Man-Go-Man-Ners

BY: RAJBIR DESWAL

Sophistication and eating mangoes do not go together. And with so many varieties of the King of fruits, each having its own culinary protocol, it becomes all the more difficult to 'execute them tastefully'

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The best way to eat mangoes, as they say, is to eat them without wearing anything on your person, for obvious reasons of sullying and soiling. You can't either hold them tight or loose and their seeds may slip out of the hands and land anywhere, even on your clothes.

Different varieties have different skin texture on them. Some have hard and others have soft. Mangoes also grow in various hues of green and yellow; as also reddish in case of Alfansos. Also, there may be different kinds of stones in the mangoes; from paperthin to annoyingly big.

The desi fashioned gnawing in the hairy and fibrous seed has its own advantages of eating and enjoying mangoes. The deeper the scratch with deep burial of the canines and more juice may flow to your palate. This last attempt to retrieve a mango after the method of the Epicureans is infact the best way to do justice to the mango discipline.

There are many popular varieties available like Dussehri, Langra, Saroli, Safeda, Tota, Chausa, Sunehri, Alfanso, Kalmi et al. These varieties do not ripen at the same time to afford you an opportunity to enjoy different kinds of tastes. Pickle varieties are still different.

The last to arrive in the markets is the Gadha variety. Yes, you rightly guessed the connotations of the appellation--Donkey like. It is very fat and tasteless but it gives you a vicarious pleasure of the reminder of the times when you ate real mangoes and not the 'ass of a mango'.

Some people eat mangos having cut them into pieces using forks. Then there are the ones who would have them cut in a way that the skin on one side is intact and the pulp side goes into the mouth. Still others like me want to have the entire skin peeled off and eat the stuff like a laddoo.

An interesting thing happened with us on board the Aeroflot flight. They served us with Dussehri mangos considering that most of the passengers were Indians. A Westerner who had not obliged me with exchanging his window seat was at his wits' end on how to unpeel and eat the mango. He had probably never tasted the fruit.

I exchanged glances with my better half and nudged her a bit indicating she should not eat her fruit yet, lest the boy should get a cue. I confess I became a bit too cruel to the boy out of mischief. We watched him eat his mango.

He held it on the plastic plate. Took the knife in his right hand. Held the mango there with a little pressure exerted. He then pierced the skin with the fork making a juicy sprout shoot and land on his cheeks. Cleaning himself with a tissue and licking the soiled fork and knife, he gave it another try. Then he gave up.

It was then our turn to surprise the boy. We took the mango in our hands like a palpable soft toy. Removed the acidic bulbous top and started slurping the juice making a bit louder noise in our typical desi style. The boy kept looking out of the window with his mind being focussed on our mangos and the way they are eaten, we could guess.

Before landing, we thought we had scored a point over a representative of the race of people who introduced their cutlery to us.