Kollan Mango: A native Kerala Mango Many of the native Kerala mangoes like Kollan, Killichundan, Moovandan... are fast disappearing from the plate and from the backyard To write on mangoes this summer is to bite the cliché and let the juice run over my laptop. However clichéd another piece on mangoes sounds, the fruit continues to seduce and compels you to write anyway. Every year, an old essay in my college textbook pops up in my mind and urges me to eat the fruit in the prescribed manner: it tells you to rub the fruit gently and then knock off the end and suck at it till the pulp runs down your gullet in a steady flow. More importantly, the brave should take the whole mango into their mouth, the essay recommends, and chew the meat and skin and then eject the stone out or some other blah. The only mango that I dare attempt to put whole in my mouth is perhaps the uppumanga (small mango in brine) or even smaller kannimanga (the eye-shaped, baby mangoes plucked when ...