Summer spells mangoes in Hyderabad. Not the green, raw ones that are sour and the smell of sap and need a long drawn process with half a dozen ingredients to make them palatable. We are talking about the ripe, fragrant ones that smell of summer, hint at temptation and invite you to dig your teeth into them. Shakespeare might have hinted at death or about enjoying every moment of life with the line: “Ripeness is all”. But for folks who love mangoes; ripeness spells succulence, juice, fibre, and sweetness that brings a smile on the face.
The blistering heat, the itchy skin, the windless days — everything is forgiven once you hold a ripe mango in your palm and hold it up to smell it. Peel them, dice them, squeeze them, freeze them and let it spill over the clothes.
Mangoes are so good and tempting that they can even bring peace. Or at least that’s what Abul Hasan thought when the Mughal armies under Aurangzeb threw a siege around the Golconda fort in the summer of 1687. Abul Hasan sent a few baskets of mangoes to the old man who had a known liking for mangoes. Along with the mangoes he sent along ₹2 lakhs as protection money and about gems and jewellery worth nearly ₹10 lakhs. The temptation wasn’t enough for Aurangzeb and he didn’t relent even as summer storms decimated his troops. By the winter, Abul Hasan lost the war and had to surrender.
For a Mughal emperor to be tempted by mangoes was ironic. The first Mughal emperor Babur dismissed the fruits in the country with contempt by praising the watermelons of Kabul. According to one story, one of the Lodi rulers tempted Babur to invade the country by promising him the sweetest summer fruit. And Babur fell in love with mangoes.
The love for mangoes continued with Jalaluddin Akbar creating an orchard of 1 lakh mango trees somewhere near modern Darbhanga in Bihar. The area is even now known as Lakhi Bagh.
Jehangir took the Mughal love for mangoes that his name survives with the succulent Jehangiri one of most prized and pricier of the mangoes,
Shahjahan created a courier service for himself from an orchard in the west coast at Mazagaon to Delhi to ensure supply of his favourite fruit that was guarded by soldiers. But his son Aurangzeb’s love for mangoes was limited to savouring the nectarine fruit.
One of the troubling aspects for mangoes are the names. While India has seen a bout of name changes for cities, villages and roads, the names of mangoes continue to be the same.
Alphonso or hapus which has been propelled to the top of temptation chart with savvy marketing, the appearance of the fruit and to shelf life is named after a Portuguese conquerer Alfonso de Albuquerque. He carried out a massacre of the locals after the conquest of Goa in 1510 but his name continues to spell sweetness and temptation.
Closer home, the Nizams created mango orchards one of which is now part of a fruit research centres in Sangareddy. Nizam Osman Ali Khan was known to send mangoes to his favoured courtiers and acquaintances. The love for mangoes was reciprocated by the noblemen who developed their own orchards with grafting and other nifty gardening tricks. Even today, a number of mango orchards dot Vikarabad, Chevella, Toopran and other surrounding areas of the city.
“Mangoes are an integral part of our diet, culture and heritage. During my childhood, the city had a number of mango orchards which used to be called ‘aamrai’. Now they have virtually disappeared due to urbanisation and growth of suburbs. In Manoharabad, where we used to have our ancestral mango orchard, most of the fruit was distributed to friends and neighbours. Most houses would smell of mangoes during the season,” says Shakeel Bin Abid Ahmed, an old-time Hyderabadi.
