Mango Melody

Underneath the mango tree / Me honey and me can watch for the moon / Underneath the mango tree / Me honey and me, we plan marry soon. Monty Norman’s calypso from the film Dr. No.

The mango season is upon us, and if it were not for the IPL, the recently concluded assembly elections and the never concluding US/Israel – Iran imbroglio, not necessarily in that order, all dinner table and party conversations will have been dominated by the mango. Under the circumstances, the luscious fruit is finding it hard to get a word in edgeways but not for want of trying. Let’s face it, the mango is a delicious fruit, probably the queen among fruits (or is it the king?), and the average Jai or Jaya in India cannot wait for the newspapers to formally announce its arrival. Rather like anticipating the monsoon hitting Kerala(m). India is the world’s largest producer of mangoes, which gives it an exalted status for the globe’s fruity bragging rights. When it comes to mangoes India is way ahead of laggard China, a distant second. Eat your heart out, President Xi.

At his recent tête-à-tête on the sidelines during Prime Minister Modi’s 5-nation tour of Europe, his dialogues with the heads of Italy, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands could well have been dominated by issues pertaining to bilateral trade keeping in mind the EU-India Free Trade Agreement. Not to forget the historic Chola copper plates our Prime Minister wheedled out of the Netherlands. It is thus entirely possible, and I am only conjecturing, that our Prime Minister, while accepting the customary gifts from the different heads of state exchanged, along with handwoven silk scarves and other exotic objet d’art, boxes of succulent Indian mangoes. The mango motif, if indeed it figured, faded into the background as India’s brand of Melody toffees was especially reserved for the Italian PM Giorgia Meloni. Which was the cue for our social and conventional media to go completely bonkers.

Evidently some bright spark in our bureaucracy, or perhaps our PM himself, who is no slouch with word play, took up PM Meloni’s algebraic equation that Meloni + Modi = Melodi and spun it for what it was worth, presenting her with a bagful of Melody toffees to sweeten the deal! It was an overwrought pun but it received over-the-top television coverage here in India. From Melodi to Melody was but a small step, and perhaps a giant leap for  Parle confectionary, the makers of Melody and beneficiaries of this fortuitous serendipity. Last heard, they were laughing all the way to the bank, given the humongous amount of free advertising the brand received. Melody toffees are presently stocked out and Parle’s factories are working overtime to meet the demand. Social media went berserk, going clean off the charts. The only unhappy person appeared to be Congress leader Rahul Gandhi who, as is his wont, mocked the PM for his toffee diplomacy while doom and gloom, if not total Armageddon, was drawing nigh here at home. Rumours that Parle have despatched an assuaging carton of Melody toffees to the Gandhi scion may or may not be true.

Notwithstanding all the geo-political distractions, I am guessing that the mango would not be denied its due place in the seasonal scheme of things. Given the mango pecking order, it would not have been surprising if the Indian Premier wore a superior smile, with a keen eye on the cameras, while handing over a box of Banganapalli, Himsagar and Alphonso, while the chief honchos of the European nations would have been hard pressed to find a suitably delicious response. If a Norwegian press reporter tried to badger him with inconvenient questions about freedom of expression back home, our indefatigable PM merely swotted them away like so many gnats. He never answered a press reporter in India. Why would he start now on foreign shores?

Frankly, I have no idea if the mango played any part in Mr. Modi’s Europe sojourn, but my imagination would like to believe it did. So much for mango diplomacy. Let us return to our social whirl. I was a fly on the wall at a dinner hosted by a prominent socialite a few days ago, and the mango was the central subject of conversation, once the party folks had tired of discussing Dhoni’s rousing non-return to CSK and if the unstoppable BJP will ever meet an immovable force. Or vice versa. The latter being laughed out of court given the recent assembly election results. Here are some random snatches of tittle-tattle I was able to eavesdrop at the party, as I flitted to and fro sipping my tall, cool glass of aam panna.

‘I just can’t wait for the mango dessert. There’s nothing quite like the pure, sliced Alphonso with a dollop of vanilla ice-cream after that rich, spicy Indian curry,’ chirped a loud, visiting American lady journalist. ‘Can’t get enough of it, and to hell with watching my weight. The mango Trumps everything else. That’s with a capital T,’ she added, giggling girlishly at her own unfunny pun.

Then of course, no mango season can be complete without pearls of mango wisdom issuing forth from the mango snob. ‘You know, everyone runs after the Alphonso like it was the nectar of the gods. I grant you the finest Alphonso is quite a treat, but I do believe it is a tad overrated. For my money, the Himsagar from West Bengal takes the cake, if you’ll pardon the mixed culinary metaphor. Not to forget that West Bengal is also currently the flavour of the season in more ways than one. There’s just that right blend of sweetness and a slight hint of sour mischief that makes it an all-time favourite. While I yield to no one in my admiration for the estimable Banganapalli from Andhra, it will have to bow before the Himsagar’s majesty’.

Speaking for myself, these cocktail circuit fancy mangoes are all very well. Priced extortionately (‘Rs.250/- a kilo, daahling, for this sinful pre-season Kesar from Gujarat’), you cannot avoid severe indigestion at those sinful prices. For me, there’s nothing like the raw mango peddled by the street vendor, expertly sliced, diced and smeared with salt and chilli powder. That’s what we used to devour standing outside our school gates. And we did not come down with food poisoning. I am talking ‘swinging ‘60s’ here. At 10 naye paise a slice, it was like mann(g)a from heaven. A true Aam Aadmi Phul. As a rule I try to go easy on puns, but I could not resist those two opportunities to indulge myself. An admonitory slap on the wrist is in order.

The mango snob is rather like the wine snob. The whole idea seems to be to preen his encyclopaedic knowledge of mangoes, and the more he has paid for it, the more his awestruck admirers hang on his every word. ‘Ok folks, we all know India is the largest mango producer in the world, and most of us are familiar with all the varieties. But wait till I fish out something special just for this small group of mango aficionados. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the world’s sweetest mango. This is the Carabao mango from the Zambales orchards in the Philippines. It cost me a prince’s ransom but hey, what’s a few bucks between friends?’

So saying, he invited us to tuck into a slice of the Carabao dipped in a specially prepared Filipino avocado sauce. It tasted like nothing on earth, by which I do not mean it tasted ethereal. Au contraire, I would not have offered it to my dog,  fussy pooch. It was as much as all of us could do to swallow the damn thing and not bring it up till we ran to the nearest loo. We did not wish to offend our host but we declined a second helping saying it was too precious to waste on common folk like us with such plebeian tastes. Perhaps it was an acquired taste, like caviar. I think he got the message.

All said and done, you cannot keep us Indians, be they the hoi polloi or the upper crust, from discussing the mango threadbare in all its myriad facets. After all, the mango season lasts barely two to three months, and if you do not dive in and get yours as quickly as you can, you are going to rue your missed chances. And the connoisseur will continue to mumble his respectful ode to the Chaunsa from Himachal Pradesh, the Dasheri and Langra from Uttar Pradesh, and the Totapuri from Karnataka. Last but not the least, there’s the Mulgova from Tamil Nadu. Celebrated in legend and song and widely dubbed as ‘the Alphonso of the South’, a description the chauvinistic Tamilians scoff at. Their riposte would be that the Alphonso should be called the ‘the Mulgova of the West’. Quite right too! The new CM Joseph Vijay could take a leaf out of that observation and gain more brownie points from his adoring populace.

So there you are. We will fight over pride and prejudice, but the mango in India will reign supreme. Alas, for too short a time. I am reminded of a song, composed and performed to much acclaim by a Calcutta based band, The Cavaliers, during the heady 60s. It was called Love is a Mango which became a huge local hit as it was released during the mango season. I might be romanticising this, but what the hell! Some of my college mates played in that band and even today, when I take a succulent bite off a Himsagar, Love is a Mango plays in my head. What can I say? We are all going bananas over the mango.