Waxing lyrical about mangoes

The best thing about having good friends from other countries is you like them enough to want to know them beyond their personalities. You want to know the country/ countries they were in and the good, bad and ugly that they experience. Another thing even better is also when you're traveling over to meet that good friend in the country they were from. Then you start amassing massive amounts of information so you wouldn't seem so ignorant and can start asking intelligent questions. Along the way, you encounter many quirky and wonderful stories while searching for more more more information. This, is one of them.

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Aam aadmi: The golden mango syndromeThe Asian Age India H.Y. Sharada Prasad

August is usually a busy month all over the country. Half way through the monsoon, farmers find their hands full of work on their fields. In schools and colleges the academic term would have got into full stride, with the distractions of student union elections left well behind. Industrial production is not hampered by too many holidays and trade would be in full swing. We find even our parliamentarians, for a change, taking their work seriously. Not that everything is tickety-boo the nation's composure has been shaken by the century's worst downpour in Mumbai and its conscience troubled by the Nanavati report.

Set against the background of these grave national concerns, what I am going to write about — a personal worry — will appear ridiculous, even bathetic, to most people. But since I have experienced it for years and years and been wanting to write about it, let me take the risk of being considered puerile and put it down on paper.

The anxiety I experience in the month of August can be called the golden mango syndrome. I have lived in Delhi for almost 50 years. I am not one of those lucky ones who escape to a hill station in the hot months. What has enabled me to stand the rigours of Delhi's summer is the mango. If Blake asked the tiger: "Did he who made the lamb make thee?," I ask the mango: "Did he who made Delhi's summer so hot make thee?," and send up my heart-felt (rather, belly-felt) thanks.

Delhi has an unusually long summer. From the end of March to the middle of July you have a hot dry summer when you are roasted. Then come the rains and you are steam-cooked for another two months. Fortunately Delhi has also an unusually long mango season. For nearly four months you get a succession of varieties of our national fruit. First you have the humbler varieties — Sindoori, Safeda, Siroli — which haven't shed their sourness. By the time the Safeda begins tasting fully sweet, the main variety of the region, Dussehri, makes its appearance to hold the field for almost two months. Then comes its paler yellow rival, larger in size, Chausa. Weaving in and out between the two is the Langda, which refuses to don the courtly colours and insists on looking rustic, but its heart is honey.

A Bengali will remark, "None of these can compare with our Malda," and a Maharashtrian will assert with supreme conviction, "If the mango is the king of Indian fruits, the Ratnagiri Apus is the king among mangoes, the Shahenshah. Who can beat it in looks, taste and fragrance?" Of all types of patriotism, mango patriotism is the most aggressive and vocal. Bangalore will swear by its Raspuri, Badami, and Malgova; Goa by its Alphonso; Madras by its Salem Gundu; and Gujarat by its Valsad Apus. Andhra will proclaim that its Imam-Pasand and Cheruku-Rasaloo are second to none. There is no variety so humble, be it Neelam or Totapuri, that does not have its taker. After all, the purse controls and rationalises taste. The mango may be the king of fruits. But it is not merely for kings. It is also the fruit of the common people, the aam aadmi, if punning is permitted.

During the year many fruits come and go — plums, peaches, pears, apricots, lychees, melons, and pineapples — like bit actors on the stage. Oranges, grapes, and apples stay longer. The faithful banana is with us all the time. But none of them has the dominance of the mango.
None commands our allegiance as it does. That is what makes my Augusts so full of apprehension. At the beginning of the month we would be consuming mangoes at their juiciest. Towards the middle of the month we get the feeling that the peak has been crossed and that the fruit allows itself to be bitten too limply. And before the month draws to a close, our neighbourhood fruit-seller announces: "Babuji, the season is over." The worry that fills my Augusts is how I would be able to cope with mangolessness until the next mango season. This is where, I suppose, memory and hope play a part.

The mango grows almost all over India. Along with the neem and the tamarind it must be the most widely cultivated tree in our country. The intimate links of all three with our country are proclaimed by their botanical names — Mangifera Indica, Azadirachta Indica, and Tamarindus Indica. All three are good shade trees and are used for woodwork and timber. The sour green mango is as much in demand as the ripe fruit for it is a popular pickle. Mango leaves are used for decorating doorposts and platforms during festivals. There are few experiences as heady and invigorating as walking in a mango orchard in full bloom in spring with the bees buzzing. Weavers, cloth-printers and jewellers have lovingly used the mango motif. It is popular not only with classical poets but with folk bards and story-tellers as well.

Mango cultivation involves considerable mastery of the science of grafting, in which the nawabs of Uttar Pradesh and the Deccan had great skill. Many are the stories told of the old mango gourmets. It is said that some of these nawabs went round their orchards when the fruits were still ripening and indicated their choice. In due course those which bore their initials were plucked and cooled for a couple of days in a flowing stream before they were cut and served with due ceremony. These mango parties were no ordinary affairs.

Such refinement is a far cry from a true story concerning an editor I knew from Karnataka who was well known for his love of a particular variety of succulent mango. Once he asked his servant to buy two dozen mangoes which he sucked with his usual relish. When he counted the seeds he found only 23. He admonished the lad for allowing himself to be duped by the fruit-seller. The boy insisted he had brought 24 and showed the master that there were 24 skins. "Then don't worry," said our editor, gently rubbing his capacious paunch.

Americans, we are told, do not like mangoes because they find they taste like shoe polish and smell like turpentine. Probably the mangoes from Colombia do — I am not sure if Colombians know of the importance of grafting. An abiding mango memory I have relates to Moscow. At a banquet that Indira Gandhi gave the Soviet leaders, mangoes were served for dessert. They created a sensation. Many of the top leaders asked whether they could take them home to show their grandchildren. It was a sight to see Cabinet ministers and bemedalled generals slipping mangoes into their pockets like schoolboys taking away chocolates.

H.Y. Sharada Prasad was adviser to Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi

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I can relate to this because in Singapore mangoes can be distinguished as well. Philippine mangoes are the juiciest and sweetest (I haven't tasted the said mangoes in this article so I wouldn't be able to compare hee...). Then followed by the skinny mangoes which always holds a surprise when you bite into it. You wouldn't know if they're going to be sour or sweet or both. Then there are the unripe lime-green mangoes which are delish for Thai salads, yum. Living in a city, who cares how mangoes or any crop for that matter are grown. They always appear nicely cleaned, wrapped in cellophane and ready to be eaten almost immediately in our supermarkets. But as I browsed through IHT today, this article on crop diversity jumped at me. The exhortation in the article is true, crop diversity is not only about survival though to me her argument regarding quality of life is a new angle and one which I can relate to easily. Imagine walking through the isles looking for your favourite cherry tomato and only finding big, red, juicy looking ones but getting disappointed when it tastes bland. I have fallen into such traps before and chosen the nicest looking vegetables/ fruits, only to be let down time and again. What's red wine without knowing if its a shiraz or burgundy, or originating from Australian, French or California wine?

But despite this argument on quality of life being more seductive, crop diversity is about survival and should not stray far from letting people understand we need to ensure genetic diversity in various crops. If you haven't noticed already the weather is increasingly erratic, temperatures in summer are soaring and suffocating, winters are bitter and unwelcoming. These crops are needed because there are some that are suitable to be grown and have adapted to certain harsh environments and are able to withstand future environmental hazards.

Oh and by the way, erratic weather is caused by global warming. Generally saying, by countries which refuse to sign Kyoto protocol and hide under the Asia Pacific Climate pact. Who are by the way, countries which are catering to the desire of our need for more. More cars, more clothes, more plastic bags. I have no solution for capitalism and I'm not going to be hypocritical to say that we should go back to using candles (though that's very romatic). But I do believe that it is not necessary to waste resources. For example, bringing your own bags to the supermarket, not buying leather goods, supporting green products (even if its more expensive, that's only temporary because they don't have economies of scale). Hmm...am I way off the tangent by this? Nature has made it so that everything and everyone is interrelated. We cannot expect to see things in singularity.

But living in Shanghai makes me realise how sweet the fresh air in Singapore, even when I'm walking along a busy traffic street. Seeing the dolphins in San Diego in their natural habitat makes me realise how much I enjoy their natural exuberance and playfulness (not even one-tenth comparable to them in captivity). I'd like to have all that, the way it was. Can I please? Pretty please?