There is a fruit cart outside the 6 train stop at 77th and Lexington that I walk past every single day without noticing. Today I noticed.
The man had Alphonso mangoes. Real ones. The kind wrapped in that scratchy paper, the kind that stain your fingers orange and make you feel like a criminal for how much you enjoy them.
I paid three dollars for one. Highway robbery, my Ba would say. But my Ba is in Ahmedabad and I am on the Upper East Side, so.
I ate it standing on the platform like a complete animal. Juice down my wrist. A woman in gym clothes gave me a look. I did not care.
Here is the thing about a mango from a fruit cart in New York City. It is never going to taste like the ones at home. The soil is different, the sun is different, the way my mother would cut it into a hedgehog shape and slide it across the kitchen table is very much different.
And yet. For four stops between 77th and Grand Central, it tasted like being eleven. Like the ceiling fan spinning too slow. Like my grandfather peeling one with a pocket knife and handing me the seed to gnaw on.
The 6 train rattled and I sat there being a person who cried a little over produce.
I think this is what living far from home actually is. Not the big dramatic homesickness they warn you about. Just a mango. Just a smell. Just the way summer arrives the same everywhere if you let it.
If you ever see the mango man at 77th and Lex, buy one. Eat it badly. Let it wreck you a little.
Some things are worth the orange fingers.
Love,