Mango Showers

In India, they have terribly hot summers in most places, but these are interrupted by rain. Of course, we also know that summer is mango season. In southern India, sometimes these rains are so harsh, that it rains mangoes. They call these “Mango Showers.”

I’d never eaten a mango till I got here.

Well, I’d eaten Mango flavoured things, like ice-cream and cheesecake and other things, but I’d never really eaten the fruit.

And I realised that the best mangoes weren’t the ones that were sweet all over and specially picked and cut up into dainty little cubes.

No, the best fruit was when you didn’t know if the mango was sweet all over, and it tasted better when it had a little bit of that lip curling sourness in it.

It was nicer when there was a mess all over the front of your shirt, and juice dribbling off of your chin.

And it was especially nicer, to have someone’s laughing face close by, stained and messy in much the same fashion, making your own lips curl into a smile.

And that was how I came to love mangoes.