Across India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, mangoes have long carried meanings beyond taste. They move through the region as symbols of hospitality, prestige, diplomacy, and the complicated emotions of a shared civilisation split by borders.
Mangoes of Rataul
The boys in Sardhana spoke chaste Hindi. Mine was broken. I was the Malayali living in a town where I understood little and was understood even less. But we were nice to one another especially during exams which I had to write in Hindi. It was 1992. Summer arrived as it always did in western Uttar Pradesh: dry, slow, the air heavy with the smell of cut grass and the dust of freshly harvested fields, and wheat left out in the open.
We were told that a village some distance away, which my friends called “Retol”, had mango orchards unlike any in Sardhana. Off we went, a bunch of overzealous high schoolers eager to get away from adult supervision. Once we got there, past the curious villagers and the furious stray dogs, we cycled through the lanes between the trees, our wheels on packed earth, the leaves overhead casting a steady dappled shade.
