Climbing the Mango Trees
By Madhur Jaffrey

Being named Madhur meaning “sweet as honey”, seems to be an appropriate name for the author, for at the time of her birth, her grandmother welcomed her into the world by writing Om on her tongue with a little finger dipped in honey. As Madhur says, “I was left with honey on my palate and in my deepest soul.”

One can’t help but love how Jaffery incorporates every facet of food within the pages of her memoir. The reader salivates over the description of a spicy ground lamb with peas (Keema Matar) dish, which was enjoyed not only at home, but on family picnics and train rides in India along with deep-fried pooris. Childhood memories are relived over savory biscuits studded with cumin seeds (mutthris) polished off at tea time with sweet, hot and sour ginger-mango meethi chutney.

All senses are awakened while reading Jaffery’s story. Along with the warm sensation of a close-knit family both immediate and extended, you can hear the laughter at family gatherings, of which there were many ... Summer holidays and picnics in Delhi to name but a few. The smell, sound and taste of a juicy ripe mango being plucked from the trees in her grandparents’ orchard freely emanates, as we read of the older children on the higher branches peeling and slicing them, before passing the treasures on to the smaller children on the lower branches. The slices were then dipped in a spice mixture of salt, pepper, red chilies and roasted cumin and then devoured, as they enjoyed the company of brothers, sisters, cousins and friends. The once thriving orchards also had jujubes, mulberries and tamarind trees.

And yet with the good times, there were bad as well. There was pain and suffering from the loss of teenage friendships due to the Partition, loved ones because of disease and old age, along with those lost to the bloody aftermath of Independence Day.

When the family left Kanpur in 1944 and moved to Delhi permanently they all lived on the same street. It was the one named after her grandfather - Raj Narain Road - in the houses numbered 5, 7, 10, 12, 14 and 16.  Jaffery takes the reader on a tour of the houses, their many rooms and impeccably kept grounds. Every kitchen was well stocked with spices and the necessary ingredients to create the most aromatic meals. There were endless serving dishes filled with savory game from the day’s hunt, fresh fruit, vegetables and so on cooked in the huge, steaming pots. Duck, chicken and goat also found their way to the large tables in a variety of ways.

The pages of Climbing the Mango Trees are dotted with stories surrounding delectable treats such as cold milk and jalebis (pretzel-like deep-fried sweet filled with syrup). Even in times when food was rather scarce (WWII), Jaffery found delight in the “K” rations, which included SPAM and Fruit Cocktail.

Her entire life revolved around food or visa versa. And she intricately weaves it through tales of first loves and first jobs, births and deaths, much the same way the jasmine flowers were gathered and threaded for many joyous weddings. Even good results of school exams “necessitated an immediate mango and ice cream party, sometimes with rasgullas (cheese balls in sweet syrup)   

Jaffery’s tantalizing memoir contains over thirty of her family’s savory recipes to thoroughly enjoy. She ends her memoir just after her college years as she heads west, with the words ... “Somewhere in my depths, each bite, each taste of all I had eaten, lay catalogued in some pristine file, ready to be drawn up when the moment was ripe.”

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