Hype over Hapoos

Summers in Mumbai are always interesting especially in traffic junctions when the hapoos vendors vie for space with sellers of pirated books, toys and other sundry items. Many of these vendors change vocations and switch to selling hapoos during summer going back to pirated books and cheap toys when the hapoos season is over.

14 years ago when I first visited Mumbai [having spent a considerable amout of my life in backward areas such as Bihar, Kolkata and Delhi] I was curiously amused by the fact that mangoes were sold in card board boxes. I had before that never seen mangoes being sold in cardboard boxes in street corners or at traffic junctions much like some tacky consumer item. I was also shocked by the price [which still continues to shock me, although at 300 Rs a dozen every Mumbai equivalent of Tom, Dick and Harry are lapping it up]. A year later and for many years after that, I regularly saw those cardboard boxes making their leisurely journeys on the numerous carousels at Heathrow Terminal 3, as an essential part of the travelling NRI, most of whom actually carried them to sell them at even more exhorbitant prices in their corner shops. The famous hapoos has now worked its way to the US, of course in much puerer form through irradiation and all that. I am happy for the hapoos. It has been the most internationally recognised mango brand from India and given some time, it will definitely give a run for its money to those large ugly fibrous red and yellow mosters from latin america which pass off as mogoes in the west. At least our friends in the west will know what a real mango is [it is not a sour vegetable most certainly but a sweet seasonal fruit!]. I am happy too for the exporters and the orchard owners who would make a mean buck by exporting the delectable hapoos.

I, however, am of the opinion, that hapoos is a highly overated fruit in India. It is an aspirational fruit and people buy it for snob value. And quite frankly it it overpriced. And more dangerously, it has hegemonised the discourse on mangoes in India - people, at least in western India, do not seem to care for any other mangoes. It is much like the case of Nescafe and Bru which most people in India take to be the real thing which they certainly are not.

While the hoopla over hapoos is killing much of the varietly in western India, I can vouch for north and east Indians that they do not care much about hapoos/alphonso. Ask any self respecting mango lover anywhere between Delhi and Kolkata, they will probably name the famous Langra [literally lame]. In spite of its being of very high quality and dominant in the minds of people up north and east, the poor langra has not killed its lesser cousins the zardalu, safeda, malda, himsagar or the hunk of a mango called fazli. In fact, mango season follows a complicated ritual in these parts. Unlike in Mumbai, you do not start and end the season with Hapoos. it is far more complicated and graduated...

Here is how it goes at least in eastern India... At the first flush of summer say in April you start of with the fazli which is sweetest when unripe and tasteless when ripe, then move on to the tasteless but colourful sindoori which is often sour, but tastes good really since you have not had mangoes for a year. Then the yelllow safedas make their appearance, slightly better tending towards sweeter, then comes the higher quality ones like himsagar, zardalu and the rest and the climax is reached with Langra which comes towards the end of the season. The defining features of a good langra from outside are two and you can not miss them: a) they look exactly like the mangoes that your teacher taught you to draw in school b) they are still green when ripe. The defining feature inside is fibreless, not too soft and exquisitely tasting golden fruit with a very small stone and paper thin skin. Commercially, it is good value for money too. Last season I bought them in Delhi at 35 Rs a kilo [a kilo would take 5 magoes].

But alas, like all good things, the langra season does not last for more than 15 days in the summer and if you are a fan, you have to make the most during that short time. And do not look out for them from March end to September, they are not sold irradiated in cardboard packets, nor do they travel across the globe as accessories of NRIs. They are home made, home grown and are there to tickle your taste buds for 15 days a year only.