How to Eat Mangoes is a radical and sensual antidote to the narratives of destruction and death we are being fed by the mainstream media.
How to Eat Mangoes takes stories about rishta aunties (matchmaking aunties), erotic fiction and the exotic mango to question how we love, how we heal and most importantly how we eat mangoes. While a rishta aunty tells us who and how we should love, sounds of mangoes being eaten punctuate her every word. We’re left with suggestions on how we heal that no longer feel risque but instead feed out soul and help us look past beyond the destruction.
We’ve spent the last year trying to survive, focussing on emergency and crisis responses.
We’ve forgotten how to dream.
We’ve forgotten how to live past healing. Have we forgotten what touch is like? Have we forgotten to trust our senses?
When our hands are enough to rupture skin, do we bring a knife to a mango fight?
Are we afraid of getting messy, of truly digging deep inside flesh and tasting honesty?
How to eat mangoes, produced in collaboration with Georgetown University’s Lab for Global Performance and politics. Afshan performed this piece at ACLS Philadelphia and the Screening Scholarship Media Festival (SSMF) CAMRA, University of Pennsylvania.