Tuesday, April 12, 2016

mango pain

. . . Aziz turned to topics that could distress no one.  He described the ripening of the mangoes, and how in his boyhood he used to run out in the Rains to a big mango grove belonging to an uncle and gorge there.  "Then back with water streaming over you and perhaps rather a pain inside.  But I did not mind.  All my friends were paining with me.  We have a proverb in Urdu:  'What does unhappiness matter when we are all unhappy together?'  which comes in conveniently after mangoes."

A Passage to India -- E.M. Forster (1924)

Pictured:  Mangoes (detail) -- Francisco Oller, circa 1901