There is no romance more enduring than an Indian’s love for the mango, no passion more exciting than the joy of devouring a succulent mango. Nothing divides the people of the Indian sub-continent more than their contending loyalty for their favourite mango — alphonso, langra, himayat, benishaan, bangenapalli, safeda, rassaalu, and so on and so forth, literally dozens of varieties. Nothing unites the people of the Indian sub-continent more than their shared love for this ‘king of fruit’! Unlike so many fruit and vegetables of daily consumption in India that were imported into the sub-continent from distant shores, the Indian mango, Mangifera indica, has been native to the sub-continent for thousands of years. Little wonder that its shape is so ubiquitous in Indian art and architecture, jewelry and design, prose and poetry. The Kama Sutra uses the mango as a metaphor for a woman’s breast while in the Mahabharata it is the repository of Draupadi’s desire. True connoisseurs of the mango know that the best way to pick a good fruit is to feel it and smell it. That very act makes the buying of mangoes a sensual experience.
Is it the heat of the sub-continental summer or the sweetness of the fruit, or its bright yellow colour or the smoothness of its skin? Whatever the reason, there is something magical about the mango. Writing on her blog, a contemporary admirer of the fruit offers an ‘ode to the mango’:
In you/ colours of sunset / envelope juice so succulent / sugar and honey blush. / And sticky rivers of laughter / trickle from fingers to elbows / as strands of delicious memories / stick between my teeth.
For in you / I still taste our childhood joy / perched high in grandma’s tree / so busy searching for the ripest, sweetest prize / that we rarely managed to make it / past the front yard and into the house / for weekly afternoon tea.
For all its local fame, the Indian mango has acquired a global market only recently. Thanks to a new ‘strategic partnership’ between India and the United States, it was only in 2006 that the US accepted the first official consignment of Indian mangoes, after years of negotiations. China opened its market to Indian mangoes only last year, again as a special bilateral gesture. After all, as the ‘king of fruit’, it was destined to become a subject of interest to diplomats, negotiators and latter day heads of state.
The Alphonso remains the most exported of Indian mangoes because of its branding and the more sophisticated marketing infrastructure that has come up in Maharashtra. In New Delhi’s corridors of power a box of Alphonso mangoes is as good a gift a Mumbai lobbyist can offer the capital’s movers and shakers as a bottle of Scotch! With the Alphonso having become a more commonplace gift, the cleverer lobbyists are now switching to other varieties.
But the mango is not just a fruit. It is also used in cooking — both the raw and the ripe variant. Mangoes find their way into spicy pickles and sweet and sour soup, they find their way into curries and desserts. Given the short span of the mango season — April, May and June — it tends to drive most other fruits off the shelf and the table. This adds to the mango’s mystique — a king for a quarter!
