[BITList] Mangoes

[John Feltham]

IN PRAISE OF THE MANGO.




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M.J. AKBAR
Delhi is tinder-dry and coal-hot as I write; the monsoon is still a prediction, albeit a happy one. After two years of water starvation, the weather scientists promise lovely dark skies heavy with continual rain. We have, though, already begun to enjoy an unique compensation for our  May-June heat: the mango season is well underway, and this year's  variety from every corner of India is both abundant and delicious.

I have a personal vested interest to declare.  Were it not for mangoes, I might have been writing this letter from India in Greek.

 In 327 BC, as we all know, Alexander the Invincible crossed the Indus and defeated Porus, ruler  of  Taxila [some 30 km north of present-day Islamabad], opening the door to the fabulous wealth of India. What is less certain is why, instead of marching on, Alexander suddenly wheeled around and started for home. The Great Greek had,  moreover, wisely turned a powerful enemy into an ally when, after his victory, he befriended the vanquished Porus.  As allies they could have ruled from the Ganges to the Mediterranean. As surely Porus knew, or as any good spy could have told Alexander, India was his for the taking, as the Nanda empire was tottering under a weak dynasts.

Theories abound. But I may have found the definitive answer in "Hobson-Jobson", arguably the greatest work of Anglo-Indian cultural history. Written by A.C. Burnell and Henry Yule, and published in 1886, it is a glossary of words and phrases from a brilliant new language wrought from the fusion of British English and Indian experience during two centuries of the Raj. Its authors note: "The mango  is probably the fruit alluded to by Theophrastus as having caused dysentery in the army of Alexander."

This is entirely convincing. The evidence is a clinch.

1: The mango is irresistible. No sane person stops after one mango, if there is an option for more.

2: The Greeks did not.

3: No invader or immigrant, besotted by first sweet and succulent bite,  is  aware of the consequences of mango gluttony.

4: Only those Europeans who have experienced a Delhi belly will ever truly understand the potential of the mango as a strategic weapon.

 It may or may not be coincidental that it took another two thousand years for Europeans to attempt a conquest of India. Question: Two millennia later, the mango was still flourishing, so why did the British succeed where the Greeks fell? The British spent a century and more as traders before they ventured on the battlefield, so there was time for their stomachs to adjust and stabilize, particularly since their principal operations were in the mango-rich lands of Mumbai, Chennai and Bengal.

It needs to be recorded, however, that a low point in Anglo-Indian relations came when Memsahibs chose to eat a mango with a spoon. I was born in a factory-settlement on the river Hooghly, called Telinipara, which came into existence to accommodate the workers of the magnificent Victoria Jute Mill, owned by a Thomas Duff from Dundee.  British managers were still in charge, living within the sanctuary of an imposing wall. Their cooks, grandly called khansamahs, dressed in white and scarlet, who lived on my street, would happily compromise their culinary heritage in the service of Sahibs  and turn out pie or souffle. But the sight of their masters eating sliced mangos by scooping yellow fruit off green skin left them bemused in public and amused in private.

The correct way to eat mangos is messily. You tear apart the skin, bite into flesh and lick the thick juice off the corners of your mouth if it begins to trickle. Some of the juicier varieties simply cannot be cut. You pull  out the short stem, pierce the skin from the top and then suck the juice out till the skin has shrivelled around seed. Among my most enjoyable childhood memories is sitting with a bucket of such suck-mangos soaking in water, eating them one after the other. We had to do this in the bathing room, bare-bodied, near a flowing tap, to prevent our clothes from getting stained.

Technology, and perhaps upward mobility, have changed habits and pleasures.   There were no "mixies"  or refrigerators  within our reach or means during the 1950s  in Telinipara. Perhaps the mango season should be renamed, as the fresh mango season. Non-season mangos would then belong to a separate category, now that tins have joined trees as bearers of fruit.

Theophrastus does not dwell on how exactly the whole Greek army was lain low. Having eaten a couple of mangos for breakfast, my mind is fertile with possibilities.

The scene: A defeated Porus is brought before Alexander. 'How would you like to be treated?' asks the mighty conqueror. 'Like a king,' answers the unbowed king of Taxila, monarch  of a kingdom rich in knowledge and civilization, home of the finest university of its age. Noble Alexander embraces Porus and offers an alliance. Porus responds with an invitation to a feast for the Greek army.  Back in his camp, Porus calls a conference to discuss the best form of hospitality. His chief strategist and national security advisor joins the meeting  uninvited, but once there cannot be told to leave. When the menu comes up for discussion, the strategist has only one suggestion for dessert. Mangos.

 

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With best regards
Jaspal S Bisht
The Sunday Guardian
www.sundayguardianlive.com <http://www.sundayguardianlive.com/opinion/1841-terror-terror-stop-game-alibis>




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