In 2011 Soe Noesuipawraepong, an author and journalist of Thai origin living in Port Louis, published an article titled «Coeur Royal» in the in-flight mazagine of an Asian airline. The text was about a young mango from the region of Ayutthaya, the erstwhile capital of Siam. The mango won the first prize in a beauty contest and was, as such, bestowed with the title, Beauty Queen of Ayutthaya. Fired by the wish to «feel the pulse of the world» she took off for America in order to become a «wonder» there and ultimately «a divine icon in the culinary temple of a New York fine food store.» The little mango’s family «scraped the bottom of the barrel» to gather the money to send her to America. The journey was hard and on her arrival in America the little fruit was immediately put into a freezer where she «froze like no other queen from Ayutthaya had ever done». At some point, however, she managed to land up, ripe and sweet, in a fruit-seller’s stand in Soho – «in the footlights of her own beauty, in the glory of her royalty». But then a careless passer-by bumped into the vendor’s cart and the little mango fell off her perch and tumbled onto the ground and went rolling under a car parked nearby, «where her regal glamour was extinguished, quite unnoticed».
With this tale Soe Noesuipawraepon alludes to the hope nursed by many of his countrymen of finding a better life by selling their beauty and by migrating to the West. At the same time he mocks his people’s belief in the incorruptible pedigree of their royal family. The upshot of the publication of his «Coeur Royal» is that it’s now difficult to go past any mango-seller without wondering if, down there in the gutter, a queen from Ayutthaya isn’t exuding her last ounce of glamour.
First Publication: 14-3-2012
Modifications: 22-6-2013