What is your favourite fruit?
Think about it and say it out loud. If you just said “apple”, “pear” or any other autumnal or winter fruit, I am sorry but we can no longer be friends. If you said a soft summer fruit like “strawberry” or “peach” we can still be friends, though perhaps not ones who speak very often. “Pineapple” and “passion fruit” get you closer; perhaps we can meet up for a coffee every six month or so to “catch up”.
But the only people in the inner circle are those who unhesitatingly said “mango”.
If you went as far as to name your favourite variety of mango – and, crucially, it was either Indian (Alphonso) or Taiwanese (Irwin) – then I am happy to welcome you into the family, promise you the hand in marriage of my (as yet unconceived and unborn) future daughter or son and name future grandchildren after geniuses like you. This is because you, my friend, are a special person. When you know, you know. Or as they say in Alphonso mango season in most Indian communities “I like you. You are my friend. Even my family. But please get out of my way. You are blocking the mango”.
The genesis of my love for this precious fruit started, as I have explained in previous posts, at a young age.
During the fleetingly short time in which prized Alphonsos could be safely exported to the UK in decent enough condition to enjoy – they travel poorly you know - my mother would make a special trip to London to bring boxes of them back to the deepest, darkest suburbs where we lived. We would then (as we were young) be stripped down to our pants – mangoes stain you know - and told we could eat a maximum of one per day, but no more. My father, being of non-Indian descent, was banished to a separate room and not allowed to partake. I think he had once expressed the view that, due to his African heritage, the slightly tarter, lighter coloured South American and Australian varieties that were available year round in the supermarket were superior to Alphonos. He is, of course, wrong, and my mother, sensing weakness and a slight cultural slur - these things have to be enjoyed properly, you know – enforced the banishment gleefully. After all, it meant more Alphonso for the rest of us. Hard luck, Dad.
Taiwanese Irwin’s came onto my radar during a cycling trip round Taiwan at an anonymous lunch stop at the side of a road. I didn’t have high hopes for the makeshift car-wash looking structure where we had stopped after the first blisteringly hot 50km of the day, so I was surprised to be treated to perfectly roasted and juicy chicken from a fire pit in the middle of the table. The real treat, however, came when I was contemplating my usual “post lunch side of the road” nap – this trip was 100km a day for 10 days straight and it was hot, you know – and looking for a spot to lie down. I was just about to lay my head on an inviting looking verge when and older Japanese man (who we had christened “the turtle” as his withered body looked rather like a turtle without a shell) gleefully pranced out from behind a road sign, smiling, saying something unintelligible, holding a pre-cut mango from a stall the other side of the sign and clicking his heels for effect.
As it turns out, the turtle had hit oil. And not just a few drops. In Texas, I think they’d call it a “gusher”. We were apparently in the capital of Taiwanese Irwin mango production. The mango trees along the side of the roads were in full bloom and each of the plentiful individual fruits hanging down were covered in their own white cloth bag, presumably to ward off flies or, more likely, to hide the gems inside from people like my Dad who probably wouldn’t appreciate them in the way they should have.
To be fair, Irwins don’t quite match up to an Alphonso, but right off the tree in peak season, they are pretty damn close.
To live through mango season in Asia is like unearthing new treasure. I have been lucky to do so for five wonderful years (and counting). The proximity to mango producing territories means even the most smelly of basement supermarkets in Hong Kong are often replete with more than a few varieties of this, the very best, fruit, between March and June each year. Every year you forget just quite how good it is, and just quite how precious these golden fruits are.
The problem, if I’m being honest, is that it makes you somewhat of a snob. Returning from time-limited Alphonsos and Irwins to year round South American or Australian grown supermarket fodder is a real buzzkill. Sometimes snobbery is good. Other times, it is a miserable reminder that you’ve become “that guy”. Like when I recently realised that my latest book order from Amazon contained four hardbacks. Hardbacks! My younger self would have sneered at the profligacy of not waiting 18 months for the paperback to save a few quid.
That said, sometimes self-doubt creeps in. Maybe my Dad had it right – inferior quality but greater year round quantity could be a virtue. Maybe I should be frugal and wait for the paperback to come out.
Nah. Who am I kidding. Banish him to the living room and gorge on the real thing while you can. Order all the hardback books you want. Sometimes you just have to be that guy.