LET us, for a while, talk about mangoes. Baray amon ka kuch bayan ho jai. That is how Ghalib took a start in his famous poem written in praise of mangoes, and that is what I intend to do today. As is well known, Ghalib was very fond of mangoes. On one occasion, this fondness found its expression in verse, a short masnavi in which he praises his favourite fruit.
The other great poet, Allama Iqbal, too, relished mangoes. Once, on receiving a parcel of Langra, a variety of the fruit from Akbar Allahabadi, he burst out: Asar yeh tairay aijaz-i-masihai ka hai Akbar
Allahabad se Langra chala Lahore tak puhncha.
The long journey of the delicious Langra variety from Allahabad to Lahore speaks of the mango bond between the two poets, Akbar and Iqbal. The three poets, Ghalib, Akbar and Iqbal may or may not have among themselves a common link of thought or style, but they had a common mango bond.
How I wish I had the opportunity to trace this mango link among the poets of our time. To their bad luck, no such link is traceable. I wonder and I pity the insensitivity of the writers of today who appear oblivious to all seasonal changes and to what these changes bring in their wake. They are unresponsive to changing seasons, or to be more exact, the phenomenon of Nature in flux. This compels me to turn from them, leaving them with their socio-political consciousness and turn to the poets of the past such as Nazir Akbarabadi. What a wonderful poet and how responsive in a most lively way to the changing phenomenon of Nature! While talking of a season, he will depict it with all its facets, including its fruits.
So, while talking of hot season, he will be found relishing in depicting melons, watermelons and cucumbers. At this point, I am reminded of a writer from Burma, the famous Aung San Suu Kyi. In one of her columns included in her collection Letters from Burma, while talking of the monsoons, she describes her experience on seeing raindrops shooting out “sparks of gold when hit by stray sunbeams against a sky bruised with shades of brown.” This reminds her of her experience with the seasonal fruit called Jaman or Jammun as called in Lahore. Aung San Suu Kyi calls it Jamu. And she tells us: “The shape and size of large olives with a shiny dark purple skin, the Jamu had a sweet, astringent-tasting flesh that leaves bright magenta stains on the tongue and lips.”
In our seasonal culture, Jaman is treated as an appendix of the mango. While saying Aam-Jaman in one breath, we never mean that the two are equal. Jaman in this combination is an appendage. In fact, Sawan-Bhadaun bring in a rich variety of fruits, each tempting us with its own flavour. But mango or aam, with its peculiar flavour, reigns supreme. And with the passage of time, it grew into something which is more than a fruit. It sublimated into a cultural phenomenon. Now when we say aam, the well-shaped yellow fruit with its smell emerges in our imagination as a culture drenched in barkha-rut. A number of sawan songs gained popularity because of their reference to the mango or mango tree or mango garden.
The mango culture, in its heyday, gave birth to a rich festivity best expressed in the playful function known as Naurauz. Some fine morning during Sawan-Bhadaun, when the sky appeared full of dark clouds, mango lovers, goaded by a sporting spirit, rushed to some mango-grove, amrayyan. They bought with them heaps of mangoes. They ate them voraciously and threw them gaily at each other. On the other hand, the girls liked to swing in jhoolay hung by the branches of mango-trees and to sing sawanis.
One may well say that this whole culture has been celebrated more in Purbi songs than in Urdu poetry. That is correct only in case we refuse to accept Purbi songs as the rural branch of polished Urdu poetry.
But alas, this now is a vanishing culture. Modern times have played havoc with the mango culture, with the whole culture of Sawan-Bhadaun. The principal variety popularly known as Desi Aam or Chusni Aam has vanished from the market. Ghalib had this variety in view when he simply asked for two qualities in case of mangoes that they should be in abundance and be sweet. And it was this variety which was mostly in demand. The celebration of Naurauz depended on the supply of this variety.
What we get now are qalmi varieties. In the company of these varieties, the mango has gained an honourable place on the dining table. There it looks good, but while at the dining table we have to be cautious and careful in eating it. We can’t afford to be extravagant with it. To be brief, mangoes in the new surroundings have lost their cultural lustre. They now are simply a fruit to be eaten.
LET us, for a while, talk about mangoes. Baray amon ka kuch bayan ho jai. That is how Ghalib took a start in his famous poem written in praise of mangoes, and that is what I intend to do today. As is well known, Ghalib was very fond of mangoes. On one occasion, this fondness found its expression in verse, a short masnavi in which he praises his favourite fruit.
