MAN GOES FOR MANGOES

MAN GOES FOR MANGOES

Khaliqur Rahman

Summer's delight, God's exquisite gift to Man, succulent with varied sweetnesses, Ghalib's favourite among fruits, you must have guessed what I am talking about. Yes, of course, if you are a connoisseur of good taste, you have.

Mangoes -- here's God's plenty -- are here again, of which one is never enough, neither are two. The truth is: enough is not enough -- at least for me. The mind -- and the body -- is always willing to go for one more, but I have to stop at a point for other reasons. There are people and what is worse, they are watching.

In fact, mango is one fruit, I would like to eat all by myself and all, all alone. It is a very, very private fruit. How often have I wished, there should be me and a room and mangoes and mangoes and mangoes, fresh from the fridge and sweating as impatiently to be eaten as I am, to eat. Perhaps, a full-length mirror nearby would make the setting ideally unearthly. How much  I would then love to lap the flesh and bite the stone and slurp the juicy eluding tricklings in many different gestures, of my hands, my lips, my eyes and even my nose. And how much I would give to have a time-to-time-look in the mirror to see how many various postures of extreme intentness my body acquires to match each gesture of its parts.

But modern civilization -- and my wife -- demands that I eat my mango -- poor, singular one or even less -- at the dining table with children and sometimes a guest or two. And that is very frustrating. I always thought mango-eating is not a child's play or for that matter a public affair. It requires a good deal of wild sophistication and extreme privacy.

But in modern times you are most often more constrained than liberated or emancipated. It was only the other day that I was thinking of Daseris and Langras, as I was relishing, with a lot of conscious composure, the taste of an undesirably delicately small piece of t. Himayat Soon I was beginning to be myself, even though the second helping was loathsomely tiny again.

But the last grab was a promising stone, thick with flesh and juice. Thinking that others would mind their own business and therefore imagining myself to be alone in the crowd, I decided to 'slog' and send the just-not-do-ables on a holiday.

I must have been in the middle, when I noticed, to my utter disgust and perhaps shame, that the children, having finished theirs, had already fixed their gaze of earnestness, surprise and greed to watch their father doing the devouring operation that presumably was to them sensuously brutal and passionately animal. Perhaps they couldn't believe their eyes as they saw their father eating for once sans dignity.

At the other end, as I encountered, from their mother, just another gaze but of a very different kind. I couldn't help muttering: Man goes for mangoes, not woman -- at least in summer!

THE ART OF LEAVING

THE ART OF LEAVING

Khaliqur Rahman

Gavaskar retired from Test Cricket after scoring a hundred in the bi-centenary Test, if I remember right, at Lords, as they say, the Mecca of Cricket. He left on a high and it was Bedi who said that to set another example of the way the little master hanged his boots and left his bat, someone would need to wait for good two hundred years and score a century in that Test to only equal the record. Gavaskar, for sure, knew the art of leaving.

Nowadays, it seems, nobody wants to leave! Tell me which country has political leaders as old as ours. Tell me which country has film heroes as old as ours. Look at Rajnikant and Amitabh Bachchan! That way Naseeruddin Shah is good enough and young enough to do those dirty tricks in the Dirty Picture. Ashok Kumar, I’m told, has worked with heroines older than him and also with the ones half his age. Dilip Kumar, too, has had a co-star less than half his age, Saira Bano, his wife in real life.

According to Ravi Shastri, some of our Test match players are still continuing to play even when they are well past their sell-by date. I wonder why Kumble chose to retire. And, don’t you remember, torn between joy and gratitude, respect and honour, Dhoni carried the old shoulders on his young and strong ones over the boundary line. Again, some way to leave!

But what’s happened to the three otherwise greats, Tendulkar, Dravid and Laxman? Look at the famously known Master Blaster. He shapes so well until the ball shapes in to hit his pads or his stumps. A hundred and ninety nine International centuries to his credit, it seems, he’s not able to leave the burden behind him when he reaches 70 or 80 or even 90. How many times he has missed the coveted century of centuries. It appears to have become a never-ending snake and ladder game with him.

And, what’s happened to The Wall? In England, he was fantastic. He belied his own age and proved his critics wrong. Now they say there’s a brick missing. He leaves the proverbial gap between the bat and the pad. When he’s in the slips he leaves those sitters, as well.

The scourge of the Australians in the past, Very Very Special Laxman now in Australia is a sad and sordid apology of himself. It seems, out of the Very Very Special Laxman only Lax remains.

I feel very sorry for them. They should have gracefully left even before the English tour. People and their fans would have remembered them not only for their records but for their greatness in and wisdom of leaving with grace. Now perhaps, they’ll remember them for their forced exit sans grace and dignity.

If only the old and stale and the dead weight had left and retired when it was the right time, and I’m afraid, it was a long time ago, the present scenario must have been bubbling with the vigour of youth and quickness of fresh legs.

It would have been better to lose, even in England and now in Australia, with the young but inexperienced than with old and experienced.

And, the Board isn’t above board either. When will those dirty and detestable, rude and roguish faces leave, for cricket to be cricket?

They have been teaching The Art of Living for quite some time. To live and let live, they should start courses in the Art of Leaving!