Indian mangoes are the best

I am saying nothing but the truth when I tell you that Indian mangoes are better than Pakistani mangoes. It infuriates me when Pakistanis don’t agree. That makes mangoes an India-Pakistan dispute just like Kashmir. Like a good Indian I don’t think this needs a referendum. Of course, our mangoes are better. How can anyone even think that is not the case?

Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against Pakistan. I am a card-carrying member of the candle-light-at-Wagah-border club. I think India and Pakistan should make love not war. I am all for resolving the Kashmir dispute, demilitarising Siachen, ending terrorism, increasing trade ties and so on. Since I have zero interest in cricket, India-Pakistan matches also fail to arouse any anti-Pakistan sentiment in me. Pakistan is a place that has my roots and some very dear friends. Yet, there is this little thorn between us: your claim that your mangoes are better.

What annoys me further is that there are Pakistanis who claim to have tasted Indian mangoes and still think Pakistani mangoes are better. The problem with such Pakistani mango lovers is that they are Pakistanis first and mango lovers second. Which is not to say I have tasted Pakistani mangoes. Why would I do that when I get to eat the world’s best mangoes? India has over 1,200 varieties of mangoes, Pakistan only 400.

Pakistani ‘mango nationalism’ is not limited to Pakistanis. The Pakistani government uses it too. Almost every year, the Pakistani government sends a box of mangoes to the Indian prime minister and sometimes the president and top ministers too. This is most insidious. This is a way of saying, “Look, how thoughtful we are”, but it is actually sub-conventional warfare against our egos. It is practically a way of saying that Pakistani mangoes are better. Killing the enemy with sweetness! The Indian government’s silence on this is most unacceptable.

The most famous Pakistani mango is known as Anwar Ratol. Half of Pakistani mango nationalism is based on the claim that Indians haven’t tried the Anwar Ratol. What most Pakistanis don’t know is that the Anwar Ratol’s roots are in a village two hours from Delhi. The village is called Ratol and its first Ratol tree is just over a hundred years old. One of the mango growers had migrated from Ratol to Punjab many years before Partition and there he named it after his father, Anwar.

So you know the mango on the basis of which you claim your mango superiority? Even that is from India. Doesn’t that settle the India-Pakistan mango debate?

The Ratol mangoes are well known in western Uttar Pradesh but haven’t taken off commercially in a big way like other mangoes. There are various reasons why some mangoes become more popular than others.

Having established in my head that Indian mangoes were thus better than Pakistani ones, I wondered why this was so important to me? How could I call myself post-nationalist and believe in mango nationalism?

Discussing the issue of mangoes with several people gave me the answer. I realised that even within India people fight over which mango is the best. There’s a great Delhi-Mumbai divide over the Alphonso. The expensive Alphonsos, we North Indians feel, is overrated. It is too sweet, too perfect.

My favourite mango is Dussehri. I grew up in Lucknow and because the Dussehri orchards of Malihabad are next door, the markets are flooded with Dussehri. When I went to Ratol and tasted the Ratol mango, I felt it was like a better version of Dussehri. But I censored the thought lest I betray my loyalty to the Malihabadi Dussehri. Therein lies the answer. Mangoes are such an important part of our childhood memory that the mangoes we grew up with define who we are. We are the mangoes we eat. Anyone saying another mango is better, is assaulting our very being. That is why, I realised, I took such strong objection to the Pakistani claim of their mangoes being better, or for that matter the Mumbai arrogance about Alphonsos.

Yet there’s one point which we can all agree about, that those South Asians who claim not to be fond of mangoes are to be pitied.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 9^th, 2014.

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