I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
The mangos are not coming.
The Indian media reports that 15 shipments of Indian mangos have just been rejected by US authorities in places like San Francisco, Los Angeles and Atlanta.
Is this the fruit of Donald Trump’s great tariff war? Well, Americans have cited documentation issues. Mangos have to be irradiated to get into America. It gets issued Form PPQ 203 which says its been inspected and treated in accordance with agricultural requirements for entry into the USA.
Until we mind those P’s and Q’s it can’t get in. Apparently that’s where the mangos have hit a snag. The shippers were told they could take them back to India or discard them.
They chose to dump them. That’s $500,000 worth of mangoes down the drain.
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata
There’s something about mangos. When I lived in America, mangos was basically immigrant nostalgia in one fruit. At that time no Indian mangoes were allowed. We had Filipino mangos and Mexican mangos but none could live up to the Indian mango.
Or rather the memory of Indian mangos.
Because in India there wasn’t just mangos. They had names, Different mangos from different parts of the country each with its own sweet mango story. Everyone could recite the names of mangos they had known and loved. From my mother in India
MOTHER
To my friend in America
FRIEND1:
To the fruit seller down the street.
FRUITSELLER1
Perhaps its because summers are brutal in India, the mango one of the saving graces of an Indian summer, is so precious. Some like their mango sweet-tart, some want it as sweet as honey, some want it as smooth as silk, some don’t mind a bit of fibre.
Fresh mango, mango pastries, mango with chicken, mango juice and mango lassi sold on the roadside
MANGO LASSI
At the mango fair I went to a few years ago you could find Great baskets of green and yellow mangos I’d never seen in the local market. little Rani mangos, slim Anupam, bulky Kishanbhogs.
MANGOFAIR1: anuapam kishanblog
There are some 1500 varieties of mangos in India. The mangos denied entry into America were the Alphonos, just one variety. They are often called the King of Mangos but those are fighting words. Many other parts of India would fiercely fight for their mangos to be king,
In short irradiated Alphonsos, the kind of mangos that do get into America are just the tip of the mango iceberg in India.
Even in India we grew up with only three or four varieties of mangos in our part of the country. The golaapkhaas, yellow and red outside and intoxicatingly fragrant when cut were the first to show up, the harbinger of mango season.
The himsagar deceptively green but smooth and sweet and yellow inside filled the markets in mid summer.
HIMSAGAR
The regal Langra brought up the rear. I actually had never had an Alphonso mango until I went to America.
The mango season, sweet, golden and fleeting still comes with great excitement for the diaspora as food writer Mallika Basu who lives in London noted on Instagram.
MB1: first find them, then drive them home in a giant box, eat them before they over ripen, then fight for the last one. But whatever you do no mango gets left behind.
Except those poor 15 shipments of mangos at San Francisco and LA and Atlanta that didn’t have the right papers. Such a waste. I remember the days when friends risked mango sniffing custom dogs to smuggle a taste of home from their own mango orchard into America. As one friend remembered
FRIEND2: Went through customs. She didn’t seem to notice. The aroma was completely surrounding me. And I was like how could she not notice
In a time of immigration crackdown is it time once again for the undocumented mango?
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata for KALW eating a gulabkhas mango.