“This is supposed to be Amitabh Bachchan’s favourite Manglorean preparation long before he got his Manglorean daughter-in-law,” says Chitra, as she shares a recipe of Ambe Upkari. “And don’t forget to eat it with your hands. It’s messy but we swear by it,” she instructs.
Mango is on our collective minds this morning on WhatsApp after I posted a photo of a mango smoothie I had for breakfast. “Since when did mango contribute to any weight loss, Panku?” Chitra demands. We have pledged to lose weight and dutifully weigh in every Friday and report to each other. “It was a skinny mango and I made the smoothie with yoghurt,” I defend myself. “Hilarious,” she responds and then gives me the recipe for the Ambe Upkari.
My mother tells me that she would put a whole peeled mango in my hand, lift me up on a chair near the sink and leave me to it. That way she only had to clean up around the sink after I finished. There is a black-and-white photograph somewhere of me in a chemise standing on that chair covered in sticky mango juice. I also remember an old galvanised iron tub filled with water and bobbing mangoes. That was supposed to take the heat out of the mangoes. We didn’t care. We just plunged our hands in, collected the booty, splashed water on each other and tore the skin off with our teeth. I don’t remember eating mangoes elegantly at all.
It has been years since I ate the Benaras ka langda. I have not come across it here. Greeny-yellow, firm and with an unbelievable fragrance. My friend Chaitali in Kolkata declares she only eats the langda and himsagar and is greeted by a storm of indignant emojis from Devarati. “What do you mean by that? We get Rani pasand, Mynaphuli, Daseri, Fazli, Sonafazli, Chausa…” I don’t know if it is Spell-check mischief, but Deva also mentions a mango called Madhugulguli, which sounds like a tickle! Sutapa sends a picture from Haldia of her beautiful mango tree and complains that the mangoes are routinely stolen.
I am going to stick my neck out here, but I do prefer the Langra to the Alphonso (hapus). So much is made of the latter that eating it seems almost disrespectful. But I remember one year when there was a transporters’ strike and the snooty Alphonso went a begging. Daddy brought home baskets of it. Everywhere we turned that summer in Daman, where we lived then, there were aamras and puri.
It is a mango party on WhatsApp with manga pachadi, pickles, aam panna, aam paapad… This is the rustic stuff; no doubt the la-di-dah soufflés and mousses will arrive later.
