Having studied in a boys only School for the last 7 years I was quite excited to be part of a mixed college during my Engineering. Thanks to my primary school being a mixed school I was not much tongue tied like my peers who had been schooled in boys schools their entire lifetime. Right from the onset, due to my easy going nature and the charming guy that I am, I managed to make quite a few friends among girls . I was particularly fond of a girl who was educated in a Convent school and was in the same boat as me. I still remember the way I used to blush whenever she used to call me in my landline number at home. My mom or brother used to pick up the phone and shout her name announcing that I have a call from her. If it was my brother he will exaggerate a bit by singing her name.Incidentally she was the first female to call me at my home so she was someone special. Before you guys jump to the conclusion that I am from the stone age let me reassure you that mobile phones came in a little later than that.
It so happened that there was a guava tree at my house which was pretty big at that point of time and gave us a steady supply of Guavas all year long.All through our childhood the availability of the fruit was quite high that oth me and my brother were sort of getting tired eating guavas .There had been a huge guava tree at my grandmother's palatial mansion named after her where we had stayed previously. At any time of the day whenever pangs of hunger hit us we used to scramble up and gorge a couple of guavas right on the tree itself. Before the naysayers(including my wife as well) start to point out that it should be atleast washed before consumption, in my defense I was too lazy to even do that(my wife would be totally nodding her head in agreement at this point) .There was no Kurkure or Lays at that time and it was fun to say the least.
Now coming back to the original story I used to take guavas to college and promptly hand it over to this female friend of mine who would distribute it to everyone around. This started to become a routine and naturally caught the imagination of the entire class. Understandably we were inundated with a number of prying questions as to if there was anything going on between us. As always I used to shrug these questions off nonchalantly with a smile.
This continued well into the second year of college, the guava tree grew in size and its roots posed an impending problem since it started to encroach into the foundations of our house. With a heavy heart after much deliberation we cut down the tree. Ironically this was the same time that differences cropped up between us and we drifted apart from each other in the remaining part of our college lives. A mango sapling was planted in its place.
It so happened that my two year old son loves mangoes, he takes after his mother who is crazy about mangoes. I recollect vividly,the first mango season after marriage in Bombay, my wife went bonkers after sampling the best Alphonso mangoes that were on offer. In all the 5 years that we were there every mango season she used to delve into the finest alphonso mangoes without fail. Influenced very much by his mother, mango was the first fruit that he tasted and ever since he has totally fallen in love with the king of fruits.
Years passed by and an equally gigantic mango tree took the place of the guava tree in question. In the Initial years the mango tree used to only grow on size but was not bearing any fruits as expected. I will be honest that a thought had occurred in our minds to cut it down but we junked the idea when it started to bear fruit. In the last few years I have only heard that we used to get a good number of mangoes from this tree.Since I was not living in my home town for a good part of the last decade I have never tasted these mangoes.
One week prior to the lock down being announced we had reached Trivandrum from Cochin where we currently live. We have been here for close to 2 months now and as luck would have it this coincided with the fruiting season of the very mango tree in my backyard. Every weekend I religiously pluck mangoes for my little one from the terrace of my house. My brother and mother witness this spectacle with great amusement because of the fact that I had been a couch potato all my life. On a lighter note during our growing up years my younger brother who is the live wire of the two never gave me a chance to be the maverick. Moreover,I was happy being myself and was not complaining about it.
Earlier whenever I used to see my son eating mangoes I always wondered if we did a huge disservice to him by leaving Bombay and coming back to Kerala . He would have had a whale of a time just like his mother gorging into the Alphonso mangoes every mango season. These days my heart fills with filial pride when I see my son savoring the fruits of my labour. Today while I was plucking mangoes I reminisced of the Guava tree in the same spot, in a span of 12 years the guava tree had metamorphosed into a mango tree.
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