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by C. H. Fernando, Department of Biology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario Canada

I do not have any idea when I first saw this tall, wiry man, with a spring in his step and moving like a gazelle, and when it first recorded in my young memory. This is one of the most vivid memories and perhaps the earliest, I had as a child.

Odiris was not intrusive and moved, effortlessly as if by some unknown force, in a way that no other man or woman moved. I recall that he moved as if moved by the wind, even when there were no noticeable gusts of wind. Like many a life, lived unnoticed and passed by, he was but a cipher. But to me he is etched in my memory because of a single thing he did, namely sell the best mango I have ever tasted in my life.

Life and times

Odiris was born and raised in a typical Sri Lanka village, in this case in the rolling countryside that formed a series of very low hills and valleys, in the western province of Sri Lanka, near Colombo, but slightly south of it and close to the ocean.

This area had once been close to the seat of the kingdom of Sitawaka, only a few centuries ago, now known as Kotte. The name of the village was Gangodawila. It was one of the thousands of idyllic villages that formed the backbone of Sri Lanka and its agriculture, mainly rice growing.

The villagers lived in small but well kept houses made of the local bricks, not baked in kilns but cut from the pits of hard laterite deposits, called 'gadol', locally. This type of brick was large, much larger than the burnt bricks made from clay and baked in kilns that also made roofing tiles of the Portuguese type. These were used to build more solid houses for the well- to -do.

The roofs of the more modest houses were made of coconut rafters and long stakes on which were placed woven coconut thatch. Each house had a small garden where vegetables were grown and it had a well for drinking water.

If the house was close to the rice field, where the water table was near the surface, the well was also used for bathing, as the water could be taken with a bucket and poured over one's head. The women bathed around midday, with their sarongs just over their breasts, and the men later at twilight when they had finished their work or a round or two of gambling, or drinking home made liquor, during the weekends.

Work was seasonal and involved ploughing, seeding and harvesting the rice. There were other activities like pottery, gold and silver work and raising and selling of vegetables. Meat and fish were consumed only in small quantities, but the local leaves and roots of plants were often used.

The diet was well balanced, with fruits in season and preparations from the jack fruit, which when young served as a vegetable, later as a staple and when ripe as a fruit. Besides the many fruits and vegetables available for picking to the villagers, there was the mango, a fruit that was much sought after by the villagers.

When the fruits were young they were used for cooking, and for making pickles and when ripe it was the most delicious fruit in the village. There were two seasons when ripe mangoes were abundant; in May-June and November-December.

The mango factor

The harvesting and ripening of mangoes was an art and included harvesting the mature fruits using a knife and bag on a long pole to prevent any abrasion of the mango and then spreading the mangoes on rice straw till they reached a prime condition for enjoying.

My father, who was a physician, loved mangoes and advised, or more correctly cajoled his patients to bring along some mature mangoes, which he then spread under his bed on straw and lovingly watched them ripen. He was greedy for mangoes. When we visited him when the mangoes were ripe, he offered each of us a mango and then ate the remaining hundreds by himself. He lived on a diet of mangoes for a month or two.

There were many types of mangoes in the area where Odiris and I lived. In our garden, which was about 2 hectares in extent, we had: Coconut mangoes, the size of coconuts with their husks on wal-amba or cluster mangoes and rata-amba or foreign mangoes, and yapane-amba or Jaffna mangoes that were supposed to have the best taste in general.

There were many other types of mangoes, like mee-amba, sweet as bees' honey, small and eaten by punching a small hole at the outer tip of the mango and squeezing the juice into one's mouth, little by little. A very common and popular mango was called 'dampara'. It was heart shaped and yellow when ripe.

Odiris had been a survey labourer in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His job was to carry the tents, utensils for cooking and storing water and general camping equipment, the surveying equipment and mosquito nets for the survey team. The survey labourers and the surveyors, walked, with equipment and worked in the field from early morning to about noon, then had a rest when the labourers cooked a meal and then worked for another hour or two.

The surveyors, who were mainly young Europeans, worked very hard, had a tea break and in the evening had their gin and lime. After a year's walking in the survey party, all the party had a year of holiday. Odiris who was unmarried, spent this year gambling and carousing with his friends.

When he ran out of funds, he sold small parcels of land he had inherited from his family and gambled that money and his pay away till his next surveying work. When I saw Odiris in the early thirties, he looked ageless and very active. He must have been around seventy years old. He was a regular visitor to our house and we talked with him about his life as a survey labourer.

He was usually around at meal time and my mother gave him his meal and also used him from time to time for errands and to transport cement, wood and other house repair material and garden equipment from the stores that were about two miles away.

The entrepreneur

Odiris had a small government pension for his long service with the Survey Department when he retired at the age of 55. Although the pension amounted to only a few tens of rupees a month, it was enough for him to live reasonably when combined with his income from a small plot of rice field that he leased out. He must have found life taxing, and decided to become a small time entrepreneur.

One area of expertise he had gathered in his wide travels in Sri Lanka was a detailed knowledge of mangoes. He had tasted many hundreds of types of mangoes during his long life. He decided that if he was going into the mango selling business, he must be independent, first and foremost. He had no plans to become rich overnight and he did not wish to work for any businessmen.

He set out on his business with planning and deliberation. He scouted the village for the only mango he thought worth eating and selling above all others. He then offered a small sum of money to the owners of about a dozen trees with mangoes near maturity. He then prepared the bag with a knife in the outer centre of the bag to which a long bamboo pole was attached.

This was his harvesting tool. He then carried the mangoes gingerly to his small house which he shared with a close friend Jamis from his survey labourer team. He obtained a good supply of rice straw that he got for the asking from farmers. He now set up the mangoes for ripening on the straw and covered the fruits for good measure with another layer of straw. Now was the time of waiting.

Mangoes even from the same tree ripen at slightly different times, even in the same batch. To sell the mangoes, Odiris had a simple cane basket he borrowed from a friend. He carried only thirty or forty mangoes in the basket and took them to houses where he knew there was a demand for these particular fruits. He sold them for 5-10 cents a fruit.

Odiris had chosen his mangoes with great care. He knew how different varieties of mangoes tasted from his wondering days with the Survey Department.

He also knew that the keeping quality of one particular mango was excellent, for about a week or so after they were ripe. The mangoes were not as susceptible to bruising as most other mangoes. They had a healthy green base with yellow and light red at the extremities. Near the attachment of the mango to the tree there were spots of black, as if they were spattered with a paint brush.

This is why this mango had the name of 'kalu-dampara' or black-dampara , to distinguish it from the much common or garden dampara.

He had chosen the ultimate mango. Mangoes must be allowed to ripen till they have reached perfection. It is necessary to pluck the mangoes from the tree when they are mature and turning to ripen, then left on straw for as long as they take to ripen. Each type of mango has a different appearance when prime for eating. This state was only known to the expert on mangoes like Odiris.

I have eaten mangoes from all tropical continents and also in non-tropical countries around the world. Upto the nineteen seventies, fresh mangoes were only available in tropical regions the mangoes in temperate countries in cans.

With the improvements in transport, and the geographic spread of the growing of many tropical fruits like mangoes and papayas, fresh mangoes started appearing in supermarkets and stores. I have eaten many varieties of mangoes from around the world and in the sites where there were grown. The choice one has now in Ontario in mangoes is very wide.

Mexico and other South American countries now supply the bulk of mangoes. India, Vietnam and Thailand too exports mangoes to North America, while Asian and African mangoes go to Europe.

Selecting and grafting of desirable varieties of mangoes to standardise for better transport resistance and appearance have made mangoes more uniform. Mangoes remain one of the most desirable fruits on the market anywhere.

Without any doubt, the kalu-dampara mango is the best I have ever tasted. It is very limited in production though.

Odiris had probably hit upon the tastiest, luxurious and sweet smelling mango in the world. I do not know whether this mango is still grown in Sri Lanka on a large scale, where mangoes of many varieties are grown and have been for generation.

The memory of the taste of kalu-dampara returns to my mouth whenever I imagine a ripe and delicious kalu-dampara mango that I ate annually for a dozen years in season, from the mid nineteen thirties to the early nineteen fifties.

When I returned from Britain after my studies in 1956, Odiris was no more, he had disappeared without leaving a trace, just one more person who had lived and died, largely unnoticed, except by his friends. His life had been satisfying, if not luxurious. I shall remember Odiris, the mango man, whenever I think of kalu-dampara mangoes and compare them to the mangoes I eat from time to time. The kalu-dampara is the very best mango I have eaten during my life.

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