Mango Tango - Page 22

The Great Mango Debate

by Som Vishwakarma
USA

May 25, 2006

Summer is the mango season in India. Everyone is excited about eating the delicious king of the fruits. The Indian summer season is blistering hot (with frequent power cuts) so people have limited good things to look forward to. Children are obviously the happiest since they have summer vacations plus they can go to their nanihaal. But for adults the highlight of the summer season is the mango. The history of South East Asian countries like India, Nepal, Thailand, Cambodia and Bangladesh is filled with mango tales. I remember reading Jatak Kathas about mangoes (okay it was a monkey tale but I cannot take my mind off the mangoes!).

In school they taught us that in India we have unity in diversity and that diversity is the essence of India. Well, even the king of fruits has diversity. We have Hapus/Alphonso from Ratnagiri in Maharashtra, Kesar from Gujarat, Banganpalli from Andhra Pradesh, Dussehari from UP and of course Langda from Bihar and Bengal .

This diversity in mangoes has created it's own set of debates. The mangoes debates! Besides the usual topics like reservations and politics, people have passionately started discussing and debating mangoes.

People from each state are claiming that mangos from their parts are the best. They are not merely satisfied by calling their mangoes the king of fruits but they want to crown their local mangoes the king of the kings. I have observed people from various states defending their mangoes with the passion of a religious fanatic/racist. Love and loyalty of the mango from their own state plus the xenophobic hate of mangoes from other states doubly blind them. Dare to call their mangoes second best and you are in trouble.

The funny things is that most people have not even eaten the types of mangoes that they are so vociferously condemning while defending the mango from their own state. Tell a Maharashtrian guy that you like langda better than Hapus or tell an AP guy that you like Kesar better than Banganpalli and you are going to get an earful. People will say nasty things to each other that will sometimes even put the reservation debate to shame! They refuse to budge an inch from their stand and are obviously blind and hostile to logic.

Their mangoes debate equation is very simple and is similar to the reservation debate equation:

My Side = Right Side and
Your Side = Wrong Side

You try to change the equation as follows
XYZ Side = Function Of (Many Variables) and all the sides will rush to you with their arms drawn.

My personal take on the mango debate is to enjoy all the flavors of mangoes. It's quite possible that a certain flavor tastes best in a certain region since the produce is more fresh (no transportation delay). It's true that the love and sweet memories of your state and language gets magically added to the mango's taste. But mangoes are meant for eating so why fight over them. It's not as if mango is a talwar and one myan can hold only one talwar. You can put a piece of each type of mango on your plate and enjoy all of them together. You can even try creating many more mango tastes by eating the different types in one bite (I forgot the permutation/combination formulae but you can get almost infinite flavors by varying the amount and type of mangoes).

In US we don't get the Indian mangoes yet but early this year the US and India have signed agreements/deals. People call it the nuclear agreement but my eyes are fixated on 'allow the mango import from India' part of this deal! Most Indians in US don't visit India during summer (instead preferring the winter/festive season) so we miss the Indian mangoes. It's highly likely that we will see the Indian mangoes in the US next summer. Till that date we have to just wait, watch and count the days (one full year to go!). To all the guys back in India enjoy the mangoes!