Happiness is a seasonal fruit.
Last summer, I would return home every few days, excitedly hauling watermelons, to no one’s surprise. Sometimes it was humongous ones that you had to hold like a very fat baby indeed, sometimes two or three smaller ones that you rolled around for fun. And oh, every moment was delicious. The small thrill of opening up the watermelon, the crisp cutting, wondering just how red it would be inside, hoping there wouldn’t be too many seeds. And the juices dribbling down your elbow when you cut the watermelon up in small pieces, to be chilled and enjoyed later at night with family, when the cloying heat would become too much to bear and you would seek some relief from it.
And when the bowl was empty, when I downed the remaining juice — cold, refreshing and sweet — I would always go out to buy a new one. To replace it. To repeat the experience. To have more, more, more. Every single time, because I could.
Watermelon season usually lasts from mid-November to mid-January here. But a miraculous harvest made it so that I was able to find watermelons in the city streets up until beginning of March.
And then eventually, even though it lasted months past its season, even though it went counter-current for a while and surprised people with how long the season lasted, watermelon did go out of season.
And this — this is happiness. A seasonal fruit.
A fruit going out of season.
The thing about happiness is I couldn’t write about mine.
Whenever I sat down and began to put pen to paper, to consider the warmth of the happiness enveloping me, all I wanted was to dive back into it. All I wanted was more of it. I didn’t want to think. I didn’t want to write. I just wanted to be happy.
So I set the pen down and went running to savour happiness, like a fruit going out of season.
(And it did).
Note:
Title: Happiness is a mango
Subject of post: Watermelons.
I realise the absolute irony of this. But while watermelons are my favourite, I have a nostalgic connection to mangoes that I can never shake off. And here’s a photo of my very exciting watermelon season, I say casually, as though it’s not the first time I’m sharing a photo of myself here 😂
Young Adult, Old Soul 