THE CULTURE WARS over the mango are a very new thing. For most of our history, Indians consumed mangoes grown only in their own region, unaware of varieties grown elsewhere; the exceptions were kings and rich merchants and travellers. Elaborate mango markets have developed only over the past half-century or so. This period has witnessed a rapid expansion of infrastructure in trade, transport, and travel. Mango varieties are traded across faraway regions today; like people, they get to travel a lot more. Markets of most urban centres sell at least some non-local varieties. High-quality fruit from a long distance away is too expensive. And the best produce of one region seldom goes outside. Consumers in Uttar Pradesh have not seen or tasted the best fruit from Andhra Pradesh; in fact, it is very likely they have not tasted the best mangoes from neighbouring Bihar! Consumers in Mumbai will not get to taste the best mangoes from West Bengal or even Goa, no matter how high a price they are willing to pay.
Your understanding and definition of the mango is shaped by what you have experienced. ‘You grow up with a taste and that does not change with age. It marks your past, your identity,’ said Faiyyumbhai Karimbhai, a third-generation mango trader in the Talala mandi near Junagadh in Gujarat. ‘We’ve eaten Kesar mangoes from childhood. No mango compares for us. Even if I travel the world to taste the finest things, the memory of that taste will remain untouched!’ It’s how I feel about the seed-grown juicy mangoes of Malwa that my uncle used to buy.
People are quick to reject unfamiliar varieties in order to celebrate their own mangoes. The Alphonso fan club gets carried away, routinely declaring the Hapus as the best and the greatest variety in the world, and as the undisputed king of the king of fruits. No other variety has so many claims of peerless excellence made on its behalf. ‘Nobody who can afford the Hapus eats anything else during its season here,’ said Anand Desai, Mandar’s brother who manages operations in Pawas village of Ratnagiri. In Mumbai, a kindly old man from a rich Gujarati family once asked me, his face overcome with pity: ‘What do you eat in the north? You do not even get to see the Alphonso there!’
A backlash is inevitable. It gets tangled up in the familiar Delhi-Mumbai rivalry, with the Alphonso of Maharashtra, and the Dashehri/Langda of Uttar Pradesh sent into the ring. A fitting respondent to Hapus chauvinism is Sohail Hashmi, a documentary film maker-cum-social activist-cum-history buff-cum-bon vivant. He is quite knowledgeable about north Indian mangoes. I met him in the Delhi Press Club one evening. ‘You never have to apologize for a Dashehri mango. If it’s ripe, it will be good. But I’ve never tasted an Alphonso for which the host does not have to apologize,’ he said. ‘They will inevitably say this one is not as good as the best the Hapus can be.’ He said the Alphonso tastes like aam papad or leathery mango bars sold in sweet and salty variations.
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Hashmi organizes walks through Delhi’s historical sites and food trails and is much in demand during the mango season. His range extends to an annual mango-eating picnic near Delhi. Hashmi, as the raconteur, is as big an attraction as the setting and the mangoes. He recounted an altercation between two famous and friendly personalities many years ago.
The first was Mumbai-born screenwriter Saeed Akhtar Mirza, creator of the popular 1980s tele-series Nukkad. The second was Rajan Prasad, a socio-political activist with SAHMAT, the Delhi-based collective formed after Hashmi’s dramatist-activist brother Safdar was murdered in 1989. Mirza had served Rajan Alphonso mangoes in Mumbai. The meeting soon descended into the familiar Hapus vs Dashehri script, becoming a sub-text to the Delhi vs Mumbai wrangle. Rajan claimed it was not even a contest, that Mumbai cannot be called a city because it lacks the two basic qualifications for a serious claim to urban culture: a poet like Mirza Ghalib and a mango variety like the Dashehri.
Just as the honour of families is popularly linked to the bodies of women—consider common swear words—the honour of cities/ regions rests in their signature mango varieties. To disrespect a city or a region, all you have to do is insult its mango. A Delhi-born friend of mine, now living in Mumbai, never misses an opportunity to run down Mumbai’s obsession with the Hapus. For the longest time, I did the same and wrote about it, too.
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Varieties of the east and the north like the Langda, Dashehri, Chausa, and Himsagar are often very sweet. The more famous varieties of the south are more flavourful, with a subtle sweet-sour taste. The Alphonso’s marquee taste owes to a particular blend of sugar and acid. The most widespread southern variety is probably Andhra Pradesh’s Banganapalle; it is called Benishan/Baneshan in Telangana, Safeda in North India, Badam in Maharashtra, and Badami in Karnataka. This, too, has a characteristic sugar-acid blend.
‘Flavour in mango results from heat,’ said Bharat R. Salvi, one of India’s best-known mango scientists based in Maharashtra. Watery conditions decrease both the sugar and acid content of the fruit. Tanveer Hussain of Bengaluru, India’s largest mango pulp exporter, described another difference: ‘The taste and flavour depend on the soil. In coastal areas, the skin of the mango tends to be much thinner; it gets thicker as you move inland. Closer the sea, sweeter the mango!’ However, no one rule can explain everything. The signature taste of most varieties owes to the soil and weather of a particular region. When grown outside that region, the same variety tastes and looks slightly different.
Southern varieties with a sugar-acid blend travel better. The excess sugar in northern mangoes makes them ripen quickly, reducing their shelf life. As a consequence, North Indians end up eating more southern mangoes than vice versa. There are other reasons, too. Horticultural operations in southern India are better organized than in the north, where rough handling cuts down their visual appeal. The biggest reason, though, is the seasonal variation: the summer begins much earlier in southern India and the monsoon arrives earlier. The mango flowers and fruits are much earlier there, about two months ahead of north India. Mangoes from the south begin to flood north Indian markets in April-May; but the markets in the South do not see as much of the late produce from the North in July-August.
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This influences consumption patterns. ‘In Mumbai, the Jains stop eating the mango with the onset of the monsoon out of a religious fear of ingesting insects,’ said Bhatambrekar. ‘Right after the first shower, you cannot find one customer for mangoes in this city,’ said a trader in the Crawford Market. When the monsoon hits Mumbai in early June, the mango market ebbs away.
Mid-June is when the major varieties of North India begin to hit the markets. In the mango belts here, people say the mango is to be enjoyed only after the rains set in. ‘We’ve heard from our childhood that only after the rains does the mango acquire shree (grace, richness, and plenitude),’ said Shyam Sunder Jaiswal, a food connoisseur of Varanasi. These differences get expressed in the greatest exhibition of the fruit, the mango festival. Each region holds its festival at the peak of its season, when the best fruit from other regions is not available. South Indians have not consumed the best mangoes from the north, and vice versa. I’ve eaten many a humbling mango over the past few years, regretting my ignorance.
- The above excerpt has been reproduced here with due permission of the publisher Aleph Book Company.
Sopan Joshi's Mangifera Indica (408 pages, Rs 799) is currently available in your nearest bookstores and online.