Every Sunday, I visit the farmer’s market in Noida’s Sector-39 like a weekly pilgrimage. Surrounded by the sight and aroma of freshest seasonal produce, it sparks ideas within me when planning my weekly menu. Plus, the produce is the best marker to track the shift in the season. From the plump red carrots and pearly white cauliflowers, we are now moving to fresh okra and gourds of various types, indicating the swiftly approaching summers. What took me by surprise, though, was the arrival of the safeda mango — in early March!
While the safeda is typically an early bloomer, it still isn’t commonly found until at least the second week of April. This year, it arrived in the markets of NCR more than a month ahead of schedule—and was being sold at `150 per kilo. Mango lovers couldn’t be happier, but at the same time, are erring at the side of caution. “I don’t know if this will be of good quality”, said a concerned Manju Shukla, a resident of Sector-39 Noida. This occurred much to the annoyance of Omkar, the owner of the fruit stall. “Jaldi aa gaya hai madam kyunki aaj kal garmi jaldi hoti hai” (The mangoes aren’t bad, they’ve come to market early because summers have arrived sooner).
This, though, is not the first time that such anomalies have happened. A quick rummaging of mango incidents across the country led me to find out about Gujarat’s kesar mango debacle from 2022. It was a day after Christmas, when this Gujarati mango variant showed up in considerable abundance — 60 kilos, no less — at the port market of Porbandar. As per reports, they were lapped up for as much as `500 a kilo!
While I resisted buying the safeda a couple of weeks ago, right on cue, my mother arrived from Mumbai with a box of the sweetest-smelling Ratnagiri alphonso mangoes in hand. Apparently, this isn’t just an NCR phenomenon — the markets in Maharashtra and Karnataka are brimming with the season’s bounty earlier than expected, because of the unexpected flush in the mango orchards of the Konkan.
Amusingly, while this brings mango lovers, much joy, there’s also cause for concern. Cold environments are not natural for mangoes to grow in — and such untimely produce suggests a host of man-made factors at play. These include the use of artificial boosters that change the produce of the natural mango cycles, different grades of fertilisers that affect soil diversity significantly, the increasing evidence of global warming and climate change in all aspects of our lives, and also, genetically modified crops that may not be sound for soil fertility or the natural food produce cycles.
Nevertheless, understanding consumerism means taking any measure of science to bend nature’s laws to our wishes. Much like so many others, I too fell to the draw of these untimely mangoes from Ratnagiri. Like clockwork, I washed the mangoes and placed them in a bucket of water to test if they had been naturally ripened, before drying and storing them in the refrigerator. I also extracted the pulp of a few and stored it in the freezer for those sudden aamras-poori cravings. Having grown up in Mumbai, the quintessential Gujarati dish of aamras (sweetened pureed pulp of mango), batata nu shaak (potato subzi) and poori have become a part of my culinary traditions too.My neighbouring houses, too, spotted the early supplies of mangoes that started conversations.
Amid one such discussion, I realised how this fruit plays a massive role in popular culture. It is one fruit that is enjoyed all across the nation.
From featuring in lassis, milkshakes and ice creams to being in pickles, mangoes are present uniformly in our offerings — at least in the summers. Moreover, the dishes prepared with it do not need much adulteration in the form of added masalas to be made tasty. Mangoes have a taste of their own, one that draws in millions. Perhaps this is why there’s so much buzz this year around them hitting mandis early — perhaps, after all, this isn’t really a bad thing for us, the average consumer!
Vernika Awal is a food writer who is known for her research-based articles through her blog ‘Delectable Reveries’