Another thing that was most commonly placed on the dining table was the medicine box. It was kept more out of necessity than any other reason. After lunch, everyday was a day of discovery. Whether it was the quality of the mango that was discovered thanks to its after effects or the quantity that was eaten, is quite another story altogether. I also remember that these were the days where we were all very victorious; momentarily so. No one dared to stop us kids at a particular count as just a single stare would throw them into another world, labeling parents as villains dropped from another planet.
But it was wonderful. We would joke at the shape of the mangoes, marvel at the color, and count the strips of the left over pieces and competed against each other. And then there were stories. Some that depicted valor, purely on the color and its meanings; quite akin to the rustle of swords and shining armor in the stories from the Mahabharata. Dadaji had a way of narrating a story that would evoke a political angle. Whether the story began with a color or shape; they all brimmed with action, a lesson of truth over evil, and of course a moral at the end.
One of these years when it was raining heavily, I was forcibly taken away from school. My servant had this unnerving look of forced importance to something. Something she dared not reveal. It was strange that the sun shone so brightly and it rained heavily too. Almost as if it was rebelling against creating some sort of a symphony! The people of our house were fluttering about and there were several outstation calls being made. While I was wondering how the telephone bill would tax my already burdened father, I heard the conversation; well partly. My neighbor was informing someone over the telephone that Dadaji had left us for his heavenly abode. Suddenly, the noise blanked out! The clouds wailed and something got abruptly silenced. I wasn’t sure how I should have reacted as the thought of death scared me. I knew that the dead were burnt; but was that all that was to be of Dadaji. All the laughter, the games, the fear, the adulation and most of all the mangoes…. Were they all gone? Simply at the snap of the Almighty finger?
I still re-live the moments every season as I look at my husband eating his heart out every mango season. He always hands me the biggest fruit and every time it reduces me to tears. Mangoes don’t taste like mangoes anymore. They may have grown expensive, rare and almost no-existent sometimes, but somehow, they’re lifeless to me now. Dadaji meets me often through my hubby, as they both have an uncanny similarity of enjoying the golden nectar; but no…. mangoes are not the same anymore!
