NATURE had bestowed a myriad of colours and flavours to each fruit, making them succulently unique in their own way.While we all had our favourites in the intoxicating fruit basket, it seemed mango was the popular choice. Everyone would rave about the luscious drupe and I couldn’t really find anyone who did not like them, besides me. While the berries and cherries would catch my eye, the decent mango could never appeal to me as much.. Infact, I was quite fond of all the stone fruits, but strangely the one that had the biggest stone, our dear mango, was a little far from my preference. Google told me that there were 1,500 varieties of mango in India alone. It almost made me doubt my taste buds for not getting tickled at the sight of them. It was tough being in a world of mango lovers.With the summer season in full swing, the mango mania had set in my house too. Replete with a handsome quantity of the juicy treat, my family would gather around it like bees to honey.

Singing eulogies to the royal relish, they would swear by its taste that they said, was out of the world. They all had their d i f f e r e n t style of eating their m a n g o . Some would like to have it cut into small pieces, some would scoop out the pulp with their spoon, yet others would merrily have them as whole. While they would be busy digging into their fruit, I would sit there like an outcast, twiddling my fingers, waiting for them to finish. No amount of coaxing or prodding helped my case. While my family had reconciled with my fruit choices, my friends were quite unforgiving. They could not digest the fact that I had not relished mangoes all my life. Infact, they took offence to it and would ask how I could survive without them. They would often nod their heads in disgust and tell me that I was a fool to be missing out on something great. The toughest day of my life came when one of my favorite uncles visited us after many years. Along with him, he brought a huge basket of Alphonso, I could see the skies falling when he asked me to taste them and tell him how good they were. After a lot of dilly-dallying, I decided to come forth. Carefully choosing my words, I tried not to upset the aura of the mango.

The minute I expressed my mind I felt as if I had stepped on a landmine. He flew into a rage and gave me an earful about the health benefits of the revered fruit. All my explanations had me digging in a rabbit hole. It was as if I had hit his self esteem. I was no longer his favourite niece. To end the argument he quoted the famous lines of Mirza Ghalib, “Kewal gadhey hi aam nahi khaatey” (only donkeys don’t eat mangoes) Lesson learnt that even Ghalib was not on my side. I had decided that I very well wanted to be a part of civil society and one day took a small helping of the revered fruit. It had laid the seeds of a new kinship, which I hoped would continue to bloom till eternity.