The Two Sides of a Mango

 The Two Sides of a Mango

There is a mango tree in front of my flat, heavy with fruit every summer. The branches lean toward the road, and the smell of mangoes fills the air. But this story is not about the tree. It is about waste.

One evening, I saw several mangoes lying broken on the road. My first instinct was childhood joy—raw mangoes with salt and chilli powder, the tangy taste that makes your mouth water just by memory. I almost bent down to pick one up. But I didn't. The adult in me took over.

I looked closer. The mangoes were crushed, half-eaten, or already rotting.

I asked the security guard, "Why doesn't anyone pluck them and share them with the flat owners?"

He shrugged. "The association has to decide. And no one wants to climb the tree."

Then I asked, "Why do they look bitten?"

He replied, "Squirrels. Bats. They eat half of them. Such a waste."

I got into my cab, and his word stayed with me: waste. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized—the squirrels and bats ate because they were hungry. Their stomachs are small. They took what they needed and left the rest. That is not waste. That is survival.

Then I thought about us. Human beings.

We waste food every single day. In our homes, in restaurants, in weddings, in hotels. We cook more than we eat. We buy more than we need. We throw away leftovers without a second thought. We let fruits rot in the fridge. We cut off "ugly" parts of vegetables. We dump plates full of uneaten food into garbage bins—while outside our gates, animals search for one fallen mango.

The security guard was upset about the squirrels and bats. But I asked myself: why are we not this upset about our own waste?

We know the value of food. We were taught not to waste it. We have seen hungry people on the streets. And still, we throw away nearly 1.3 billion tons of food globally every year. We waste more than the squirrels could ever eat in a thousand summers.

One side of the mango tells the story of an animal that fed itself without greed. The other side tells the story of a human who knew better—and wasted anyway.

The animals don't know the value of food. They act on instinct.
But we… we have no excuse.

So, if this story has a title, it is not about the mango. It is about us.
And the title is simply this: Careless.

M.L. Narendra Kumar