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Aam: Not so common after all!
SUMMER IS one sultry saga of seeping sweat and swelter, ?when nothing is moving, least of all me?, to borrow a line from Cliff Richards? The day I met Marie. That is the explanation I give to you, my reader(s), for skipping my date with you on more than a couple of occasions. But the phone calls and e-mails got to me and I have been coaxed out of my lethargy.
SUMMER IS one sultry saga of seeping sweat and swelter, ‘when nothing is moving, least of all me’, to borrow a line from Cliff Richards’ The day I met Marie.
That is the explanation I give to you, my reader(s), for skipping my date with you on more than a couple of occasions. But the phone calls and e-mails got to me and I have been coaxed out of my lethargy.
Summer is also a time for the King to reign, and between platefuls of it and the loo, there's ever so little time to spare… have a heart!
That aside, when in pensive and in solemn mood, I often think about the person who called mangoes ‘Aam’. I have no guilt in admitting that I know nothing about him, except that either the gent was suffering from the biggest inferiority complex after Hitler, or else, he wouldn't be quite all up there, up in the head, I mean. How else do you explain something as sweet, as juicy, as luscious, as palatable and as lovely as a mango getting labelled, ‘Aam’? How common, how cruel and how pedestrian!
You have anecdotes galore of Ghalib and Mir exchanging repartees over an impromptu mango feast called in the lanes and by lanes of Awadh. The charpais (and not charpoys) were the seat and the dastarkhwan, while the King sat teeming in buckets of water, cooling His heels.
Dripping, it would be pulled out, peeled with bare hands and savoured the way it should - sinking gums deep into its flesh - sans the trappings of knives and stainless steel plates.
At one such daawat
where Akbar and Birbal were in attendance, Akbar tried to get smart with his friend and minister. He kept devouring the fruit and piled up the seed and skin in front of Birbal, who, it seemed, was oblivious to the goings on. After they'd had their fill, Akbar jokingly remarked, “My, Birbal, you really love them, don't you”.
True to his character and wit, pat said Birbal, “My Lord, not as much as you. Look, you've even finished the seed and skin”. That had the gathering in splits, Akbar looking sheepish and Birbal enjoying himself.
Historians have religiously recorded that much before dinner diplomacy gained currency, mango diplomacy held sway and kings would hold parleys with statesmen over an 'Aam' feast.
And even though much water may have flowed (and not flown) down the Gomti, I must concede that love for the King has remained unwaveringly the same, if not more. And having said that Dussheris, Totaparis, Langras, Safedas and Chausas don't seem to show up in the kind of profusion they used to.
Have exports actually gone up? Are they growing them less? Are we consuming them more? What? WHAT? W-H-A-T? Whatever, the moot point remains: Who called something as special as mangoes, ‘Aam’? If I may say so, it's not a common query. Think about it.
