Mangoes

One of the greatest rewards of Bombay’s hot months is the mango season. It starts with little green mangoes, which go straight into pickles; and before long the madness is upon us, heat and mangoes. There are hundreds of varieties of mangoes in India, but only western India has the Alphonso. In Bombay, procuring, securing, and ensuring a household’s continuing supply of good Alphonsos becomes a preoccupation that lasts until there are no more to be had, just around the time the monsoon begins. In a lively history of the making of Bombay, P. M. Malabari reports on particular mango trees with such a reputation for the quality of their fruit that Mughal emperors sent for them all the way from Delhi. Not far from where my parents once lived, there was supposed to be a tree that bore mangoes all year round. Sad to say, it got cut down more than a hundred years ago.