mangos

I took this photo in May while I was visiting my parents up north in Rajshahi. Rajshahi is mango country, and mango season is just beginning.

Mangos.

I love them. They're appearing everywhere now, piled high in the fruit shops with a fragrance sweet and bold enough to mask even the open sewer's foul punches. Everywhere now, lining the sidewalks where men sit cross-legged with paring knives, ready to open the ripe flesh to prove the quality to any doubting buyer, they're calling out, "Langra aam! Fusli aam!" Aam, mango. Mmm.

As I dreamed about mangos at my desk today, my mind re-encountered a childhood memory. I must have been about seven years old, somewhere in Bangladesh with more trees than buildings. Not Chittagong. Walking along a shaded path one afternoon between monsoon showers, I saw a discarded mango pit lying on brown earth that the rains had patted firm like clay. And from this carelessly tossed mango pit a tiny tree was sprouting. I bent down and examined the tiny roots, pushing their way into the hard earth. A mango tree was growing. Just like that.

When later on I learned the word "fertile," I allowed the memory of that mango pit on Bangladesh's soil to be the image that captured the meaning of that word for me.

You are a fertile country, Bengal. Your monsoon rains are coming, and your mangos are ripening. Bengal, Oh Mother mine, as Tagore sang, the fragrance from your mango groves drives me wild with joy.*


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*From "Amar Shonar Bangla," written by Rabindranath Tagore, eventually adopted as Bangladesh's national anthem.