a homestead because it was a massive, sprawling structure that had seen many generations of my family, who were landowners in the village. There was a huge courtyard in the centre, around which the rest of the house was structured. The walls were thick, made of worn stone, with massive recesses set in, to be used as cupboards, or (as I then thought) cool niches just for us children to curl up in, on a hot day, preferably with something to much, or a pillow and a book.

Kesar mangoes
pic courtesy google images

Here, there were whole rooms that would be piled high with mangoes, sorted out by those that had fallen off the trees and those that had been plucked off them. Our orchards did not grow that king of mangoes, the alphonso, but something just as sweet- the kesar mango. This is a slightly elongated specimen, that never turns that delectable shade of reddish golden so prized in markets, but stays greenish yellow even when ripe. The taste for me, though, is unmatched as remembered from my childhood.

I don't remember ever having this fruit cut, in a plate/ bowl, in the usual civilised way. No. We would simply choose what we wanted from the pile, wash them summarily under the eagle eye of some grown-up, then settle down to devour. The fruit was first squeezed on all sides to make it squishy, then the top was taken off, and we would proceed to suck the pulp out. Mmmmm...heaven! The mangoes had a very small seed, and plenty of pulp, so some of our meals would consist only of a handful of mangoes, and then some- on the go. I remember my brother once swallowed a seed by mistake, and to this day we rib him about the mango tree that never grew out of him!

Of course with the surfeit of fruit, quite a lot was sorted out and sold in the surrounding towns. Most of the rest was preserved in rural methods, and the remaining was made short work of by eating. There were special meals cooked incorporating the mango- aamras-puri being my favourite. To make aamras for the entire clan, whoever could would sit around with huge brass vessels and sqeeze out the pulp. If the pulp had to be extracted to preserve it, women from the village would be called in for the day- sometimes days. They would, of course, be paid in kind for their work. No, I am not speaking of very long ago- this was about three decades ago, and a lot of things worked this way in rural areas then.

The pulp thus gathered in great brass vessels would be cooked to thicken it. Sugar would be added as a preservative and what we finally got was a thick mass that solidified on cooling. A lot of it would be spread out in brass platters or on banana leaves to dry in the shade. We call this 'aamba-poli'. The rest would be shaped into rough balls and cooled for a few hours in the shade and stored for future use. We called this 'aambyacha saatha.'

Freshly mixed pickle

Raw mango- a lot of it was processed into a variety of home made pickles to be used over the year. There was an interesting pickle made of the smaller raw mangoes- they were simply mixed with a large amount of the rough sea salt, not the table variety. This lasted much longer than the pickles in which oil had already been poured. So after the other pickles were over, this one was opened, the mangoes cut up and used as a mouth-watering addition to the rough rural diet of bhaji-bhakri (vegetables with jowar/bajra roti) and crushed green chillies.

Some of the raw mango that had sweetened a bit was made into a refreshing drink called 'aam-panha', which could be made fresh, or in a preserved form that surprisingly lasted for weeks inspite of no refrigeration. Let me share a modern version of this drink with you. One that is made every year at my home.

Take raw mangoes. Remove peel. Cut the flesh away from the seed. Cook in a microwave till tender in a vegetable steamer without immersing the pieces in water. Puree. Measure the puree. For every volume of puree, add 3.5 measures of sugar. Add some salt to taste. Blend till evenly mixed. Add elaichi powder / jeera powder / kesar for flavour. Store in glass jars. This can stay in the refrigerator for upto a year.

While serving, take a tablespoon for each glass, add water and ice, stir till mixed well. Enjoy!

Oh, for those unfettered times!