Well the malgoba tree in the garden has been chopped to half its actual size, when the apartment block came up. Naturally the tree can’t give the 500 mangoes I remember being picked as a child. The floor of the store room in the old mansion was filled with these huge fleshy beauties and Grandpa enjoyed calling us all to the table to sit around and eat as many as we pleased.
Dad was a strict father and knew my weakness for mangoes. He would look sternly at me and say-- “only one,” giving me the eye. Then Grandpa would calmly over ride him and say - “ Go and eat as many as you like. They are there for you to enjoy.” And Dad had to back off!
The tree inspite of only half of it left, gives a few fruit, though not 500 like in Grandpa and Dad’s days! During Dad’s time we would get our Narsimappa from the farm to pick them, but later Bonny learned to pick them with the boys lobbing the fruit. Bonny used the koble ( said kobla -- a as in apple) and David and Andrew would stand around and like in cricket -- Bonny would lob the fruit to them and Dad would place them carefully to leak their deek into the soil. The boys still remember those Sundays with fondness!
Our Raspuris are pretty damn close to Grandpas malgobas!
Yesterday Bonny daringly climbed up to take off the few that grow now on the tree. There are plenty of flowers that bloom, but sadly as all the insects are blitzed in the garden twice a week, there are no bees and insects to pollinate the flowers and give us mangoes. Fogging does that -- obliterates everything except for us domineering humans. But covid has taught us a good lesson. We are NOTHING infront of mother nature. She has whipped us to our knees and I am glad, so glad.
The deek is acrid and if it splatters you on your skin wipe it off fast as it burns. The room where the mangoes were kept smelled of the strong deek for days, till it dried and after a week the store room smelled of ripening fruit.
Our first round of picking Mallikas from Hoskote
A malgoba has thick leathery skin -- at least our variety has. You can slice it open and like Nana did for us, made squares of the cheek and pushed it inside out for us to scoop the cubes and relish the juice that ran down our chins. There is nothing in the world, except for our own Raspuris and Mallikas from Hoskote, as delicious as Grandpas malgobas.
But as you can see, its a helluva job to pick them unlike our compact graft trees in Hoskote. So, the bats enjoy them every night.
