Mango-phrenia (or Mango Madness of the Average Indian)

 Indians are generally a laid-back, easy-going people, not prone to hysteria and manic attacks. But talk about food likes and dislikes, and the Average Indian (AI, usually male) turns into a red-eyed, slavering devil who will brook no argument against his favourite dish / cuisine.

This is especially true of mangoes – the national fruit of India and a potent source of the most vociferous, bellicose and chest-thumping declarations of passionate longing not heard since Romeo facetimed Juliet.

This frenzy of inflamed emotions comes to a peak during the “mango season” in India just before the monsoon breaks – April and May. The mango season coincides with the annual summer break in schools and colleges and the AI is free to devote all his energies on sourcing and consuming the fruit of kings (or is it the king of fruits?) till his shirt buttons pop out. Cliff Richard warbled about “summer holidays” and was indisputably inspired by the indecent-sounding Chausa mangoes of his birth city Lucknow.

Having got the above off my chest I can now come out and declare that I am not a fan of mangoes.

It wouldn’t be too far off the mark to say that if there is a food that I hate, it is this, it is this, it is this. I am not a fan of the colour yellow. Any fruit that needs to be sucked…sucks. The taste and smell of a ripe mango can be overpoweringly cloying. The very act of eating a mango is distressingly messy and “poetic conversations” about the many attributes of mangoes move me…out of audible range of the mangomaniac who spouts these odes through mango smeared lips.

This dislike is so intense that I reject white wines (usually a favourite tipple) that have the aroma of mangoes (think Meursault or Sauternes). Which is sad because these wines are like nectar and have other notes that uplift the soul.

I fail to understand what it is about these mammary shaped fruits – which incidentally come from plants belonging to the poison ivy family – that drives man to paens of putrid prose which could be classified as objectionable content if posted on social media. Is it the look? The shape? The hand feel? The mouth feel? The intensity of the taste? Or is it a forced, unjust liking, a pretence effected to be socially acceptable and not be branded a misfit? Heaven knows. But a fruit whose peel can trigger contact dermatitis is best scratched off the dining table, n’est-ce pas?

I may stand alone and solitary in my dislike of this fruit. But I shall hold true to my beliefs, to my credo and will not let any AI persuade me that my dislike of mangoes is unnatural and against all principles of mankind.

As the revered sage Baxicius said, let mango go to seed!