The thought that the king of fruits might need mindless dark humour to attract eyeballs in its own kingdom would have been pulped not long ago. But a quick-commerce platform is turning heads in Mumbai by running a hearse-like carriage called ‘Aambulance’, featuring a man seen lying on a hospital bed with mangoes strewn around. Apart from the advertiser’s lack of concern at whether it might connote the fruit’s diarrhoeic properties, the hard-sell reminds us that though India produces half the world’s mango, it has not closed the large gaps in its storage and processing. Top producing states such as Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Bihar and Telangana must set up common processing mills to ensure that so much of this ephemeral manna does not go waste.
