United flavours of mango

BREATHES there an Indian who does not overdose on mangoes in this season? I think not. With even bakwas vegetables (torai, lauki) being sold at unbelievable prices, to say nothing of tomatoes that are out of reach for most of us, it makes so much sense to switch to eating fruits instead. As any good housewife will testify, they are a healthier option and it is far, far easier to persuade picky children to eat these rather than the watery vegetable curries made by bored cooks. Jokes aside, there is a mind-boggling variety available in every market, each with a distinctive flavour and aroma. This owes much to those who have spent years grafting and perfecting the native Indian mango, which was small, full of fibre and juice, but lacked the sophistication of the present varieties. I can say pretty confidently that many of these gifted orchardists were Muslims, who created some of the best-known mangoes.

Malihabad, a qasba near Lucknow, produces the dusseri that cannot be replicated anywhere else. Its long, firm fruit that contains a heavenly aroma and a sweet, fibre-free pulp is now exported almost completely to the Middle East. It is said that contractors from there come here to check the crop and book entire orchards. The produce is then packed and flown there. The result is that the dusseri now sold as Malihabadi is actually the grade-II variety. As a child, I remember huge baskets packed with green leaves at Charbagh station waiting to be carried by train to various destinations. One of these baskets (known as jhauas) would be sent by a friend to my uncle, a doctor in Mukteshwar, and neatly sliced to be evenly distributed among the large gathering of cousins and others who shared their table.

The delectable langra comes after the dusseri. Grown all over the Indo-Gangetic plains, Varanasi was traditionally considered its natural capital. Friends from Bihar swore by their malda, which is the Bihari cousin of our UP langra. The end of the mango season belonged to the chausa, known as samar-bahisht in Rampuri lingo and was truly the king of the North Indian mango. Each year, on our return journey from Kumaon, we made pit-stops to buy these fragrant, juicy and utterly sweet beauties. For a long time, these were the best mangoes I had known. I’d heard of the Ratnagiri haphoos (also known as the alphonso) but never tasted it because it was unavailable where we lived, or so expensive that we could never buy it. ‘There is one mango,’ I was told, that outstrips all these. It’s grown in a little village called Rataul, near Meerut, and comes for just a week to Delhi.’ Later in life, when I had a chance to eat both the alphonso and the Rataul varieties, I felt our langra and chausa were still better. Wisely, I kept quiet. Then Gujarati friends introduced me to their kesar and others to the mangoes that came from the South. Obstinately, I clung to my own UP mangoes.

A few years ago, long after the mango season in India was over, my cousin served what was the best mango I’d ever eaten. ‘Chausa? In September?’ I asked her. ‘My dear, this is the Pakistani chausa. It costs a bomb but worth every rupee, believe me.’ It was a slice of heaven, truly. On a trip to Rataul in July two years back, we were taken to the orchards that the Siddiqui family has owned and where they grow their prized mangoes. The patriarch who hosted our group was a man whose tongue was sweeter than the mangoes he shared with us. Rataul is a small fruit but has all the attributes of a dusseri, a langra and a chausa, he told us in his gentle, soft voice. Sharing this with my brother, he took the story further. A Siddiqui from this clan, called Anwar, took some saplings with him when he migrated to Pakistan in 1947 and started growing it there. The result is a larger fruit and called the Anwar Rataul and I’m told it’s divine. The Pakistani chausa must have a similar history.

It is interesting to trace the lineage of the mango and find the close syncretic bonds that tie us together as communities. Whether fruits, vegetables or grains — we have received so many new strains from countries and people outside India. What we call our own actually belonged to another land, grew and prospered here and became one of us. This simple truth, so evident even in the very food that keeps us all alive and healthy, needs to be thrust down the throats of all those goons and fundamentalists who want to exclude people rather than embracing them. Nature has taught us over and over again that monoculture ultimately ruins the plant and the land. When will we ever accept this simple lesson?

I have deliberately stayed away from directly addressing the spectre of communal violence that is destroying the efforts of generations of Indians who worked so hard to bring disparate elements together. Our pride in this heritage and our responsibility in keeping it alive should be a sacred covenant that we value above all. One day, when this madness is over, I wonder whether there will be an India left to feel proud about. Or will it sit inside us like the remembered taste of that Malihabadi dusseri mango?