The Saga Of Mangolover
I'm Bernard the Buffalo, and this is my home.
Seeing how I’ve already laid the foundation for a nice rainy-day feel here, it seems that the only right thing to do is continue with the theme. The evergreen theme regarding rain. So, another story about the glory of rains it is!
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A mango. What is a mango? According to what I learnt during biology classes over the course of the previous year, it’s a type of fruit called the ‘drupe’. It has a hard, stony epicarp, and a thin skin. If it wasn’t for the telling illustration of this ‘drupe’ next to the explanation in my textbook, Lord knows I would never have guessed that this ‘drupe’ actually was the effervescent mango. Now we all know that a mango is as much of a fruit as you can imagine - it could possibly be the fruitiest fruit to ever make its way down anyone’s oesophagus. However, a little known fact is that it possesses a strange power over certain folks, much like the ring in the Lord of the Rings. Many tales have circulated over the ages about how people have been preyed upon by the power of Mister Mango, and one such person was a neighbour’s relative from the hick town that I have been known to reside in for a good part of my life. For brevity’s sake, he shall now be known as Mangolover.
This is his story.
Mangolover, as I have said, was a relative of the person who lives next door to me in the hick-town. Now he himself didn’t stay in the hick-town; he merely visited from time to time, after seemingly arbitrary intervals. On closer inspection, however, it could be seen that all of his visits revolved around the period of the mango. So this neighbour, he has quite a nice, fully grown mango tree flourishing in his garden, and the aforementioned period of the mango began the moment the tiniest, rawest mango popped up on the tree. As soon as Mangolover got word of this very first upshot of the very first mango — his several, lesser powerful mangoloving accomplices made this possible - he was seen in my neighbour’s house, staring out through the window unblinkingly at the mango tree. The reason he kept this perpetual vigil over the tree was the rival mangoloving clan of street urchins who, although possessing love enough for the mango, lacked vital processes in the brain that could be termed as intelligence. As a result, they sought to serve their love for the mango with nothing but petty thievery.
And so Mangolover would stand there, staring through the window, armed with several viciously sharp mango seeds that were doubtlessly the products of the previous year’s mango consumption. The minute he saw the smallest sign of the rival mangolovers, such as a stone thrown from a distance at the tree, there’d be a mango seed flying through the air, simultaneously deterring the path of the stone and giving the stonethrower a severe concussion. It went on like this for a long long time, until the mangoes were ready to be plucked, and this task he did in secret, in the dead of the night. One day your stomach would be aching at the sight of countless luscious mangoes just standing there, and the next day, there’d be nothing left. All gone, gone with the Mangolover back to where he came from, never to return for another year.
But that was all in the past, in the glory days. Now, it’s been at least a few years since he fell from grace and power, and sought to live in exile, with his Mangoloving days far behind him. In fact, he even had a name change operation from ‘Mister Mangolover’ to ‘Mister Mango Lova-lova’. Nevertheless, several theories circulated regarding the reason for his sudden loss of mango-fascination, many of them venturing into obscene irrationality. All these theories were banished into obsoletism when they witnessed with their own eyes a little known fact: his wife. Those who were blessed enough to see her, felt compelled to end their relation of the saga of Mangolover with the following words: with a wife like that, who needs mangoes?
THE END. I hope you enjoyed that. If you'd like to read more, there's plenty available in the archives