Summer is here, but mangoes are nowhere to be seen. A few trucks carrying the much-coveted yellow fruit have arrived at the APMC in Vashi. But the prices are frightfully high. Months before the season, importers in the Gulf and other places do advance booking of hectares of the crop, especially the alphonso variety, which leaves little for the domestic market. But the craze for the fruit is such that people don’t mind paying through their nose, but they must bite into the succulent fruit. Restaurants like Thakar Bhojanalay, Thacker’s, Soam, Status, Samrat, Tip Top, etc, serve aamras-puri. You break hot puri into pieces, dip them in icy cold aamras and put them in your salivating mouth. The feeling is heavenly. There are several varieties of mangoes, hapus, pairi, langda, Kesari, dasseri, neelam, totapuri, etc. But hapus from the orchards is rightly regarded as the king of fruits.
A Karma Yogi In The Real Sense
Mumbai lost one of its finest citizens recently: Mahavirprasad Saraf. A successful businessman, he used much of his wealth for social welfare. He once went for a funeral and was shocked that the mourners had no place to sit. That was when he decided to donate cement benches to the crematorium. After that he had thousands of benches made of cement and steel installed at public gardens, playgrounds, railway stations, etc. When he realised that drinking water at several railway stations was not available to commuters, he spent lakhs of rupees to install water coolers. He also spent crores in promoting education, especially among women. An extremely soft-spoken man, he was a karma yogi in the real sense.
India Dreams
The tough immigration laws that Donald Trump is threatening to implement has dashed the hopes of thousands of Mumbai students who were planning to study in the US and settle down there. In fact, even those studying in American universities are staring at a bleak future. Maybe instead of chasing the American dream, these youngsters should pursue their dreams in India, which has so much to offer.
Tailpiece
A wag rightly observed that things have come to such a pass that computers are asking you to prove through captcha codes that you are a human being! (Compiled by S Balakrishnan)