I am not an aam hater. At worst, I am aam-indifferent. Aam hater, that'd be the mothership. Should even the faintest smell of the fruit reach her nose, she would screw up the face; still does.
A strange contortion grips her beauteous features as the mother in her wrestles with the inner aam hater. When we were children, she would thrust two mangoes before the two of us, looking like a cross between a martyr and a bandit queen - face covered, knife in hand, dripping with pulp and a plate full of murdered fruit.
"You two better finish every bit of it," our Phoolan would say in muffled voice and disappear. We'd sit at the table for ages, teasing the fruit out of the skin with fork, making craters with teaspoons, letters with butter-knives. At some point we must have got to the fruit, dutifully, but the eating was incidental, unmemorable. We were in a hurry to get done and then with icky fingers and sticky chins, we would seek out Phoolan for punishment hugs as she squealed in not-entirely-mock horror.
Sometimes the other parent would be asked to supervise the aam eating. He'd peel, chop and distribute to order - cubes please or sides only or aanti (mango stone) - but order he could maintain not. Sometimes he cajoled with verse - Aamshottwo dudhey pheli/ Tahate kodoli doli/ Shondesh makhiya diyi taate/ Hapush hupush shobdo/ Charidik nistobdho/ Pipira kandiya jaay paate. Eludes translation, basically a rhyme about they who made such a hearty meal of fruits, milk and sandesh that at the end of it there was nothing left for even the ants to chew on. But aamshottwo is not aam, we would squeal and helpless he would tell us more stories.
About how as a boy, when there was no refrigerator in every home, he had seen the delicate Sari aam kept in a bucket full of water. Aam upon aam would be dropped into a bucket, its mouth covered with a plate and a brick placed on top of it to keep it all from floating up. At meal times, the golden fruit would be cut with a thin bamboo knife and had. One, two, three, sometimes four. We'd listen mesmerised, indifferent to the fruit but not to his telling.
He told us about a relation who had retired from the Food and Agriculture Organisation and set up home in Lalgola in Murshidabad. He grew mangoes with lyrical names such as Golapkhas and Begumphuli. When they had guests visiting, they served the children bowls of warm milk, stirred till it was nice and thick, with mango chunks in it - dudh aam it was called. They would also make a mean aam kheer or condensed milk with mango, he would say, and I could tell his mouth was filling up with saliva.
In Hooghly, where we grew up, Sari and Himsagar are native fruits. The Sari is believed to have been invented by a father and a son or an uncle and a nephew, jagirdars of the Nawab of Bengal. They decided to grow mango orchards on their jagirs, apparently got grafting experts or kalam-kars all the way from Benaras for this.
Those days we would drive down the Grand Trunk Road. Either side of the road would have mango trees standing at ease, in summer months they would be heavy with fruit and covered with nets. Folks from the countryside would rent a cluster of trees; it was they who cast those nets to keep away birds. At night they would beat tin drums to scare bats.
Once ripe, the fruit would be auctioned by the basket to city merchants. The rejects, bird pecked or dimpled beyond repair from the pellets unleashed on them by greedy little boys with catapults, would be sold on the highway at throwaway prices.
I had several missing teeth at the time; this had earned me the moniker of Hooghly'r Phugli. ( Phugli means gap-toothed.) It added to my "aamathema" as the fibrous fruit would get stuck in my imperfect set.
Sometimes, when we had guests over from Calcutta, I remember the older kids getting into arguments. Master Hooghly would say, "How would you know what a Himsagar is? What you get to eat in Calcutta is Dhona, an impostor. Pah." Miss Calcutta would say haughtily, "You call these Himsagar? Actually what you eat is the Chattujye, Barujye, Peyarapuli..." I still remember that moment as if it were a scene out of a movie. The city girl, so tall and pretty with her full set of teeth, spitting out the names of the local varieties, as if they were lowly things. I, of course, had nothing to say on the matter.
"Eh you," one time they picked on me. "Whose side are you on," they glowered menacingly. " Chickoo [or sapodilla]," I replied. "It tastes like chocolate."
They never asked me again.