The Scent Of Mangoes

She sells the sweet smelling alphonsos next to the stinky drain behind the maternity hospital. She’s been doing this so long that now the overpowering stench from the drain doesn’t bother her anymore. Being the only vendor selling mangoes at the drain makes it easy for her customers to locate her and gives her a small but regular clientele. Also, being close to the hospital ensures that she sells sufficient to keep herself alive. She herself has never liked the taste of alphonsos, so she can’t understand why they are such a rage. One reason for her naivety may be that she herself has eaten only those mangoes that are close to rotting and do not sell. As a matter of fact she has a very poor appetite and seldom eats. How people can possibly have three meals a day remains beyond her comprehension. So far as her own eating goes, her stomach since birth is conditioned to only one, or at best two small meals a day.

She has long forgotten her age and doesn’t care much for it. If asked to make a guess, she says she maybe about 80. Her parents had died of cholera when she was only a child, leaving her to be brought up in the village orphanage. Then for a very long time she worked as a daily wager at different road construction sites; till the dense smoke from the burning tar had settled sufficiently well in her lungs and given her tuberculosis. And though she did marry her husband after a few years had run away with another woman from the village. She doesn’t know where he is now, or even if he is dead or alive. And children, she never had any from her marriage. It is selling mangoes since as long as she can remember that she has been able to provide for herself. She has no savings for a rainy day, and in case it pours she is ready to be washed away.

In her recent pilgrimage to Tirupati Balaji (the shrine of Lord Venkateswara located atop the Tirumala Hills in Southern India) she donated all that she had put together in her last thirty years. She believes that having donated it all is sure to absolve her of all her sins (if any) ever committed by her unknowingly. Meanwhile, she takes life one day at a time and future plans she has none. All her old acquaintances are by and by gone. With her spirits waning, she knows that her time too is just around the corner. However, it least disturbs her. The only preparation she’s made is of placing an advance of a hundred rupees with the caretaker of a local crematorium; to pay for her final expenses whenever it is. Till then, Laxmi as usual, continues selling mangoes behind the maternity hospital near the stinky drain.