The Vicks Mango Tree, Anees Salim, HarperCollins Publishers, Pp 381, Rs 399.00
This story is set against the backdrop of a small fictional village named Mangobaag, which is limping back to normalcy after 21 months of declaration of a state of Emergency in the country.
A Vicks mango tree stands near the end of the alley, a foot head taller than the tenement block where Teacher Bhatt lives on the third floor as a retired teacher and so does Raj Iyer, a young journalist. Teacher Bhatt has written a manuscript titled, The Autobiography of an English Teacher which he is keen to publish. When he runs into Raj Iyer, he asks him, “What’s news Raj?” Raj replies, “Not good news, if you are a great fan of Indira Gandhi. JP is going to be the next man in power.” Teacher Bhatt gets worried at her plight and expresses his concern as to what would happen to her. Raj tells him that she will have to step down, considering the rallies that are being held in every part of the country.
One day while talking to each other, Raj enters Teacher Bhatt’s house and his eyes fall on the photograph of the latter’s wife in the living room, right in front of the front door. He is reminded of his adolescent days when he had a serious crush on her.
In the same building, but on the other side, lives Aladin with his wife Rabia and two sons, who keep visiting Teacher Bhatt’s house to pluck mangoes from the Vicks mango tree. Rabia loves making pickles, marmalade, and chutneys out of the mangoes. She spends her time cooking and listening to the radio on which she loves a particular programme that is hosted by Sweet Didi. Rabia loves the programme so much that she harbours the desire to meet her Sweet Didi one fine day.
Rabia is unhappy that her mother does not keep in touch with her except to visit her once or twice a year because she believes that after marriage, the daughter’s place is in her in-law’s home. Rabia is educated quite unlike her mother and once when she hears Aladin curse Indira Gandhi for imposing the state of Emergency in the country, she sympathises with her. “She had her reasons – good, valid reasons. She understood what it must have taken to raise two children – that too, two boys – without a husband. She gave full marks to Indira Gandhi. She knew the hardship of bringing up two boys Farook and Haroon without Aladin being of any help.”
One day journalist Raj’s father sends him a letter from Calcutta, telling his son to be careful of Indira Gandhi, who was silencing her critics. As it happens, Raj had written an article, criticising Indira Gandhi. This letter has been handed to Rabia’s flat as it was in the same building as Raj’s. Rabia, unable to curb her curiosity, opens the letter and reads it and knowing that she has already opened it, instead of delivering it to Raj’s home, hides it.
One day while Raj is away, the police swoop down on his flat as they have come to arrest him. When Raj returns and is on the way to his flat, Aladin stops him midway to warn him and advises him to go back to Calcutta as he would be taken away for having written a derogatory article on Indira Gandhi. “It was an obituary note in fact. A disguised one.” Immediately Aladin rushes to the back of the building while Raj goes and hugs the Vicks mango tree to which he has got attached. Aladin emerges on his scooter and instructing Raj to climb behind him, he drives him to the railway station.
The police take turns to await Raj’s return. One day Raj’s father, Sunder Iyer arrives all of a sudden to meet his son but when he is told by Aladin that he had dropped his son at the railway station to make him leave for Calcutta, alarm bells rings in the father’s mind. He, however, decides to stay on and await his son’s return though with faint hope.
Some years later in a corner of the municipal park emerges a bronze statue of Raj. No one knows why he has become famous as to have a statue carved of himself, though rumours are afloat that a book is being written on him, hailing him as a hero of Mangobaag.
Teacher Bhatt goes to the window and notices the absence of the Vicks mango tree which has been felled a day before.
(HarperCollins Publishers, A-53 Sector 57, Noida, UP-201301)
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