Mango as Happiness and Love
My two friends recently got married. They both are very important people who became my friends after I am grown up and spent time together at a turning point of my life. The best part of their marriage is that when I visit one of them, I can see both of them at the same time, anytime, for the rest of my life.
This summer brought us sweet yellow mangoes. Mango season in India is only two months from April and May. April is for Alphonso mangoes which is our favorite. I go to a fruit shop and buy some pieces of mangoes, and say the shopkeeper “A very little kindness would be appreciated.” He gives a smile and discount about ten rupees or so.
Alphonso Mangoes have less fiber. While pealing the skin, the fresh melts by the pressure, so you may start swallowing in the kitchen sink and finish it there. Indian people mash a mango fresh without pealing the skin, and open a small hall on top and swallow it like a mango shake. This is easy way to have a mango effectively.
Haruki Murakami repeatedly writes about the importance of memories for a person’s life in his novels. We would be caught by a disaster, unlucky fate, or pathetic loneliness. The world is a tough place. Life is not an amusement park. But even so, if we try hard to remember good memories, even if it’s very few, and save them carefully as fuel of the heart, it warms us up and helps to go on.
I think the taste of Alphonso mangoes will be one of my small memories which helps me long term in the future. The happy yellow color, the heavenly sweetness, the smell, the faces of friends who shared one mango together in a late Sunday afternoon. Remembering them, I feel better. Feeling better, I go to a fruit market to buy some more, or call my friends talk about the memories. Every summer. Things continue. Maybe love and happiness of my life has the form of a small yellow mango.
Bombay Dog 