But before you ask how to eat a mango, learn how to choose one

Don’t commit the folly of using your eyes to pick the best. Ripe, luscious, juicy. Tsk. Don’t have a clue, do you? Superficial fools! Listen, pay attention—close your eyes. Don’t peak.

Hover over the fruit with other senses; smell, touch, gut, historical evidence. Breathe in earth’s soil-toil-turn-sweat-sweet-honey-nectar. Breathe in deep, deeper than the lungs, beyond the crater where the umbilical was severed. Go all the way to where the kundalini sits – there—the spot that dings with an inexplicable heave when your mother tells you you’ve put on pounds. Do something about it, she says. She pats your head, her eyes fixed on your soft middle. Her voice is a cocktail—one third pity, two thirds fear when she says, don’t be mad. You know how laden with calories a slice of mango is.

Slice? What sacrilege! Who takes a knife to a mango?

Tsk.

Put down your mother’s burdens. Look. Look at me. Let me show you your way back to the Indus. Listen. I shall not repeat.

Caress, smell, seduce, suck, swallow, pinch, lick, gulp, hold the fruit with both your hands, all your fingers, lips, all at once.

Puncture the tip with your teeth, undo the knots of traditions, spit out the bitter bit, knead the skin, tease the flesh, dig in—go deep, deeper still. Fondle the fibers with tongue/lips. Create new words from old vocabulary. Be hungry. Stay hungry for equality/equity.

The juices will ooze and trickle. Let them. Don’t go answering phone calls/duty/guilt. Keep at it.

Sighs as deep as oceans may escape the hollows you hold within. What are you waiting for? Acceptance! Tsk.

Don’t stop plundering till you reach the pit, the hard seed. Did I mention you should wear an armour before you start? Mangoes get messy when you question patriarchy. Egos are guillotined. Blood spills. Wash all evidence. Don’t let them suspect your awakening. Work ferociously. Let them wonder how you did it. You’ll wonder how you did it. Trust me. Don’t give up. They’ll accuse you of unsavoury things. Don’t pay heed.

Tsk! Don’t look back, not at your mother or hers before or the stories of compromise dripping with sacrifice to keep the peace at home, in society. Tsk! Ask – the cost. Who’s paying the price?

Listen to your inner Shakti commanding you to eat the fruit like you mean it. Like it is yours for the taking. Like you are an equal, enough and beautiful. Don’t go saving the best mangoes for only men; sons, brothers, husbands like your ancestors did.

Don’t be quiet. Don’t quit.