In May, there’s a calm that sweeps across south India. Â The heat slows all living things down and the wind is thought of as a nurturing mother. Â Even flies get lethargic. Â Heat aside, sweat aside, the calm that this season brings is coupled with a childlike glee that arrives in the form of a fruit.
My first memory of eating a mango dates back to the ages of 3-5. Around this age, we spent summers in a tiny village known as Narsapur. Â Â My grandma had this wonderland of a yard that had mango and papaya trees. Â We, my brother,cousins, and I spent hours in this mini farm–climbing trees, plucking fruit, playing hide and seek. Â The mangoes from my grandmother’s yard were so juicy that as I ate them the juice would run down my arms all the way to my elbow like giant, yellow tears. Â I’m telling you there is nothing more satisfying than eating a mango that you just plucked off a tree. Â It is the one fruit I miss the most from my homeland.
My first mango season in the US, I was as excited as a child on the first day of summer vacation. Â My aunt bought a couple of boxes of mangoes home and we had to wait a few days for them to ripen–the most arduous wait of my 10 year old life. Â On Saturday, the mangoes were finally ready and we sliced them for dessert after church. Â The sweet familiar smell melted away the sadness that lived in my core that year from having left my life in India behind. Â The first bite, however, proved the sharp change that had been this move: Â leaving behind everything and everyone I know and settling into a country that felt so far away from who I was and what I knew. Â The taste was just not sweet enough, not powerful enough, I remember refusing to eat the rest of the portion on my plate. Â That afternoon, with too many mangoes on our plates, my parents, brother, and I shared our memories of eating the best fruit to ever exist. Â We laughed about the shameless large yellow stains that decorated all my shirts and dresses during mango season, the time Dad, Sam, and I planted a bunch of mango seeds in hopes of growing our own, and the gleeful aroma the wind spread during this season. Â It took me years to accept the imported western mangoes.
 After lunch with my family a few Saturdays ago, my mom pulled out a box of mangoes and tried to hand them off to me.  While I negotiated how many I can actually eat before they began to rot, the aroma of the mangoes swept me away to a time when refusing a mango was a sin.  As a girl in India, I spent all Mango season eating mangoes.  I ate them for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  I ate them with chapatis, sliced, and drank their juice directly.   This was a time when I relied on my parents for my food choices.  This was a time when there were seasons for fruits and you could only eat certain fruits during certain seasons.  I didn’t realize how lucky I was to have this experience at the time because when mango season was over I mourned it for quite a while.  It didn’t occur to me that if I got mangoes year round, it would come from far away and thus not taste as good.  I always knew that if I returned to India it would be during mango season.
After a long negotiation with my loving, but pushy mom, I took three mangoes that I smelt and tested for firmness before making my decision. Â Each day that week I couldn’t wait to get home because I knew I would have a perfectly ripe mango waiting for me. Â My favorite part of a mango has always been eating the seed because you have to get dirty to eat it right. Â As I bit into the end of the mango seed, I was transported back to a time when I didn’t need to be there for others, a time when I didn’t have responsibilities, a time when I didn’t worry about being a bad friend, daughter, sister, teacher.
A week later after all three of my mangoes were consumed and I mourned their absence, the universe sent me a small gift: Â I had a friend make me a mango yogurt parfait that blew me away. Â It had layers of vanilla yogurt with layers of mango puree mixed with cinnamon, orange juice, and honey, and topped off with a Kiwi. Â Yes, it was more like dessert than breakfast. Â Each spoonful was a luxurious morsel of flavors and textures–flavors that had the power to heal a heavy heart or a tired soul. Â On my way home from breakfast, I got to thinking about how I couldn’t even remember the taste of an Indian mango. Â
This year, one of my close friends has gone through a big life change. Â Thus, our relationship is going through some changes. Â Initially, I was sad, angry, frustrated. Â I didn’t want to accept this new stage in our relationship and kept fighting for the old. Â When you have a taste of genuine love and support from a friend, it’s hard to let that go. Â So, yes everything changes–sometimes sharply, sometimes fluently, but I have been the type of person that pushes the plate away refusing to accept the new fruit in front of me. Â When I did this with the mangoes, it was I who didn’t get to eat and accept the subtle differences in flavor. Â It was I who didn’t get to experiment by adding mango to cereal or oatmeal. Â
Tonight I was watching Sister Wives (yes, I am a shameless fan who watches waiting for one of the wives to say they want monogamy). Â In this episode, one of the wives was struggling with acceptance and the other, older wife said things are so much easier when you begin to accept people as they are. Â This stuck with me because I have been sulking around, dwelling on how much I miss this friend and how different things are and how I have a hole in that place where she used to be in my life–I can be a bit melodramatic; I blame it on my early exposure to Bollywood films. Â The truth is once I accepted that I would have mangoes from India once in a while, and I still have these “American” mangoes that can be an ingredient in several dishes and not just fruit, this is when I began to really enjoy mangoes again. Â Today, although I may not remember the taste, I know it exists and whenever I visit in May, I can have an Indian mango in all it’s glory again. Â So both flavors exist and I have access to one more than the other, but this doesn’t mean that I will never have an Indian mango again. Â
Similarly, things are different right now in this relationship. Â This doesn’t mean that I will never experience the closeness we once had. Â Additionally, once I accept her for who she is today, I may be able to taste the calm, the glee, the support in a whole new way than before. Â Mango Season is here, I say bring on the soulfully sweet rivers of acceptance.