Dear Bigger Apples,
My story is a little similar to the municipality mango clerk from Ratnagiri. Instead of Ratnagiri, I blossomed into a mango fruit at Patna.
I lost my parent mangoes when I was only a small keri. And being a Keri without a tree, I was very sour and bitter to taste. My friend mangoes were all rag-pickers and that's what I did through my childhood and early teenagehood.
I fell in love with a pretty looking Keri ragpicker. She loved the movies and we used to often travel to nearby villages to watch open air movies. We also used to gather up the leftovers after the show and practise the dance steps that we had seen.
That's how I came to know about this big apple Mumbai and the bigger apples who lived there. It was my dream to come to big apple and become alphonso mango moviestar aka mithunda and govinda.
To cut a long story short, myself Keri and herself Keri came to mumbai and tried our shot at the movies. One thing led to another and instead of acting or eating alphonso mangoes, we built a hut of thrown away mango crates. Myself Keri started driving an autorickshaw (a huge improvement from ragpicker and a little less than that coolie amitabh bachpan) for a alphonso apple sethji and Herself Keri started producing three more keris and washing clothes for other big apples and alphonsos.
Now coming to the main seed of this mango post - myself Keri, my autorickshaw and the fruity things I do that makes all you big apples so red in the face. When I started driving the autorickshaw, I was in awe of the places I will visit in big apple mumbai and all the different apples and mangoes that will sit in my autorickshaw. I was always eager to be flagged down and drive these big fruits to different places.
I drove on the Bandra - borivali belt, usually in andheri. I remember looking up in awe at all the big apple buildings and when I looked straight ahead I saw big apple cars crawling among autorickshaws. Doing this, I first broke all the suspension of my auto and even managed to break its nose on a car ahead. Many beatings and abuses later, my alphonso sethji executed me by wiping away five months of salary. I was also to pay for the fuel and repair my rickshaw for the next five months.
Poof, bang and boom - I landed on earth and have never left it eversince. By loans and various other secrets that I wish not to divulge I repaired my auto and paid for the fuel. I flatly started refusing any journey within two kilometers from where I was flagged down. I flatly refused to ply my rickshaw on road craters bigger than the moon. Fuel prices started becoming as costly as alphonso mangoes and even jaali fuel made Keri chutney of my family income.
I found out a pleasure for a different kind of fruit/veggie drink - one that made me wonderfully happy at night and sick in the morning. Little dry crushed leafs chuna marke became my chewing gum of first choice. By this special drink and special chewing gum (that turned blood red when I spit it out) , I could bear the moon craters, I could bear constantly inhaling black smoke in serpentine traffic jams, I could bear the constant monstrous noise from my own auto and others around me, I could bear my alphonso sethji's abuses and much more, I could bear my auto breaking down every third day, most of all I could somehow bear the constable mangoes constant heckling and needless fines and finally I could bear the constant cries of the big/small apples/mangoes questions of asking why are you saying NO.
I say NO, because of all the above reasons. I say NO because I believe I am running a business and can refuse a bad investment of time and fuel.
I also OVERCHARGE and have rigged my meter Keri chutney style because I need to feed myself Keri, herself Keri, three little keris, pay for fuel, give money to sick mango cops, give my bloodstained money to the alphonso sethji who owns this god-forsaken contraption and finally I OVERCHARGE because I need that magic drink (fondly named as Desi Tharra) and that magic chew to bear it all. Yes, I earn but never enough, never enough....and there are no promotions in my job.
So, my dear big apples, 'I am sorry for inconvenience caused - but work in progress, not charity.'
Mango wala wink P.S - And big apples - fyi - I earn nearly the same amount by ferrying all you alphonsos as I do by taking special mango girls at night to mango hotels and back. I earn as much by taking kiwi fruit tourists to setting wala hotels and if by the grace of Alphonso mango almighty - a Washington apple happens to flag me down, then I expect unexpected diwali bonus. So, I shall here-fore say NO and rig that meter darned fruity.
I am Aam manoos. I love mangoes and all my childhood memories are centered around mango trees. My "bapu"ji was a menial worker at a big mango orchard at Ratnagiri Maharashtra. I was his 8th Alphonso.
There were 5 female and 2 male Alphonso's before me. And there came to be 3 more Alphonso's after me. I learnt my basic reading, writing and phonetics by memorizing all 11 Alphonso names. All 24 english alphabets were covered in the 11 names.
Ratnagiri was brimming over with mangoes during harvest time and my family used to get its fair share too but the Alphonso mango was very scarce. The master of the orchard where my Bapuji toiled, used to send us only one crate of Alphonso's every season. Thus from a very early age, my craving for the elusive Alphonso took seed. The rate back then was a huge 20/ rupees a dozen. 20 Rs also happened to be the cumulative school fees for all us Alphonso siblings.
To cut a long story short, I ripened into a graduate and became a clerk at the Greater Mumbai Municipality. My craving for Alphonsos had only grown (and the rate for 12 of them was now Rs 350). My salary being Rs 3500, I could only afford 10 crates of Alphonso during the season and there being 13 of us including Bapuji and Ma, I could not fulfill my dream of sending each one of them a crate of Alphonso.
This went on for a few years and I started having my own brood of Alphonsos to manage. But slowly, I started seeing a different kind of Alphonso on the streets of Mumbai. Huge malls, big cars and tiny flats very high up in the sky. Now, not only did I want crates of Alphonsos, but I wanted the Alphonso car (BMW), I wanted the Alphonso Flat (20th floor penthouse at Prabhadevi) and to send my Alphonso kids to the Alphonso country (USA).
Now how can I afford all these different kinds of Alphansos, you definitely will ask me. My answer is - In Ratnagiri I grew up watching people with huge lands planting trees and getting fruit. In Mumbai, I saw people planting roads and getting fruits during monsoon because they had to replant them. This was an altogether new Alphonso for me. I started moving around with these magic people and soon had a construction company of my own. Every summer I now build roads and after every monsoon, I build them again. I start building bridges and dams and in the middle of construction I go for a large holiday with my family. We go on pilgrimage to all Yash Chopra locations around the world. And when we return the Government doubles what it was paying me earlier.
Now I not only eat Alphonsos but also send different kinds of Alphonsos to my friends in the Sarkar and the opposition Sarkar. But I have a small worry. It's been growing for a few days.
All these well educated journalists at English dailies keep talking about something called "Corruption" and other big educated stuff. My wife tells me I may get arrested soon.
But if I do get arrested, I will tell the police Inspector (he is the oldest Alphonso among my siblings) - Brother, what did I do wrong? I simply was a clerk in the "Greater Mumbai Municipality" and wanted a few crates of Alphonsos and I wanted to eat it in this lifetime. Is that wrong?
Pray tell me, my dear Alphonso loving readers, Am I wrong in desiring Alphonso mangoes?
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On a parallel note: Please feel free to visit a call of action against corruption and taking a stand: http://bindthepleiades.blogspot.com/2011/08/and-citizens-ombudsman-awaits-citizens.html
And I have no views on the Lokpal Bill but do go through the link and choose - http://www.indiaagainstcorruption.org/
PS - Yes, I am actually starting to develop views on the Lokpal Bill and this link is one of the influencers. Its a must read for the democratically inclined - http://kafila.org/2011/04/09/at-the-risk-of-heresy-why-i-am-not-celebrating-with-anna-hazare/
Finally got around to writing about a topic close to my heart and something that I’ve been meaning to write (& right) for quite a while now.
I am sure that most people reading this have debated, read and deliberated over this topic at expansive length but I just wanted to question the ridiculous morality that most of us seem to harbor when it is related to anything close to sex.
The genesis for this post first happened when I had gone to visit one of my dad’s office colleagues; they have a son around the age of 4. He had just come out of his bath and his mom was drying him up with a towel. In the meantime, the kid was innocently playing with his private part. The way in which his mother reacted when she spotted it, was shocking – she first slapped him and shouted at him for doing something that was dirty and which he had been warned before against indulging in, and actually fell to tears which she quickly swallowed when she realized that I was present in the room.
This act between mother and son was a spontaneous one. The son’s act was spontaneous due to his natural curiosity and the mother’s due to her indoctrinated horror at something she perceives as a ‘dirty act’. I am sure that she was acting out of love and genuine concern for her child but was unable to fathom the damaging consequences with which she handled this incident.
And I believe that this is a common instance that happens across a lot of homes in India and abroad. Maybe other parents do not show an outburst along the lines that this ignorant woman showed but I’m sure that such things are heavily frowned upon till today.
This opening act leads to my central thesis of sex being invariably seen as a “dirty thing”/”an immoral thing”/ “an animal or carnal instinct” / “the devils act” ….(adjectives galore).
This medieval idea of sex being portrayed as “an immoral act” has pervaded to this date and defied logic and rationality. And believe it or not, it is hardwired into the maximum majority from childhood, along the lines of the kid above. We are allowed to question on why we have a nose, how does a car move, why is the sky blue – but as soon as we ask our elders “how did babies come” or “what are condoms” – glances are exchanged, the room becomes deathly still and the kid feels he is being taken to the gallows for these filthy thoughts.
Our elders are genuinely ignorant of this fact – the fact that they imbibe a sense of horror to sex in the same way that their parents have imbibed in them, without a moment’s pause of thought on what damage they are inflicting on their kids.
From childhood itself sex and everything related to it is submerged under a guilty thrill…a guilt that manifests itself in ugly forms over the lifespan of an individual’s life.
This early trauma for the kid when it comes to anything sexual makes a deep and lasting impression on the child’s latter life when it comes to relationships and obviously physical intimacy.
The kid senses the secrecy shrouding any mention of this topic and starts to either swallow this natural curiosity or satisfies it in hushed conversations with school friends and the external media in today’s age.
The problem being – she develops a distorted view on sex that lasts throughout her life and is permeated into her children and her confused relationship with her lovers.
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*She represents the adult male and female.
I hope to write more on this topic. As you can imagine, the topic is very vast and there are multiple things that I would like to cover. I genuinely believe that our generation has suffered greatly due to the duality that is related to sexual morals and I hope that it is not transferred to our kids.
As a disclaimer, I also want to include that I am greatly influenced by Bertrand Russell’s – Marriage & Morals.
