When I was a little child, about five to six years old, my grandmother taught me the proper way to eat a mango.
"First, you enjoy the smell of the mango. Like this." She kept the fruit a little distance apart from her nose and inhaled. She closed her eyes, savoring the sweet smell that could belong only to a very ripe mango fruit.
"You don't cut the mango with a knife or anything," she said softly. With me sitting on her lap, watching her face with unblinking concentration, she used to demonstrate to me how to truly enjoy a mango, her wrinkled face breaking into a maze of a thousand crisscrossing lines, as she smiled tenderly down at me.
Her thumb would first poke into the soft exterior of a mango, making a small hole. And then the yellow juice would flow out of it, as the rest of her fingers squeezed the mango, just a little bit, the juice oozing further and further out. And then she would pick the mango up, put it near her mouth and suck a little of the juice from that little hole she'd poked on the surface.
And then her eyes would close, as if she was feeling ecstasy, amazement, wonder at the sweet taste bursting into her mouth. And I would wonder why and how she looked much younger when she got lost that way.
Then, her fingers would poke into the hole to widen it, bigger, bigger, till the mango rind broke farther and farther apart to expose the dark yellow interior of a good, ripe mango fruit.
The smell emanating out of the now completely open fruit would drift to our already sensitive nostrils and envelop us both, touching, teasing, playing with its light fingers.
Somehow, a mango's smell is never overpowering. An orange could send out a strong citric odor, like all other citrus fruits, but a mango never dominated a room with its smell. It was an interesting odor, yes, it was powerful, definitely, but it was never overpowering. No, it was subtle, it was light; like it was there, but still not quite there.
Once you're done breathing in the fresh smell of a ripe mango, the very next thing you'd want to do would be to bite into it.
But that wasn't how my grandmother went about it.
She would slowly scoop out a little bit of the flesh of the mango with her fingers and pop it into her mouth. Her tongue would peek out to take in the juice stuck to her lips, as if it were too shy to enter her mouth, and her tongue would dart out to take in everything. And then she'd close her eyes again, as if she didn't want anything to disturb her pleasure in experiencing the sensuous assault on her senses.
And then she would lick her fingers slowly.
And then she'd scoop out a little more of the flesh out of the mango.
If watching her was exhilarating, mimicking her was explosive. I learned to close my eyes, and focus. I learned to enjoy every other thing the same way, and not just mangoes - chocolates, for instance. And soon, I was able to extend the experience to other things, things that affected my other senses. Music. The smell of scented candles. Sex. I was able to focus on what every enjoyable thing was doing to me, and I was able to allow everything to touch my inside, deep inside of me, my very core. I was able to turn every little thing, every little experience into something close to a mental orgasm.
My grandmother had taught me not only to get the full essence from a mango, but also to choose well.
"You press, see, like this," she would show me. Her thumb would pressurize, very mildly, on a spot on the mango's skin, and when she removed her thumb, the spot would be dented. She knew by the touch and feel of the spot, its sensitivity to the pressure, that it was a good mango and worthy of her attentions.
But this wasn't the only step to picking the best mango, of course. "It's always safe to indulge your olfactory senses," my grandmother would say. "A mango that doesn't give out even a little of its pleasant odor won't taste half as much. No smell, no taste. It won't be a mango, it would be yellow sawdust."
She taught me how to not develop any preconceived notions from what a fruit looked like. "Don't be fooled if the skin is green," she would say, nodding wisely. "Some of the greenest mangoes have the insides of the deepest yellow you've ever seen, like glowing topaz or amber." I was disabused of any prejudice or the ability to judge a fruit by testing it shallowly.
It is strange how more than half of the lessons of life my grandmother taught me revolved around mangoes. I could distinguish one mango from another, and that taught me that if one mango had a positive quality, another mango had another. "You cannot expect the same taste or smell from all the good varieties, or from even all the good mangoes of the same variety," she would say. "Each mango has its own strength." I couldn't help noting that she didn't even bother to comment on the mangoes that smell and taste like sawdust.
"Trust your instincts," she said. "If a mango passes all your tests, but you're still not sure if it would be juicy or ripe enough, go by what you feel."
I knew she expected me to apply this to not just mangoes.
"The most important thing you must remember is," she had looked right into my eyes now, "you should never regret picking a mango. And if you'd gone by your instincts, you've still picked an agreeable mango. Never blame yourself - or the mango - if you don't get what you expect in terms of taste. After all, if it didn't smell good, it would never have passed your preliminary test."
She always let me pick my own mangoes. And all the choices I've made, have always given me the ripest mangoes.
She smiled at me every time I cast a triumphant look at her.
"I see you've got the luck. Whatever you do, you'll always inadvertently choose the best mango of the lot."
Somehow, this moment between us always sprang to my mind whenever I blotched up something or felt like a loser, a failure in life.
"Whatever you do, you'll always inadvertently choose the best mango of the lot."
The seriousness with which she said this almost made it sound like a blessing. Or even a prediction. It was as if she had acknowledged a talent within me. Or, as if she had entrusted something in me, she had passed on a legacy, something her ancestors had given to her, something she expected me to pass on to my successors.
I always believed my choice was great, though not in the beginning, at least in the long run. I was able to stubbornly stand up for my choices, my ideas, my beliefs. My faith in my choice was firm, and it was as if this faith induced a magic that turned even a failure into a success.
It was a long while before I had the time to ponder on these words and get the hidden meaning. My grandmother had been long dead by then, and what she had tried to communicate to me had been so much more than I had extracted from that simple line.
By making me believe that I'm lucky, she had given me the confidence that any mango I picked was the best mango, because I had picked it, and it was my choice for myself - even if I discovered later that it was not so ripe or not so yellow or not so juicy. It was still my choice, the road I had taken.
She hadn't encouraged me to throw away a less satisfactory mango and go ahead with my next choice. I never ran away from my choices if they didn't fulfill my expectations, because she had taught me to derive the best out of even an unsatisfactory mango. She had wanted me to give the mango a chance, to appreciate its finer qualities. She had taught me to put a mango to rigorous test, and once I had picked it, to be stubborn and sure that that was it. I was to take it easy, to enjoy the specialty of the mango, whether it was its exquisite sweetness or its overwhelmingly sour taste. She had taught me to pick a mango and find it wonderful, and not think, "If only I had picked that obviously very ripe, yellow-orange fruit that was lying to the side..."
She had taught me a handy method of arresting moments. Of adding to a moment's beauty by associating it with something special - a smell, taste, sight or touch. She delighted in little things, and it was her ability that delighted in mangoes that taught me to enjoy my life, to cherish each moment, each experience that came my way.
She had taught me to take pride in my choices, to live a life without regrets. And to go for the best mango, no matter what.
