Shafaqna India: Mumbai can be many things — glitz, glamour and hustle. It conjures up images of Ganesh Chathurthi, monsoon and multitudes mingling at Marine Drive. But few, if any, outside of the city know that Mumbai is also mad over mangoes.
Not the Dussehri or the Safeda of the north, it’s only Hapus for the city of dreams. Come summer, from Amchi Mumbai, it transforms into Ambachi Nagri. Every other person on the street is seen flaunting a box of mangoes. Mango boxes are everywhere from the buses to the trains and even the airport. If you spot a mango box bobbing up and down amidst the crowds, it’s got to be someone nonchalantly balancing one on their head.
Menus at home and in restaurants revolve around, what else, the mango. Aamras and poori is a rite of passage in the mango season. People throng to iconic Thali restaurants serving unlimited helpings of this delicacy. Homes convert into aamras making cottage industry. Its carefully deep frozen to be enjoyed around the year.
Sending aamras and mangoes to friends and family is the love language of the city. Not only to those who live nearby but Mumbaikars have finetuned the supply chain to ensure that their loved ones in bahar gaon also enjoy the flavour of the season. You name the city or the country and your box of mangoes gets shipped smoothly.
It’s a sweet affliction which creeps over you slowly. You begin as an observer, soon you have progressed to obsessing over the arrival of hapus and then you find someone who gets it for you straight from Konkan. Your lifelong conversion to a Mumbaikar enjoying the mango season is then complete and total!
