Summer is here and the first thing which comes to my mind apart from the terrible heat is MANGOES ,The King of fruits. Those green Mangoes in different shapes and sizes makes my mouth water.Even as i write this post my mouth is watering. Mangoes always take me to my childhood days . We all would be lazing around and Granny wud come and tell , "why don't you people go to the 'Thota' " (similar to estate with variety of trees,most prominent would be coconut and arecnut) and pluck some mangoes. The whole gang of our cousins used to go to pluck mangoes geared with Knife ,Salt +Chilli+oil and a big stick . The sun would be shining on us ,still we wouldn't mind .We would walk on behind the other , cracking jokes and pulling each others legs. After reaching the Mango tree ,it would be difficult to decide which mango to aim for. Some of us would usually climb the mango tree (includes me too) and some even fell down from the Mango tree (Which we usually hide from the elders otherwise we would get scolding). Finally after lot of aiming ,stone throwing , 2-3 mangoes would be pluck. Someone (usually a girl) would cut the mango is abrupt peices and put it on the Banana leaf or newspaper and within minutes the mango pieces would be finished . Whoever had the seed of the Mango would do full justice to it by biting every inch possible and then he would call some random name and if the person responds ,the person with the mango seed would say "Go with the Mango seed" and throw the mango seed and everyone would have a good laughter. On the way we would eat other fruits also like Guavava ,sugarcane etc ,etc .
Mangoes in any form is tasty ,whether it is raw , ripe or in the form of pickles. Whenever i go to granny's house my granny would always tell me to learn to put pickles and then she would tell how much pickles she used to put when she was fit and healthy . In another two weeks i am off to my granny's house with full family :o) ! I won't get to meet all my cousins as everyone is in a different place and busy with their work or studies but still i get to pluck Mangoes and climb on Mango trees :o) and stilll a chance to learn to put pickles!!!
