An unapologetic mess!

Its that time of the year. When mangoes come to rule the roost.

When I was kid, eating mangoes was a ritual where the first step was to get out your clothes. Sit in your little underthings and eat away. There was no cutting involved. We would sit on the floor, preferably with a newspaper spread and peel the mango with our teeth and then chomp away.

The juice would dribble .. down our chins, down our elblows, drip onto us, onto the news paper spread below us and the thrill indescribable. Any other fashion of eating a mango is extremely sanitised and does not have have the flavour.

Our favourite place was a huge block of stone (shaped like the hull of a boat) under a guava tree in my grandma's place. We all 'kaccha limboos' (literally raw lemons or kids who never got included in other older kids' games) would sit on it astride and eat mango after mango. There weren't compulsions of how fattening or hot a mango could be. We would, am sure, expend, all the calories even before we got back home. But that's not the point.

Last night I ate a mango in the similar fashion and was instantly transported to my childhood. I was tut-tuting my sister who insisted on eating the mango thataway. It was not so easy to give up my inhibitions but once I did, it was with no regret.

It was almost like my first mango of the season. These mangoes were Alphonoso - thick skinned and easy to peel and the most popular kind in my belt.