The Runaway Mango

Along the green Konkan coast, where the mango trees grow thick and the sea is never very far away, there is a sweet old tale that grandmothers like to tell on rainy nights.

One year, the story goes, the monsoon came in wild and grand, with thunder rolling over the hills and the rain pouring down in long silver sheets. High up on a hillside, in an orchard heavy with fruit, a single ripe mango, golden and perfect, was shaken loose from its branch by the storm.

Down it dropped. And down it rolled. Through the wet grass, over the little stones, bumping and tumbling all the way down the long green hill in the rain, this one runaway mango went rolling on its way, as though it knew exactly where it was going.

At the bottom of the hill stood a small house, and in that house a young woman had lately been married, and was just beginning her new life there. The runaway mango rolled the last little way down the path, right up to her doorstep, and there at last it came gently to rest.

In the morning the rain had stopped, and the bride opened her door onto a washed and shining world. And there on her doorstep sat the most beautiful golden mango she had ever laid eyes on, arrived from who knows where, as if the storm itself had carried it down to her as a gift.

She did not eat it. Instead, she carried it out to the soft wet earth beside her new home, and she planted it.

And in time, the story says, that single runaway mango grew into a fine strong tree, and the tree in time became a whole grove, heavy every season with sweet golden fruit. And the bride’s home was never short of mangoes, nor of good fortune, ever again.

Which is why, all along the Konkan coast, a mango that comes to your door in a storm is still thought to be the very luckiest of all good-luck gifts.