Go, Man Go!

From pulp to classic, fat reams have been written on the mysterious charms of the mango. Another paean

YOU CAN TELL from his manner that he8217;s closer to glutton than gourmand. It8217;s there in the exaggerated relish with which he eats mangos by the dozen, the juice dripping down his hairy chin, the peel roughly dis-carded, making loud, slurping noises with absolutely no regard for the rest of us who8217;re watching him. It was only when he discovered his first ever Alphonso that I saw my guest make the transition from messy eater to connoisseur. He slowed down, raising his eyebrows in surprise; he closed his eyes in ecstasy and shuddered, he took his time, lovingly licking the kernel so as not to waste a single drop of juice, the smallest shred of pulp.

His gastronomic adventure was rudely interrupted by the cook who8217;d discovered his theft8212;that Alphonso was not come by honestly. But even as the old bull monkey, a regular raider of the mango tree outside my window every summer, disappeared into the branches, hooting rudely, he made sure he took what was left of the mango with him. Hours later, you could hear him crooning at the second Alphonso he8217;d pinched when the cook8217;s back was turned. The Hapoos had conquered taste buds yet again, though this may perhaps have been its first simian conversion.

It8217;s hard to carry a grouse against the Alphonso: the pale-green skin, when allowed to ripen to sufficiency, re-veals succulent flesh that carries a taste of ancient sweet-ness, a blend of sunlight and mead. But its supremacy in the market8212;partly because it adapts easily to cold storage and long travel, instead of grousing like other, rarer man-goes8212; makes it easy to overshadow the rest of the roughly two thousand varieties some say are found in India. It8217;s even been successfully cultivated in Jamaica, where the Hapoos is now taking on the legendary Julie and appar-ently holding its own.

Like many mango-lovers, I firmly believe that the mango exists as compensation for summer. The word itself comes from Tamil, though Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Spain also lay claim to the root word; and the fruit spread through Asia, South America, Spain and parts of Eu-rope cour-tesy the Por-tuguese.

True con-noisseurs, un-like my mon-key friend, observe strict mango etiquette. They start the season with raw mango pickles, ambols and curries, work-ing their way through the end-less varieties8212;Banganapalli, To-tapalli, Jehangiri, Dussehri, Langda, Chausa, Pairi, Himsagar, Gulabkhas, ending with Chausas and chusnis. There8217;s fierce competition between the devotees of each kind: the langda, named for a lame fakir from Varanasi who is supposed to have introduced the fruit, is often consid-ered the king of mangos; others swear that the Dussehri is more subtle; still others say that nothing can beat a per-fectly ripened Alphonso.

The passion for the mango finds its way into literature: there are few novels about the avocado or the pear, one memorable William Carlos Williams poem about plums, but the mango is an oddly literary fruit: there is A House on Mango Street and The House of Blue Mangos, A Mango-Coloured Fish and a score of mango poems, written by everyone from Faiz to Chinua Achebe. It8217;s equally versatile in the kitchen, showing up in pies, souffleacute;s, kheers, drinks, salsas, sauces, sherbets, curries and stir-fries.

What is the correct way to eat a mango? I asked three chefs. The first suggested presenting segments of freshly cut fruit in a silver bowl nested in crushed ice, with a silver fork and cream on the side. The second said that the fruit should be sliced, but not peeled, and served without the stone, to be eaten in polite company with a fork, in relaxed company with the hands. The third looked at me as if I8217;d gone insane. 8220;Getting sticky is the whole point,8221; he said.

Story continues below this ad

8220;To eat a mango with anything but your hands is like mak-ing love with a blanket between you and your lover.8221; Books of etiquette might suggest that he is wrong; but I8217;d suspect he has the happiest girlfriends of the lot.