Mangoes and Melons

Now that summer is almost upon us, with the heat and the dust and the electricity cuts, one of the (many) things that make me look forward to the season are the magical summer fruits - tarbooz, kharbuza, angoor, jamun, litchis (how I remember gorging on them on long summer afternoons) and of course, the Amb!

This post is all about the 'Amb' or the 'Mango', with a bit of Babur and his melons thrown in. 

The etymological root of the word Mango is the Tamil manga or man-gai, "which is perhaps a euphonic transposition of am-kai (mango fruit) from the Sanskrit amba (A historical dictionary of Indian food - K.T. Achaya). The word Manga was first used in Italian in 1510 by Ludovico di Varthema (who was apparently the first European non-Muslim to have entered Mecca) and who writes -

"Another fruit is also found here which is called the 'Amba', the stem of which is called 'Manga'...and when it is ripe it is yellow and shining. This fruit has a stone within like a dried almond, and is much better than the Damascus plum. A preserve is made of this fruit, such as we make of olives, but they are much superior."   

The word Mango was used for the first time more than a 100 years later by Dr. John Fryer (of the East India Company) while describing it -

"When ripe [the mango], the Apples of the Hesperides are but fables to them: for Taste, the Nectarine, Peach and Apricot fall short."

Babur, though, wasn't as rapturous over the great mango of the Indian sub-continent. He writes in the Baburnama - 

"Mangoes when good, are very good, but many as are eaten, few are first rate...taking it altogether, the mango is the best fruit of Hindustan. Some so praise it as to give it preference over all fruits except the musk-melon but, such praise outmatches it."   

Of course, Babur was more of a melon man.

India failed to impress him (other than for its wealth), for, amongst other reasons, its melons weren't good enough. He describes the melons of the cities he mentions in his autobiography,  he remembers Kabul and writes, "Recently a melon was brought, and as I cut it, I was oddly affected. I wept the whole time I was eating it.", and he judges towns by the quality of their melons - "Bukhara is a fine town; its fruits are many and good; its melons are excellent."

(On an aside, the plums of Bukhara are also praised by Babur - "The Bukhara plum is famous; no other equals it.", and in Punjabi, a plum is an 'Aloo Bukhara'. I wonder what the original Persian of Baburnama calls the "Bukhara plum".)

Me, I love my fruits, but as much as I love Babur and his lands of Central Asia, I'll take my Hindustani amb and leave his Fergana melons to him.

The Rebel Girl.

There are women of many descriptions
In this queer world, as everyone knows.
Some are living in beautiful mansions,
And are wearing the finest of clothes.
There are blue blooded queens and princesses,
Who have charms made of diamonds and pearl;
But the only and thoroughbred lady
Is the Rebel Girl.

CHORUS:
That's the Rebel Girl, that's the Rebel Girl!
To the working class she's a precious pearl.
She brings courage, pride and joy
To the fighting Rebel Boy.
We've had girls before, but we need some more
In the Industrial Workers of the World.
For it's great to fight for freedom
With a Rebel Girl.

Yes, her hands may be hardened from labor,
And her dress may not be very fine;
But a heart in her bosom is beating
That is true to her class and her kind.
And the grafters in terror are trembling
When her spite and defiance she'll hurl;
For the only and thoroughbred lady
Is the Rebel Girl.
- written by Joe Hill, inspired by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.

And here's Joan Baez, at Woodstock, singing 'Last Night I dreamed I saw Joe Hill'.

And here is Chaos Bogey (to whom I owe all of the above knowledge) writing about all of the above, but eloquently.

Still just about three-fourths through Zinn's A People's History of the U.S.

  

The Translation Conundrums.

Barking at the moon

On the rotting wharf that pilfering cur,
Pale yapping waif of a wharfinger,
Barks at the lonely moon:
The lonely at the lonelier.

O listen hard. By the wharf's stone wall
Where in the dark the water curls
To lap at land's ramshackledom,
There gloomy voices rise and fall,
Gloomy voices of yellow girls
Singing, singing of kingdom come.

Why must I hear such singing; why
Must I walk so ware of the world gone wry,
And why pale dog,
Unhappy dog, am I always I?

- Hagiwara Sakutaro
  translated by Graeme Wilson
  
I came across this poem in the December 1968 issue of Encounter, and I can never read it without reading it aloud. But this other translation is probably a more literal rendering of the poem:

Sad moonlit night

Drat that snatch-thief dog,
He howls at the moon from the rotting pier.
When the soul pricks up its ears,
It hears the shrill girls choiring,
Choiring
With their gloomy voices,
By the somber stone wall out at the pier.

Why is it always this way
with me?
Listen, you dog, you.
Tell me, you pale-blue, unhappy dog, you.

- Hagiwara Sakutaro

(I don't who the translator is for the second version.)

Graeme Wilson’s translations have been criticized, for taking "the creative role of the translator to the extreme, resulting in poems that only vaguely resemble Sakutarō’s originals" and I have no idea how much of Sakutaro am I reading and how much of Wilson. But then, I would never have come across Sakutaro at all if not for Graeme Wilson, and if I had come across the second version first, I wouldn't have been interested in reading more by or about Sakutaro. 

Once upon a sea...

And, as my erudition was essentially nourished by anecdotes, I told him one suitably in keeping with his passion and our haven in the carcass of an old boat. Once on a perilous sea an English warship met a French vessel, and before embarking on a battle with no quarter, the English captain addressed his historic enemies, cupping his hands around his mouth: "You, Frenchmen, fight for money. But we, subjects of the Queen, we fight for honour!" Then from the French vessel this jovial riposte of the captain's could be heard blowing across in a gust of salt wind: Each man fights for what he does not have, sir!"

- Dreams of My Russian Summers
  Andreï Makine

March 23, 1931 and March 23, 1988.

The first poem of the video for today (till 2:03) -


Nazm-e-Bhagat Singh.

Bhagat Singh

When my grandfather was born you were 12 years old
Saluting with reverence
the sacred soil of Jallianwala

When my grandfather was 12 years old
you attained martyrdom at the age of 24 years

When he attained the age of 24 year
You were still a youngman of 24 years

When my father came of age
You were still a youngman of 24 years

When I was of 24 years
You were still a youngman of 24 years

I attained 25, 26, 27, ….37 years of age
You remained a youngman of 24 years

On my every birthday
I march towards old age by one year
But on your every martyrdom day
You remain a youngman of 24 years

Every mother blesses her son
For long life and youthfulness
But indeed you are ever living youngman
Enjoying eternal youth
You will be of the same age as ever
when any coming generation will attain youth


- Jaswant Zafar

The most dangerous of all is the death of our dreams. 

On March 23, 1988, Avtar Singh Paash was shot dead. 


Sab ton khatarnak oh chann hunda hai
jo har katal kaand de baad
sunn hoye vehrhya vich charhda hai
par tuhadiyan akhan nu mirchaN wang nahi larhda hai.

"These truces with the infidels," he exclaimed, without caring how suddenly he interrupted the stately Templar, "make an old man of me!"

"Go to, knave - how so?" asked Cedric, his features prepared to receive favourably the expected jest.

"Because," answered Wamba, "I remember three of them in my day, each of which was to endure for the course of fifty years, so that, by computation, I must be at least a hundred and fifty years old."

- Ivanhoe
  Sir Walter Scott

And Plato lives on in India...

How Plato became Aflatoon in Arabic and the languages east of Arabia is explained in this article, but what is equally fascinating is the fact that "Aflatoon" has taken on a life of its own.

Long before I knew about Plato, Aflatoon meant someone who was hyper, a jack-of-all-trades, someone very quick on the uptake - in my memory, it was used for a kid who couldn't really be controlled, but it wasn't a negative term - equally, it implied brilliance. My Punjabi-English dictionary sort of supports my understanding and says "a clever person".

A search of the internet (I don't have a Hindi or Urdu dictionary at home) though, throws up many more meanings, including:

• an epithet applied to a boaster, 
• a mischief-maker, though for Farrukh Dhondy in his childhood, it was the equivalent of Abracadabra, 
• something that is awesome, incredible, amazing or great,

and a series of meanings given by internet users -  a person who talks about improbable ideas, a conman or a criminal, carefree, naughty, mind-blowing.


But did he -













...really deserve this?

If you want to hear the complete song (6 minutes of what passed for Hindi music in the '90s), here it is.   

"Laughing a tiger's laugh..."

Corbett, an old favourite, shall probably recur time and again here, but to begin, I give you an extract from Jungle Lore that always makes me grin - 

"The seven pea fowl after crossing the glade had evidently taken to their legs for Magog had gone at least a hundred yards into the dense scrub and tree jungle before I heard a flutter of wings and the squark of a pea fowl, followed immediately afterwards by a frightened yelp from Magog and the angry roar of a tiger. The pea fowl had evidently led Magog on to a sleeping a tiger, and birds, dog, and tiger, were each expressing their surprise, fear and resentment, in their own particular way. Magog after his first yelp of fear was barking furiously and running and the tiger was emitting roar upon roar and chasing him, and both were coming towards me. In the general confusion a peacock - giving its alarm call - came sailing through the trees and alighted on a branch just above my head, but for the time being I had lost all interest in birds and my one and only desire was to go somewhere, far away, where there were no tigers. Magog had four legs to carry him over the ground whereas I only had two, so without any feeling of shame - for deserting a faithful companion - I picked up my feet and ran as I had never run before. Magog soon overtook me and the roaring behind us ceased. 

I can picture the tiger now, though I could not do so at the time, sitting down on his haunches on reaching the open glade and laughing a tiger's laugh, at the sight of a big dog and a small boy running for what they thought was dear life, while all that he was doing was to shoo away a dog that had disturbed his slumbers."

Two Songs.

I heard Peter Sarstedt's Where Do You Go To My Lovely (courtesy the brother)

...And Divine Comedy's A Lady of a Certain Age almost seems to be a sequel to it...

Also, I seem to be the last person to come across The Divine Comedy. 

My two penny worth

Now read on...

When does it start?

There are very few starts. Oh some things seem to be beginnings.

The curtain goes up, the first pawn moves, the first shot is fired. (Probably at the first pawn.) - but that's not the start. The play, the game, the war is just a little window on a ribbon of events that may extend back thousands of years. The point is, there's always something before. It's always a case of Now Read On.

- Lords and Ladies

Terry Pratchett