Look, I’m not saying Ramu was a liar exactly. My mother would’ve called him “creative with the truth.” He sold fruit near the old temple, always going on about how his papayas could cure insomnia or his coconuts were harvested during some auspicious planetary alignment. Most of us just nodded and bought our bananas. You learned not to argue with Ramu—it only made the sales pitch longer.
But that June—god, it was hot that year, the kind of heat that makes your thoughts sticky—he outdid himself.
I was getting chai from Shankar’s stall when Ramu came striding up with this mango. And okay, it *was* beautiful. The kind of mango that makes you understand why people write poems about fruit. Greenish-yellow, no blemishes, catching the light like it was posing for a magazine. Even Shankar stopped mid-pour to look at it.
“This,” Ramu announced to anyone listening (which was basically just me, Shankar, and old Krishnan, who was half-asleep anyway), “is the perfect mango.”
Shankar snorted into his tea. “Perfect for what? Your retirement fund?”
But Ramu was on a roll. “This mango can mend a broken heart. Win an election. Erase debts.” He said it with this completely straight face, like he was reading cricket scores or announcing train timings.
We laughed. Of course, we laughed. What else do you do when your fruit vendor starts sounding like a fortune teller?
Here’s the thing about small towns, though—gossip moves faster than good sense. By afternoon, there were actually people at his cart asking about the mango. Word had spread through the tea stalls, the tailor shops, the temple courtyard. I saw Latha there, and my stomach twisted a bit. Her husband had left six months ago with that teacher from the next village. Latha had gotten thin, quiet in a way that worried her friends. She’d stopped wearing her usual jasmine flowers, stopped laughing at anyone’s jokes.
I don’t know what Ramu told her. But I saw him cut a piece of the mango, saw her take it with shaking hands. She bit into it and just… stood there. Then she started laughing. Not polite laughing—real, gulping laughter that made people stare. Juice was running down her arm, and she didn’t even wipe it off.
“That mango must be *really* good,” Shankar muttered.
“Or she’s finally cracked,” I said, but I didn’t really mean it. Truth was, it was good to hear her laugh again, even if it was over fruit.
The next day, Subramaniam, the clerk, showed up. He always looked like he was carrying the weight of the world—which, given his debts, maybe he was. His wife had been after him for months to do something, anything. He ate a slice of the mango and walked straight to the moneylender’s office. I heard later he actually negotiated his interest rate down. Subramaniam! Who couldn’t negotiate his way out of a paper bag! The man once paid full price for a broken umbrella.
Then things got weird.
Mr. Shetty arrived with his whole circus—the MLA candidate, all white kurta and loud voice, with maybe ten people trailing behind him. Campaign workers, assistants, and someone whose only job seemed to be holding his water bottle. He wanted the mango because, apparently, someone had told someone who told someone else that it could win elections.
Ramu just handed him a piece. No ceremony, no speech. Didn’t even wipe the knife first.
Shetty ate it, and for maybe thirty seconds, he didn’t say anything. Which for Shetty was like holding your breath underwater. The man gave speeches in his sleep, I swear. Then he said, so quietly I almost didn’t hear, “I’d like to just sit for a while.”
His assistants looked like he’d announced he was joining a monastery. One of them actually reached for his forehead to check for a fever.
After that, everyone wanted a piece. The mango got smaller and smaller. Ramu was careful with it, I’ll give him that. Measured each slice like he was a surgeon. But eventually, obviously, it ran out.
People were angry. Mrs Patel accused him of being a fraud (which was fair). Young Dinesh wanted to know where he’d bought it so he could get another. Someone even asked if there were seeds they could plant. “Start a grove,” they said. “Sell saplings. We’ll all get rich.”
Ramu cleaned his knife very slowly, the way he did everything when he was thinking. “There’s no trick,” he said finally. “It was just a good mango. But you all tasted something in it—maybe just a reminder that things can be sweet again. That’s all.”
“That’s all?” Mrs Patel looked ready to throw her handbag at him.
“That’s everything,” Ramu said, which was the most philosophical I’d ever heard him sound.
Half the crowd called him a charlatan and left. But I noticed Latha still smiled more. Subramaniam stood straighter and started wearing ironed shirts. Shetty stayed quiet for almost two weeks, which might be a record. He actually listened to people at the next rally instead of just talking over them.
Me? I never tasted the mango. Didn’t need to, I guess. Or maybe I was afraid it would just taste like a regular mango and ruin the whole thing. Some mysteries are better left alone.
Ramu’s still there by the temple, humming his terrible songs, selling his blessed bananas and his charmed coconuts. Sometimes I think he really believed that mango was magic. Sometimes I think he’s the most brilliant con artist in the three districts. The man could sell ice to a penguin, as my father used to say.
Probably it’s somewhere in between.
But I’ll tell you this—ever since that summer, people have been buying more fruit from him. Not because they think it’s magic. But because maybe, just maybe, if you believe something can taste better than it should, sometimes it does.
Or maybe we’re all just idiots. I don’t know.
It was a damn good mango, though. I’ll give him that.
