‘Tis the season: the season for mangoes, that is.
This doesn’t just mean that now is when you’ll get the best price for a mango. Or that now is when the restaurants will introduce their seasonal seduction of mango cheesecakes, mango mocktails or mango mess. Or that now is when your hair, skin, gut, eyes and immunity should be at their peak from all the mango health benefits you are being promised.
Mumbai’s mango season doesn’t just mean any one, or even all, of these things. Oh no, no, no. It means an invasion, a flood, a deluge; a city-wide siege by an all-powerful fruit royalty; a pell-mell descent into mango madness as Mumbaikars bow down to their King of Fruits. And if the mango is the King of Fruits, then you can only imagine the reverence reserved for Alphonso, pride of Maharashtra: King of the King of Fruits. Right now, about a month into the season, it’s Alphonso holding court. The internet tells me this year is a bumper year, as was last year, which perhaps explains the avalanche which has engulfed the city.
Anyone who’s anyone is a mango man these days. Curbside purveyors range from shops to wagons to carts to a simple stack of boxes, arranged opportunistically on a vacant paving slab. You can’t go more than five minutes in Mumbai without seeing someone hustling to flog a mango. Imagine an English strawberry season or a Jersey royal potato season, with their ubiquitous menu specials and grab-and-go honesty boxes half-hidden in hedgerows, but with more manpower, fewer rules, and far, far, far more produce. We, Jasper and I, have found ourselves a mango guy close to home. He is more pot belly than personality but he comes up with the goods. We can either do a drive-by at his pop-up not-quite-shop on our way back from one of Jasper’s classes, or we can walk there from home in about five minutes (depending on the strength and willingness of our legs at that moment, on that day). Jasper treats him like an old friend, shouting a big ‘hello again’ from a couple of metres out, having stopped there at least ten times so far this season. The man eyes Jasper with some confusion and much distrust.
The mango is India’s national fruit, in the same way the mighty apple is Great Britain’s and the mysterious Riberry is Australia’s. What on earth is a riberry, I have no idea, but Wikipedia tells me it also goes by Syzygium luehmannii, small leaved lilly pilly, cherry satinash or clove lilli pilli, so I am almost certain it’s made up. It makes sense for India to bestow national-level recognition on the mango, given that this country is the world’s leading producer of mangoes, with an estimated 24.7 million tons of mangoes being produced here annually.
As humble worshippers of this fragrant King, we pay our homage by consuming around two dozen mangoes a week. Before you grow frantic with worry that we’ve taken out a mortgage to fund our fruit bowl, I should let you in on a secret. Alphonso mangoes are only about 70 pence a pop here in Mumbai. And that’s for a medium-large one, weighing in at around 260g and measuring at least 11 cm from stem to tip. Sure, it’s still a￡16 a week habit we have ourselves here, but I think the three-month season’s costs pro-rata’d across the entire year must work out almost reasonable, no?
When we lived in Myanmar, we also enjoyed the mango season, but never to this level of frenzy. In Yangon, we would buy our mangoes from a roadside fruit-seller, or from the regular supermarket; one or two fruits at a time. The main reason for our comparatively conservative consumption was that Dylan had a particularly dedicated admin assistant on his team who would chop a mango a day for him to eat at his desk. With his (then significantly less extravagant) mango needs satisfied, our fridge was allowed to hold alternative fruits.
In Myanmar, another big difference was that we didn’t live in the mango-growing region. Yangonites had to bring in mangoes from the north of Myanmar, up near Mandalay, or from Shan State, which made mangoes a rarer fruit than here in Mumbai—the capital city of the state from where most of India’s mangoes originate. Gifting someone a dozen, carefully transported mangoes, was a mark, not only of generosity but also of respect in Yangon. While I worked at the bank, I was sent a box of mangoes per season (from the founder’s own Shan State mango farm, I believe): a treat afforded me by my designation, rather than by any assumption that I would reciprocate in any way, as may have been the case in some other mango gift exchanges.
Jasper’s first experience of mango was about a month into his weaning journey, when my annual corporate haul arrived accompanied by those meant for a colleague who had kindly passed on his gift on account of having recently visited Shan State and returned with his hand luggage laden. As I scrambled to make mango for all moods—smoothies, ice-creams, muffins, cookies, fruit bowls—I offered some freshly stripped pits to a then 7-month old Jasper and he all but bathed in the juices of two dozen ripe Sein Ta Lone, Myanmar’s most famous variety, which also goes by the humble pseudonym the ‘diamond solitaire mango’. (That we achieved this level of mango joy mid-pandemic and mid-coup speaks volumes for those famous health benefits of mango, I'd say.)
Here in Mumbai, now approaching midway in our third mango season, I can’t blame Dylan entirely for how many we go through; Jasper and I pull (and eat) our weight too. Last year, I was more conservative in my purchase of mangoes because it felt too indulgent, too decadent. This year, I’m here to win prizes.Where last year I would find a duff one in my dozen and chuck it with a sigh of gratitude for how many good ones I had, this year I complain and request a replacement. I have even abandoned my trusty fruit guy (the one who delivers all the other fruits we have in the roster—watermelons, pears, grapes, blueberries, kiwis and the odd trusty apple) in favour of our friendly neighbourhood mangoman because I felt duty bound to reward the hustle of going so deep into specialist sales for such a short window of profit. I think our new guy is actually a barber in the off-season. Which might explain the wariness with which he eyes Jasper and his current unruly mop.
Every morning I chop mangoes for our breakfast. I add blueberries to Dylan’s and my bowls, just because they look nice, but I know that Dylan would prefer his mango untarnished by a so-called superfood. I have my chopping down to a fine art, although I have no idea if this is actually the right way to cut a mango.
Something I learned last year, despite my reserved approach to mango season, is just how many different varieties of mangoes there are and what order they come parading out in. I actually don’t think they necessarily have to stay in formation through the season, but my experience last year was that once the Alphonsos started to run out, in came the Kesar to take their place. Not quite as delicious and not as plentiful in harvest (from what I could see), the Kesar did at least fill a hole. And once the Kesar was past its best, I was introduced to the Langda and the Chousa. I believe the mango menu rotates with the weather in the states from which each of these originate: the Alphonsos are from Maharashtra—Ratnagiri, if you’re a purist; the Kesar from Gujarat—a neighbouring state just north of here; the Langda from Uttar Pradesh, and the Chousa from Himachal Pradesh or Bihar. This tail end duo are from up near the Himalayas in the far north and east of the country, which might explain the different timings of their seasons from their lower lying, more western counterparts. (Might, I claim no expertise in mango farming here, just the observational powers of my taste buds.)
Despite only being about half way through the season, I am already dreading it ending. Not because I will miss the fruits, which, of course I will, but only in the same way I miss my Christmas tree when it’s time to pack it away for another year. It’s also not because the departure of the mangoes means the arrival of the rains. No, the main reason I dislike the end of the mango season is because it signifies the beginning of the long, tedious, 9-month stretch of what I like to call the Complaint Season: the season when I have to endure Dylan’s daily grumble and gripe about the sad state of his morning fruit bowl.
Here is some actual footage of Dylan devouring a mango at breakfast this morning.
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