February 17, 2025 • 63 mins
Sopan Joshi, in his book Mangifera Indica: A Biography of the Mango, which took eight years to write and research, accomplishes a historic, cultural, religious and economic exploration of India’s favourite fruit.
Did you know that India is home to over 1,000 varieties of mangoes, besides the much loved Alphonso, Kesar and Dashehri? And whenever a major battle took place, such as the Battle of Plassey, it was usually near a mango grove, which was ubiquitous in ancient India. Once a place for social joy, “free therapy”, and the food of the poor, we now depend on store-bought mangoes, he points out.
He links the mango to colonial history, Jesuit priests—the “Google search engines of their time”—who brought modern grafting techniques of the 16th century to India, and the Mughals’ fascination for the fruit. He also ties the mango and other fruits with our deepest cravings, associating it with alcohol and sugar addiction, which begins with mother’s milk.
Listen in!
Timestamps
01:38 How the book happened
06:20 On the three parts of the book; seed-grown vs grafted mangoes
08:13 The culture of the mango grove or “amrai”
10:30 All empires and kings were invested in the mango
14:00 In earlier India, you were never very far from a mango grove
20:00 Akbar onwards, Mughal emperors were obsessed with mangoes
23:00 An obsession with the mango flower; the Kamadeva connection
31:50 Modern grafting techniques began in Goa with the Jesuit priests
35:36 The end of mango groves started with zamindari in the late 18th century
40:50 The “Habitat Selection” theory and why green belts are essential
42:25 The mango’s association with alcohol
46:04 How our ability to see red is rewarded by the colour of fruits
49:00 Whether the mango originated in India
54:46 Over a thousand varieties of the mango in India
58:20 Mango diplomacy down the ages, starting with Buddhism and the Mauryan empire
01:00:45 His relationship with the mango; memories of his uncle
Follow and share to grow the conversation.
Follow Anuradha on LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram
Email: swishingmindsets@gmail.com
Disclaimer: Views and opinions expressed are personal. Listener discretion is advised.
Did you know that India is home to over 1,000 varieties of mangoes, besides the much loved Alphonso, Kesar and Dashehri? And whenever a major battle took place, such as the Battle of Plassey, it was usually near a mango grove, which was ubiquitous in ancient India. Once a place for social joy, “free therapy”, and the food of the poor, we now depend on store-bought mangoes, he points out.
He links the mango to colonial history, Jesuit priests—the “Google search engines of their time”—who brought modern grafting techniques of the 16th century to India, and the Mughals’ fascination for the fruit. He also ties the mango and other fruits with our deepest cravings, associating it with alcohol and sugar addiction, which begins with mother’s milk.
Listen in!
Timestamps
01:38 How the book happened
06:20 On the three parts of the book; seed-grown vs grafted mangoes
08:13 The culture of the mango grove or “amrai”
10:30 All empires and kings were invested in the mango
14:00 In earlier India, you were never very far from a mango grove
20:00 Akbar onwards, Mughal emperors were obsessed with mangoes
23:00 An obsession with the mango flower; the Kamadeva connection
31:50 Modern grafting techniques began in Goa with the Jesuit priests
35:36 The end of mango groves started with zamindari in the late 18th century
40:50 The “Habitat Selection” theory and why green belts are essential
42:25 The mango’s association with alcohol
46:04 How our ability to see red is rewarded by the colour of fruits
49:00 Whether the mango originated in India
54:46 Over a thousand varieties of the mango in India
58:20 Mango diplomacy down the ages, starting with Buddhism and the Mauryan empire
01:00:45 His relationship with the mango; memories of his uncle
Follow and share to grow the conversation.
Follow Anuradha on LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram
Email: swishingmindsets@gmail.com
Disclaimer: Views and opinions expressed are personal. Listener discretion is advised.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, Welcome to Swishing Mindsets. This is Unrada and today
I'm speaking to Soapan Joshi, journalist and author of the
book Mangi Ferra Indika, A Biography of the Mango, A historical, cultural, religious,
and economic exploration of India's favorite fruit. So Hi, Soapan,
So tell me a little about the book, because I
(00:22):
actually don't have words to describe it. It's such a
thick academic work almost, but you know it is so
interesting to read, so please.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
We are not used to reading about fruits in this way,
as you and your listeners will realize. Every summer, numerous
publications carry articles on the mango. No other food item,
no other fruit is covered like this. It's as if
(00:53):
we are obsessed with the mango. And I've not been
a route to write on any subject as much as
the mango over the years, because all kinds of people
will get in thatch and say they want an article.
They're wondering if I can, if I will do a
piece on the mango. So I have begun to realize
(01:15):
that there is something unusual about the mango, and nobody
seems to have a handle on why we are obsessed
with this boot. So earlier. You asked me before we
began this recording that you asked me how I ended
(01:37):
up doing this book. This book comes from an article
I wrote more than ten years ago on the mango.
The first time I wrote about the mango was more
than twenty two years ago, which again tells you that
we constantly keep revisiting this. That article got some traction
(02:00):
and the publisher got in touch with me and they
said that they were looking for somebody who can do
a a more comprehensive book on So that's how the
idea for the book came about. It's not it's not
like I was sitting somewhere and then there was a
(02:21):
Eureka moment and said, mango. Nothing like that. Why did
they come to me? As part of my work in agriculture?
In journalism, I have covered agriculture. I covered uh, It's
one of the topics that I have covered, and agriculture
strangely does not get covered in in Indian journalism because
(02:46):
journalism is an urban occupation. It's it's people live in
cities writing for other people live in cities, but they
want to know about mangoes. Now, you'd see if you
read your average mango feature that appears in any newspaper
or magazine. You realize that it's urban people going to
(03:15):
a location for half a day, for one day, go
to a research institution, visited, and come back and write. Now.
I began reporting on this book sometime around this November
of twenty fourteen, and within a year and a half
of reporting, I realized that all that I had found
(03:40):
out was what I did not wish to write, So
this doesn't happen. Journalism is a very hurried occupation, and
I taken almost a year and a half traveling into
several parts of the country, and I realized that if
(04:03):
I were to write from the reporting that I had
at that time, it it was going to end up
being the same that people write about all the time.
And this is a book, so a book has a
different kind of shelf life. So I went back to
my notebook and I began to look for what look
(04:27):
for themes that showed a bigger picture than what I
said out to find. And two words appear to me,
risk and desire, well shock, actually shock and risk. These
are the two words that I heard everywhere I went
in our churchs, in research institutions, in drawing rooms, in
(04:50):
living rooms all over the place. People said that this
fruit is about shock. Shock is from the Arabic means longing,
it means nostalgia, it means passion, it means desire and risk.
So then I began afresh. In about twenty sixteen seventeen,
(05:19):
I began reporting afresh. I began visiting places afresh. And
this book results from nearly eight years of reporting from
several parts of the country, and it also attempts to
draw from all previous work, and it also suggests work
(05:43):
that needs to be done in the future. I don't know.
Does that make sense to you?
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Yes, of course, I'm gone through your book. It makes
perfect sense.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
So while doing the book, I realized that my material
was falling in three categories roughly. So then the writing
was reorganized in a way that those three categories were
addressed independently. So the first category is the book one,
(06:17):
as you would see.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah's book one, book two, book three.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Book one is called the fruit of India. So that
is a cultural exploration of the money right we are.
I doubt there is any other country in the world
which has such a deep relationship with one fruit. I
don't think there is any comparison to this. So that's
(06:45):
the and if you see how the story moves in
book one, it starts from a personal account, then it
broadens into the story of a country that goes mad
over the men every summer. Then it goes into the
nature of the mango fruit, the variety, and that's where
(07:09):
you mentioned earlier that there is a difference between seed
grown mangoes and grafted mangoes. So that lays down the
historical account of how we have seen the mango. By
the end of that you get another glimpse of how
(07:29):
as a culture we have been obsessed with seed grown mangoes,
not grafted. Minds, the mangoes that we get in the
market today are almost all grafted. But this is not
very old. It's only the past sixty years or so
that that the mango is the mango appears in the
market in such volumes and is grown out from grafted materaio.
(07:57):
Then the story becomes a wider or by the end
of it, it is clear that it's not the fruit
that has driven India man over the mango. It is
a part of a much wider culture, and that culture
was the culture of the mango grove. And in India,
(08:21):
perhaps the most important aspect of infrastructure in villages and
in towns was the amarai. These were seed grown mango
groves where people went for picnics, wedding parties. The barat
used to stay in amais. Weddings used to be solemnized
(08:43):
in mango groves. These were the original banquet halls in India.
And this has been so since since we don't know when.
So then it becomes apparent that this country existed in
the culture of the mango world. It was an inherent
(09:06):
part of land use decisions in villages and towns. Then
it becomes apparent that we were crazy about the mango,
not because of the fruit in the summer, but because
of the flower in the spring. And the greatest festival
in India was the two month modern Otsa or the
(09:30):
arm or the Usa. It was a two month festival
where all manner of people abandoned the usual the rigma
role and celebrated in a riot of communal joy and happiness.
And various parts of the country had their own rituals
(09:54):
that had to do with the spring festival. We've completely
forgotten that festival. All that remains is one little festival
of Bully. Out of that even that has been reduced
to a symbolic funeral pire. So from there it becomes
(10:15):
a parent that all religions in India have had the
mango deeply enmeshed in their stories and their practices and
their observances. Then it becomes a parent that all empires,
all kings were deeply invested in the mango. If they
wanted to let people know that they had done something
(10:37):
for the greater common good, they created mango growths. And
we know this from at least the marine times, if
not before. So from there, the Fruit of India ends
with an exploration of the scientific evidence available from paleobotany
(11:00):
of the mango's origin, and we find out that the
best evidence available currently makes it clear that the mango
evolved on the Indian plate at the time when the
Indian plate was south of the equator. Right, So this
is the Fruit of India. So imagine the sweep of this.
(11:20):
It begins with small personal accounts and it ends up
traveling across space and time millions of years, hundreds of kilometers,
thousands of kilometers actually, And you realize that if you
I realize this, that by holding on to the mango.
(11:41):
I was crossing fabrics of space and time in ways
that I never imagined. So that is the Fruit of India.
Book two is an account of the mango from nature,
from ecology, and that is called the Fruit of the Wilderness.
Now even the queue for this comes from the the
(12:05):
culture of the grove. It comes from there and it
becomes then Book two through to the Wilderness examines the
evolution of the mango, how fruits, fleshy fruits like the
mango are deeply linked to the to the mammal order
(12:29):
which produced us primates, from which it goes into mango's genetics.
Then it goes into ecology. Then from there it goes
into cultivation of the mango, from there to the markets
and finally it ends with exports. Book three is just
called the Fruit of the Senses, which is essentially travelogues
(12:52):
from across the country of finding out of eating really
good mangos in their own location, not sitting in the
market and buying fruit, but actually going to where the
best fruit is pun So that's the split of the book.
The Fruit of India, the Wilderness and the Fruit of
(13:14):
the Senses.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Wonderful and you know when I was reading your book
and when you just said it, I felt very wistful
reading about the mango groves and you've written that, you know,
they were just donated to the public and poor people.
I think you mentioned it happening in the past. They
ate rotea with mango pulp. Mangos were so common, so
(13:42):
it's it's very interesting, you know, and you feel very
wistful because you've also written about the Tundiesruck and now
you just find it in poems, you know, in poetry,
but earlier it was a real thing, and we don't
realize what tundies struck actually went, so maybe you can
talk about that.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
So I've had I've heard a lot of people wondering
while I was working on the book, asking me questions
about what is it about the mango? Why am I
putting in so much time and right? Why am I
asking them all kinds of questions, you know, questions nobody
(14:18):
asked them before this, and I really didn't have an
answer for them. But I do have an answer now,
and the answer is we don't realize how our culture,
our social life, our ecology is influenced by our passion
for them from the ancient times to now. And the
(14:43):
weird thing is, even as the large markets for mangoes
have emerged over the past fifty or sixty years, we've
actually forgotten how deep this fruit runs into our culture.
It's as if we we are completely disconnected with our
own country, with our own people, and this fruit was
(15:06):
a means of that connection. That connection traversed ecology, it
traversed regions, it traversed classes, it traversed casts. I can't
think of any one thing that represents all that is
India so comprehensively.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Yeah, you mentioned that even the transgender community they had
their dedicated you know, grows, mango groves.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Look at so many of our great wars have happened
in mango golds.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Right, So I spent a fair amount of time figuring
out what is it about the money? Right? The battle
of class is in a menum. Yeah, the first battle
of puneybirth mango, third battle of honey birth mango grow.
Most likely even the second battle of honey birth happened
in the manum. It just keeps occurring again and again.
And then I realized what was perhaps the most important
(16:06):
lesson of my efforts to understand the mango in India.
Wherever you were, you were never very far from mango world.
So you could do anything anywhere and a mango grove
would be close by. The mango grove was so ubiquitous,
(16:26):
it was a basic part of being Indian, of living
in India, and we've forgotten all of that. All we
can connect with today is a fruit that we buy
in the summer the market, and that is a disconnection
with our own ecology, with our own culture, with our
(16:48):
religious practices, with our cultural traditions. There is a great disconnect,
and the mango has become my way of joining the dots.
There is a there is a much bigger picture of
a subcontinent that emerges from merely chasing the mind. Yeah,
(17:16):
you you mentioned Amari is created by transgender people. The
Parsi Tower of Silence in Bombay has very old mango things. Now,
the Parsi community came from outside, but once in India,
(17:40):
they embraced the mango and that made them Indian. Likewise,
the Muguls are coming from an ecological landscape that is
very different from India. India is a subtropical or a
tropical region most of India. They were coming from Central Asia,
(18:01):
which is the temperate area. Then again, Central Asia is
right in the middle of two ancient gardening superpowers. It
was China to the east and Iran to the west.
So those practices have shaped Central as So when the
Mughal dynasty comes to India, it is coming with its
(18:26):
own fruit culture, but they embrace the mango, and then
their embrace of the mango turns them Indian to the
point where all manner of Mughal emperors and exemptions on
land revenue for mango groves and orchards.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Yeah, the the Moguls, I mean, which.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
The mango culture, the mango culture that we see today,
how mango is discussed today, that is entire barely a
Mughal tradition.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Yeah, but the way you mentioned each MgAl ruler, it
is fantastic. It's so amusing. They're craving for melons, they're
craving for the mango. And Barber was waiting for a
sign to enter Hindustan and somebody.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
So that was that that is actually that account is
actually fictitious, Okay. That account, that account comes from a
courtier from Jahanguese court who goes back and writes a story.
So he's trying to color Barber's entry into India with
(19:34):
the mango. Ah, okay, right, because the mango is so auspicious.
Anybody who's in India wants to connect themselves to the mango,
and by connecting themselves to the mango, they end up
connecting themselves with India.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Yeah, but it also loved mango's right you mentioned By.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
The time Barber's uh Humayu wasn't in India for the
most part of his life. He returned and he died
soon after his return Akabar onwards. The Mughal emperors are
absolutely crazy about the man. I mean or Zeb gave
(20:13):
sanscript names to two mango varieties, okay, right, Madhumlas and
Rasna Vilas. Right. Yeah, Orne used to I mean Shajana
used to get upset with Oranzey for not sending him
(20:34):
fruits from trees that he loved. When Barber came to India,
he used to be set up an elaborate career service
to get melons from Afghanistani. By the time it came
to shah Jahah, there was a career service established to
get good mangoes from the Maharashtra coast to Devii. They
(20:57):
were getting mangoes from Bengal to Delhi. There was a
great amount of patronage given to and what the mugles
ended up doing was they ended up transforming the older
culture of the article. Right, So the difference is earlier.
You know, since the ancient times, ordinary people had mango grows,
(21:21):
and people with resources like kings and merchants, they created
articas which were which had trees of both economic and
medicinal value as well as plants that had medicine. Now,
these varticas were very elaborate botanical affairs, right, and they
(21:47):
had high quality mangoes because people with resources could invest money,
land time into growing fine lines. Ordinary people have their
mangos from the MRIs. And this is weird because every
(22:07):
summer there's so many reports from Malihabad about the passion
of the Navabs for great mangoes and what on. But
when I was traveling in Malihabad, old timers told me
he made. They were trying to say that this is
a flute that belonged to all manner of ordinary, to
(22:29):
the community, right to the community. And they used to
say that when poor people are no other vegetables to
eat in the summer, they'd have their Chabati with mangoes,
no of You know, there's so many books written on
the mango. There's so many articles written on the mango
(22:51):
every year, but these details don't come out anywhere. All
we hear is stories of royal patronage. Now, if you
see the accounts from before the Mogul times, the obsession,
I mean, the mango has always been an obsession in
the arts in India. We sculpture, the painting, with epics,
(23:12):
the drama, but people were obsessed with mango flower.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Said and.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
It's not just Karmad's arrow, I mean the mango flowers
k arrow, but the entire mango tree is supposed to
be an embodiment of comedy. Mm hmm, right right now,
what that means is see ka is An is an
(23:44):
ancient Vedic gating and is very mischievous. He he has
this habit of getting people to drop their inhibitions and
do what their better sense prevents them from the right.
So he's a troublemaker and that is the trouble maker.
(24:06):
I mean, that is the trouble of excitement, which is
why the Spring Festival was considered Karmadeva's festival. And it
was said that Karmadeva, who had been rendered invisible by
by Shiva because because Shiva was upset with the kind
(24:26):
of trouble Karma Deva calls to all manneral people during
the spring festival, Karmadev comes alive in the mango tree.
An all manner of rituals associated with Karmadeva were associated
with the mango tree and also with the with the
(24:47):
Ashok tree. So we've completely forgotten all this. You know,
we keep talking about ancient traditions and culture, and but
we've forgotten the central sanity of nature in all our
cultural and ritual observations. I don't know. Does that make
(25:08):
sense to you?
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Yes, that's true.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
I mean, how did you How did you find these
these accounts that I found from either old material or
from academic sauces, or from accounts gathered from conversations with people.
Does it make sense to you because it is it
is material that's coming from a diversity of sources.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Yeah, of course it makes sense because it makes me
think it's not something I've really thought about because in childhood,
I remember all of us, have you know, plucked mangoes
from trees that you've written on one of your accounts
that you saw tree and you wanted to climb it, right,
so you know we've all done that, but now it's
just you go to the market and you pick it up.
So there is a huge disconnect.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
And it makes it Yeah, this is consumerism. Yeah, this
is consumerism at play, which will never give us the
kind of ay that we got out ordinary cultural practices.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
That's true. And you know, so when can we also
talk about you know what I mentioned earlier. You've mentioned
about the grafting techniques, and that was fascinating for me
to read about because you mentioned the Jesuit priests. You've
gone into the goa inquisition, Spanish inquisition, everything, then Uppar
wooing these Jesuit priests, you know, and leading them, misleading
(26:28):
them basically into thinking that you know, he may convert.
So it's it's very interesting. Then the Buddhist monks as well,
you know, they've also traveled and you know, propagated the mango,
so you know a little bit, you know, to people
who have not read.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
First of all, no religion is as deeply enmeshed in
the culture of the mango grows as was. Yeah, because
once Buddha renounced a domestic life. Once he became a renansi,
(27:02):
he could not live inside houses, because that was the norm.
Once you became a big who, once you became once
you renounced the world, you could not live inside the house.
So Buddha's entire life was spent under trees and especially
(27:24):
mango growths. So I mean that the spread of Buddhism
across this country and across South Asia, across East Asia,
across Southeast Asia, that's deeply enmissed with the mango. The
mango was an element of promoting Buddhism across Asia, and
(27:51):
the Buddha was the Buddha and his disciples were for
the most part living in mango growths of what is
today Bihar and Pradesh. Then the big change comes into well,
it wasn't that big at the time. We end up
overestimating a little bit, overestimating the change a little bit
(28:13):
in hindsight. But the mango is what scientists called in
a heterozygous organism, which means at the time of fertilization,
you don't know which traits the progeny will take from
which parent or from which ancestry. Right, a homozygous plant
(28:42):
is or organism is something that has a very predictable outcome.
The progeny is like the parents. But that doesn't happen
in human beings. You know, our children. We can never
say what will be the great quality of our children,
(29:02):
what will be the great limitation of our kids. The
mango is like that. It's it's highly heterozygous, so you
don't know what you're going to get from the seed.
So people who wanted a predictable seed, a predictable fruit
from new plants, they didn't have a way till modern
(29:26):
grafting practices were used. Now grafting, I mean the oldest
accounts of grafting actually come from China. In India, so
as you'll see in chapter two, there is an elaborate
list of the ancient texts that describe crafting practices. Even
the Karma Sutra. Karma Sutra describes grafting as one of
(29:49):
the key sixty four hours that a person should be right.
But for some reason, we did not apply grafting to
the mango because we accepted the wild characterism. See India
has had a great embryce of wilderness. That's something in
(30:10):
which we are different from your nature is seen with
some amount of suspicion in your wilderness is seen with suspicion.
In India, wilderness was kept close and that is another
reason the amarai was a great blessing because an ambraye
(30:31):
close to a village or a city was like having
a forest clothes. And people accepted that we cannot be
naturally joyous if we are away from wilderness, because we
come from the wilderness. And you'd see all the great
(30:52):
traditions in India, they are arnak. Yeah, there is a
great celebration of the forest. Now, if you look at
the Vedic traditions, the Astik traditionis the dishes build their
ushdums inside the forest. If you look at the Nastic traditions,
the ones that did not believe in the Vedans, they
(31:14):
had Ranazis who did the tapasia in the forest. Then
Fangul cultures have always been deeply enmeshed in the forest.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
We are.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Rabindranath says this beautifully in an essay titled Religion of
the Forest. He describes that all our cultural practices celebrated
the first the mango is what mediated our relationship with
the forest. But if you want a more predictable fruit,
(31:45):
you will not get it from the seed of the man.
So modern grafting practices actually begin in Goa. And the
people who brought those practices to India and applied them
to the mango were Jesuit priests. Now the Jesuit Order
(32:06):
Society of Jesus as it is called, we've all heard
of Jesuit schools because the Jesuits are very big on education.
The Order itself, I mean, it came about in France
in the early sixteenth century, and soon it became one
of the major orders of Christendom, along with the Dominicans
(32:31):
and the Franciscans. And but then it actually became more
powerful than all the other orders. And because the Order
had been created with a certain military zeal, there was
a great emphasis on secular knowledge, and the Jesuits ended
up doing what the Arab Empire had done maybe four
(32:55):
hundred five hundred years before them, which is uniting all
manner of knowledge traditions in the world, learning from everybody
and compiling it together. And that's why the Jesuit letters
were the Google search engines of that time, because there
were Jesuit centers across the world which reported to Rome.
(33:16):
So if you go through the Jesuit archives as set
as some historians and researchers have done, you can learn
about pretty much anything. I'll give you another example which
is not in the book, but this tells you how
deep the Jesuit story runs in the history of the world.
(33:37):
Africa is very close to Europe, but Africa wasn't colonized
till the mid nineteenth century, almost whereas both South America
and North America and Australia and large parts of Asia
were colonized by European naval powers much before. How did
(34:00):
this happen? Why didn't they first colonize Africa, which had
great resources, which had gold, which had many minerals, ivory forests, everything.
It's not that they didn't try, but nine out of
ten people who used to enter the forests of Central
(34:21):
Africa used to die of malaria. And until the Jesuits
found that the bark of the Sinchona tree in Peru
has properties that prevent malaria, from which comes the drakunin
(34:41):
or quinine as some people call it. That discovery comes
from the Jesuits. And once there is a once there
is a way to prevent malaria, then the colonization of
Africa begins. So we don't realize how these small discoveries
(35:02):
play a huge role in international history. And that's why
a careful, deep look at something like the mango is
important for us because it tells us things about our
own culture, about our history, that the standard accounts will
never provide.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Absolutely, absolutely the way we were And you said when
the railways came to India and in the Canal colonial era,
that's when mango groups were cut down.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Right, Mango groups begin to get cut down with Zamidari,
which is seventeen eighty to seventeen ninety three. That's when
Zamidari is established across North India, right, and the Zamidars
had no interest in the well being of the villages
(35:56):
that came under their administration. They were countable only to
the East India Company. That's when mango grooves begin to
get felled mercilessly. And there are accounts from British officers,
from revenue officers warning about the cutting of mango growths. Now,
(36:19):
this is also a key difference because the Muguls came
from outside, but they completely embraced the mango. Right. There
is no account from the Mugul times that I've been
able to find where mango grooves were disturbed in any way, Right,
I'm talking about groves which belong to ordinary people. Yeah,
(36:42):
And they promoted the mango orchards in a huge way.
So they take the culture of the Vatica and they
adapted to new practices, but they didn't touch the the
culture of ordinary folk and its association with the mango.
(37:05):
The amorais were thriving under Mughal rule and then they
begin to be cut under the British. So you see
that there is a there is a break between the
rulers and the idea of economic well being of the
(37:27):
masters that occurs after Zamidari. Before that, just like a
show was telling people. I mean, there's inscriptions left by
a show Emperor a Shoke describe how he invested in
mango broths. Right. He he has left back there inscriptions
(37:51):
from the third century BC describing that the emperor a
show has has granted mango growth to ordinary people for
their well being. So you know, there was a great
desire among kings two two spread the message that they'd
(38:16):
invested in the mango, right, and that comes down all
the way. When Shashasuri revides the Marian highways and the
Grand Trunk he planned, he gets mango trees planted along
the highway, which is which is an ancient practice. When
the British created their roads and railroads, they did no
(38:38):
such things. When it came to planning New Delhi. They
did not put the mango in Latian's Delhi, right, They
were not interested. They were interested in the fruit. British
administrators were bunkers about the mango as a fruit, but
(38:58):
they were not interested sted in either the the culture
of rich people in terms of vaticas and bagijas, nor
were they interested in the in the mango groves of ordinary.
So this shows a break in the relationship. And that
(39:19):
is how we see it today. Our relationships with our
own people are not determined by the old social relationships
that existed. We haven't improved on them. In fact, we
have turned away from our own Now we are only
(39:43):
interested in the fruit that we can buy in the market.
We have no idea where our food comes from. We
have no association with the land that grows that fruit,
that food. And that is the tragedy of the mango today.
Right while we continue to talk about it, we have
no idea why we are obsessed with the mango isolation.
(40:06):
We have no idea. That's because we have forgotten the
relationships that made us Indian. Right, we copied the British
attitude towards our land.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Very true because this season was you know, gifted some
mangos by a friend who got it from a farm,
and the taste was so different, nothing like you know
the ones that you order online or something, And it
was so different.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
Yeah, because the taste includes the relationship. Yes, you can
also taste the relationship, and when the relationship is good,
you can also taste the relationship with the soil, with
the pollinators.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
Right.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
There is plenty of evidence from from psychology, from research
projects in psychology that show I mean, it's a theory
called the habitat selection theory. It says that we cannot be,
we cannot thrive and prosper outside the environment in which
(41:10):
we bought.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Yeah, you've quote it in the book as well.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Yeah, it's it's the I mean. The theory comes from
a great biologist called E. O. Wilson, Edward O. Wilson. Yeah,
And there is ample evidence now from people who research
the design of cities that localities that do not have
any greens around them, the rate of violence grows up,
(41:40):
social relationships break down, the sales of medicine's goal. So
having greenery around us is an essential element of public health.
And that's the role that the mango grove played in
our villages and cities. Forgotten that we had three therapy
(42:01):
from mango groups, we had psychological therapy, we had we
had festivals, we had social joy. We've exchanged all that
for what for a funeral pyre in Boli growing synthetic
colors at each other for half a day and uh,
you know, maybe having a little bit of bound Whereas
(42:26):
the mango flower was supposed to be the great intoxicant
in India.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
You've written that you know, alcohol reminds you of mango.
It's the same association. You said, no, it doesn't remind me.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
I mean he is the so I mean. This theory
comes from from a scientist who whose own father was
an alcoholic and their family suffered a great amount of
damage from alcoholism. And he was part of a search
team in the forest of Costa Rica when he realized
(43:00):
is that primates were eating fermented fruits. Right if sugar,
if you leave sugar out in the open, any product
which has sugar, there is a yeast that arrives on
that fruit and it creates alcohol to protect the fruit
(43:21):
from bacteria and other pathogens. So alcohol is that yeasts
food security measure. Right, So fleshy fruits, when you leave
them out in the open, they will develop alcohol. So
he proposed a theory that we have a tolerance for
(43:42):
alcohol because we are obsessed with fleshy fruits. Later on,
other studies provided evidence of this, and there is evidence
now even from genomics, which shows that we have a
certain mutation that allows us to metaboli alcohol and drawn
nutrition from it. Now, this would have been a huge
(44:04):
advantage for our ancestors when they faced food scarcity because
if you can tolerate alcohol, what that means is you
can eat fruit that has fallen on the ground and
which has begun to permit. And alcohol is actually also
a good source of nutrition. So if you can tolerate
(44:24):
the alcohol in fruit, you have access to more nutrition
than others. And he proposed that this is how we
get our taste and desire for alcohol. So our addiction
to sugar begins with mother's milk, but it gets transmitted
(44:45):
to fruits because in the primate order. We are called
fruitgivory dominant omnivors, meaning we eat anything that is available,
but our chosen fruit. Chosen food is always fruit. Right,
So the desire for fruit actually runs deep inside us,
(45:09):
both culturally, which Book one, the Fruit of India Documents
and Book two documents that from a natural perspective, right,
it's been a great mystery in science for a long
time how the primate order has its eyes in the
front of the face. We don't realize this is actually
(45:32):
quite unusual in the animating room. This also gives us
stereous copic vision. Right. This is the reason we can
drive cars and ride motorcycles at three hundred kilometers per
hour on rattracks because we have excellent stereous copic vision.
We have very good depth perception. It's unusual in nature.
(45:53):
And it was proposed in the nineteen seventies that this
was a result of hunting, so this was called man
the hunter theory. And then in the nineties emerged a
parallel theory to this, which is now the dominant theory
of primate evolution. That are, the design of our body
(46:13):
is shaped by our desire for foods, for fleshy foods.
Another feature that we don't realize comes naturally to us.
We can see the color red. We are the only
order of placental mammals that can see red, and this
(46:34):
is linked to Scientists have theorized that this is linked
to please creating fruits in the in the orange, yellow,
brown color range, all of which requires the ability to
see red. We don't realize this. The cat family cannot
(47:00):
see red. We don't realize that that cattle cannot see red.
You know, antelopes cannot see red. We are the only
plus order of placental mammals who can see red. And
the trees knew this. The trees figured it out, and
the trees invested in us. The trees offered fruit to
(47:24):
us because the trees wanted realized that we were the
kind of pollinators that they needed in the tropical rainforests
of the Cenozoic early Cenozoic period. So the trees figured
out that we had certain key features that are advantages
to them, and the trees offered us rewards in fruit,
(47:48):
and those rewards have driven us since the time we
don't even know, right, that's how deep the desire for
fruit runs in us, right, it's it's there in our design,
it's in our eyes, it's in our brain, it's in
our opposable thumbs. Right, it's and that is what has
(48:11):
made it possible to make tools.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
Right, So the key features that define us, that differentiate
us from the animal kingdom, differentiate us within the animal kingdom.
They are linked to trees that both fleshy foods. And
that's the part that's the fruit of wilderness. That's the
(48:38):
story of the andreo sperm's evolution, and the story of
the primate order. The genetics of the mango, how crazy
they are, it's weird ecology. All of that follows from there.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
Yeah, it's wonderful how you've linked the mango to biology
and culture and everything.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
You know.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
This is why I really love your book. This is open.
You've tried to answer the question of whether the mango
had its origins in India. Can you talk about that
a bit.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
The first naturalists to speculate on this subject was Joseph T. Hooker,
our great friend of Charles Darwins. He had trained to
India in the mid nineteenth century, and he had also
traveled across Southeast Asia, and he realized that there were
(49:28):
more wild mango trees in the forests of Southeast Asia
than India, so he proposed that the mango very likely
came from Southeast Asia to India. Now, later, as evidence
began to emerge of wild mango trees in northeast India
(49:50):
and Bangladesh and Burma, it was said that the mango
originated in the Indo Burma region Indo Burma region extending
to Indonesia. Now, with time came a new set of
evidence that is fossils, and the oldest fossil of the
(50:15):
mango found outside of India is from Thailand and that
is about twenty three million years old. Twenty three million
years is about when India connected with Asia over land. Right,
the undersea collision between the Indian Plate and the Asian
(50:36):
Plate occurred fifty million years ago, but for about twenty
seven million years there was no land connection, so the
death Is Sea stood between India and the Indian Plate
and the Asian Plate. So the oldest fossil that is
outside of India is from a time after the land
(50:58):
connection had happened. But the oldest fossil of the mango
from India is has been found in Meghalae in sediment
that dates back to fifty nine to fifty six millienius,
and at that time, Indian the Indian Plate, was an
(51:19):
island south of the equator. There is now that is
a mega fossil. I've seen that fossil. It's a it's
a beautiful leaf, mango leaf. Beautiful, right, And then that's described.
I describe it as you know, as a tor and
(51:40):
I hang at the door of my mind. Oh lovely. Right,
So it is the oldest mega fossils are from India
and from a time when India was actually an island
south of the equator. Then there is another branch of
your botany. It's called peridology. They look at polan fossils. Now,
(52:07):
the difference between mega fossils and polan fossils is polen
fossils are plentiful, right, but polen fossils do not provide
a high resolution, sharp image, whereas a mega fossil is
a part of a plant, so it provides a high
resolution image. So both poland fossils and mega fossils show
(52:33):
that the mango existed in India on the Indian Plate, right,
So that changed the discussion, and then it came to
be accepted that the mango is perhaps one of the
(52:54):
trees from the Gondwana super continent that then arrived in Laura, Asia.
And there is a I mean a great scientist, RC.
Marotra in Lucknow at the beegburg Shani Institute of Paleosciences.
He he has a beautiful line to describe the role
(53:15):
that the Indian Plate played in a lot of these
in the movement of these plant families. He says, the
Indian Plate was a biotic ferry during its northward voyage
from Goa to Asia, and that biotic ferry carried many
gifts of zation and the mango was one of them.
(53:39):
To the best of our knowledge currently, yeah, we don't
know what fossils are lying buried in which part of
the world, right, But the best evidence available with us
today shows that the mango came into its own on
the Indian Plate when the Indian Plate was around the equator.
Speaker 1 (54:00):
Okay, so we can claim it.
Speaker 2 (54:03):
I'm sure we can claim it. We can anyway claim it.
We can claim it culturally. Suppose tomorrow there is some
fossil found in Japan that is older and that shows
that the mango was already in existence in Asia before
it collided with India. That doesn't change our cultural relationship
with me. It is still unique and it is incomparable
(54:25):
with any country or any flute. Yeah, India and the
mango is a unique relationship.
Speaker 1 (54:32):
Yeah, truly. Another things open. You know, you've also written
about how we're not aware of so many varieties of mangoes,
we just know the few.
Speaker 2 (54:40):
That are in vogue.
Speaker 1 (54:41):
Really, so there are how many, like sixteen hundred or
something you've mentioned.
Speaker 2 (54:46):
At last count around twenty ten eighty two mango varieties
have been documented across the world, okay, and of these
about one thousand hour available in India. So that has
to do with See you're asking me about the mango's origin.
(55:10):
So Manngifera indica is merely one species of the mind
they're about seventy odd species, and India has merely nine.
You know, Vietnam is thirteen, Indonesias thirty one, Malaysia has
twenty nine. So obviously in terms of in terms of species,
(55:33):
Southeast Asia has a greater number of mango species. But
the difference here is with Manjifera ala. Manjifera indiga, or
what is called the common mango, is highly heterozygous, which
means it changes a lot from you know, in time
(55:56):
and space, so it can within the same species that
can acquire the kind of variety that you do not
typically see in fruits that you do not typically see
in other mango species. And they're literally about seventy mango species.
(56:19):
Thirty one species occur just on the island of Borneo,
but they're wild and that their fruit is not as
good as Mangifera indica. Right. Mangivera indica is one species
which has you know, about seventeen hundred cultivars mm hmm, right,
and that that has to do with with its genetic instability, right,
(56:44):
it's not in its evolutionary journey. Mangifa indica has not
it upon a very predictable and repeatable reproductive formula. So
in biology you come across that's the role of sex
(57:05):
in biology. Sex is a big mixer. The other species
of the mango that can produce seeds that are asexual,
and asexual seeds are dominant over sexual seeds, so they
actually kill the sexual seed. In polymbryonic mangoes, which are
multiple seeds, the seeds that come directly from the mother,
(57:26):
which are clone seeds are stronger than the sexual seed
that is a result of a union between a male
and a female. So what that means is and Mangifera
indica has merely one seed and that seed is sexual.
So just like sex drives diversity, Yeah, you know, desire
(57:50):
is the code for diversity. It's manjira Indica which has
that kind of diversity, right, It's the limitation that gives
it diversity, right, And it's that diversity which gives us
this incredible cultural appeal of the mind.
Speaker 1 (58:10):
Yeah, fantastic. You know, we can just go on because
there's so much in your book, but I just want
to ask you, although this will probably also lead to
a long answer. Uh. You know, for the mango diplomacy
you've talked about even in current times, you said somebody
wanted their car delivered early, so they send a gift
of mangoes when nothing else worked, right, And in you
(58:32):
also mentioned in Nero's times he sent a basket of
mangoes to somebody who was considered a political opponent, you know.
So it's just going on.
Speaker 2 (58:44):
So this comes from the same cultural The cultural way
to the mango is such that even when India and
Pakistan open diplomatic channels. Right, the first thing that happens
is mangoes get exchanged. Yeah, so when you want to
spread goodwill, it's the mango. And to the best that
I've been able to find out, this tradition goes back
(59:07):
to Buddhism. Okay, right, the modern Empire began using the
mango as a gift spread the message of Buddhism. And
that's when people realize that this is a gift that
melts people's hearts. So you know, when you suppose you
(59:29):
and I were to have a fight and you stop talking,
when we try to re establish connection, we need to
do something to open the door. Nothing opens doors in
South Asia like the.
Speaker 1 (59:44):
Short answer, Yeah, short answer.
Speaker 2 (59:49):
It's disarming. You know what happens is I've noticed this.
You go and mentioned the mango to somebody who's in
the middle of a you know, intense work conversation or
this work on something, and you mentioned the mango, and
someday they drop everything and look at you and their
eyes dilate. The effect is the scene as meeting somebody
(01:00:12):
you love. The mango has that kind of effect on
people in selfish. It has a disarming effect. It has
a loving effect Suddenly. I mean, you might be tense
and really worried about something and a mango comes in
front of him. Suddenly you relax, you smile. The mango
(01:00:35):
makes a smile like nothing else.
Speaker 1 (01:00:38):
So you know, So when I haven't asked you finally
about your own relationship with the maggo.
Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
Well, I mean, as part of this book, I've tasted
more mangoes than most people. But because taste is an
element of memory, favorite mango is the sucking type. They
see mango found in Malva that my uncle used to
(01:01:08):
buy from the Munday and he used to sit all
of us children around buckets of water in which that
they see malbi mangoes was soaked. And he used to
massage the mangoes with his hands and give them to
us and used to watch our faces while we had
those meanings. And that was the greatest joy for my uncle.
(01:01:34):
Even when I met him the last time I met him,
the moment he recognized me, his eyes were going, his
body was going. He saw my face and the first
thing that he said was mango juice.
Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
Right.
Speaker 2 (01:01:49):
So, taste is deeply entangled with memory and smell and taste.
Smell especially is handled by the amig dilla in the brain.
And that's also where the primal emotions I have with
some in popular culture, it's called the lizard brain yeah,
(01:02:12):
or the most basic part.
Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
Of the brain, the fight or flight response basically yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
And fragrance is linked to that. So, no matter how
many expensive or rare mangoes, that taste to the mango,
that that dilates my eyes, that just leaves me with
a tear in my eye is the mango seed grown
(01:02:38):
mango from the Malgai, from where my family comes. The
memory of that taste is my connection with the soil
of Malba.
Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
That's a wonderful note to end on. Indeed, thank you
Sopen for doing this.
Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
Yeah, and thank you for taking out the time to
read the book.
Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
Of course it's worth your while, absolutely
Hi, Welcome to Swishing Mindsets. This is Unrada and today
I'm speaking to Soapan Joshi, journalist and author of the
book Mangi Ferra Indika, A Biography of the Mango, A historical, cultural, religious,
and economic exploration of India's favorite fruit. So Hi, Soapan,
So tell me a little about the book, because I
(00:22):
actually don't have words to describe it. It's such a
thick academic work almost, but you know it is so
interesting to read, so please.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
We are not used to reading about fruits in this way,
as you and your listeners will realize. Every summer, numerous
publications carry articles on the mango. No other food item,
no other fruit is covered like this. It's as if
(00:53):
we are obsessed with the mango. And I've not been
a route to write on any subject as much as
the mango over the years, because all kinds of people
will get in thatch and say they want an article.
They're wondering if I can, if I will do a
piece on the mango. So I have begun to realize
(01:15):
that there is something unusual about the mango, and nobody
seems to have a handle on why we are obsessed
with this boot. So earlier. You asked me before we
began this recording that you asked me how I ended
(01:37):
up doing this book. This book comes from an article
I wrote more than ten years ago on the mango.
The first time I wrote about the mango was more
than twenty two years ago, which again tells you that
we constantly keep revisiting this. That article got some traction
(02:00):
and the publisher got in touch with me and they
said that they were looking for somebody who can do
a a more comprehensive book on So that's how the
idea for the book came about. It's not it's not
like I was sitting somewhere and then there was a
(02:21):
Eureka moment and said, mango. Nothing like that. Why did
they come to me? As part of my work in agriculture?
In journalism, I have covered agriculture. I covered uh, It's
one of the topics that I have covered, and agriculture
strangely does not get covered in in Indian journalism because
(02:46):
journalism is an urban occupation. It's it's people live in
cities writing for other people live in cities, but they
want to know about mangoes. Now, you'd see if you
read your average mango feature that appears in any newspaper
or magazine. You realize that it's urban people going to
(03:15):
a location for half a day, for one day, go
to a research institution, visited, and come back and write. Now.
I began reporting on this book sometime around this November
of twenty fourteen, and within a year and a half
of reporting, I realized that all that I had found
(03:40):
out was what I did not wish to write, So
this doesn't happen. Journalism is a very hurried occupation, and
I taken almost a year and a half traveling into
several parts of the country, and I realized that if
(04:03):
I were to write from the reporting that I had
at that time, it it was going to end up
being the same that people write about all the time.
And this is a book, so a book has a
different kind of shelf life. So I went back to
my notebook and I began to look for what look
(04:27):
for themes that showed a bigger picture than what I
said out to find. And two words appear to me,
risk and desire, well shock, actually shock and risk. These
are the two words that I heard everywhere I went
in our churchs, in research institutions, in drawing rooms, in
(04:50):
living rooms all over the place. People said that this
fruit is about shock. Shock is from the Arabic means longing,
it means nostalgia, it means passion, it means desire and risk.
So then I began afresh. In about twenty sixteen seventeen,
(05:19):
I began reporting afresh. I began visiting places afresh. And
this book results from nearly eight years of reporting from
several parts of the country, and it also attempts to
draw from all previous work, and it also suggests work
(05:43):
that needs to be done in the future. I don't know.
Does that make sense to you?
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Yes, of course, I'm gone through your book. It makes
perfect sense.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
So while doing the book, I realized that my material
was falling in three categories roughly. So then the writing
was reorganized in a way that those three categories were
addressed independently. So the first category is the book one,
(06:17):
as you would see.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah's book one, book two, book three.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Book one is called the fruit of India. So that
is a cultural exploration of the money right we are.
I doubt there is any other country in the world
which has such a deep relationship with one fruit. I
don't think there is any comparison to this. So that's
(06:45):
the and if you see how the story moves in
book one, it starts from a personal account, then it
broadens into the story of a country that goes mad
over the men every summer. Then it goes into the
nature of the mango fruit, the variety, and that's where
(07:09):
you mentioned earlier that there is a difference between seed
grown mangoes and grafted mangoes. So that lays down the
historical account of how we have seen the mango. By
the end of that you get another glimpse of how
(07:29):
as a culture we have been obsessed with seed grown mangoes,
not grafted. Minds, the mangoes that we get in the
market today are almost all grafted. But this is not
very old. It's only the past sixty years or so
that that the mango is the mango appears in the
market in such volumes and is grown out from grafted materaio.
(07:57):
Then the story becomes a wider or by the end
of it, it is clear that it's not the fruit
that has driven India man over the mango. It is
a part of a much wider culture, and that culture
was the culture of the mango grove. And in India,
(08:21):
perhaps the most important aspect of infrastructure in villages and
in towns was the amarai. These were seed grown mango
groves where people went for picnics, wedding parties. The barat
used to stay in amais. Weddings used to be solemnized
(08:43):
in mango groves. These were the original banquet halls in India.
And this has been so since since we don't know when.
So then it becomes apparent that this country existed in
the culture of the mango world. It was an inherent
(09:06):
part of land use decisions in villages and towns. Then
it becomes apparent that we were crazy about the mango,
not because of the fruit in the summer, but because
of the flower in the spring. And the greatest festival
in India was the two month modern Otsa or the
(09:30):
arm or the Usa. It was a two month festival
where all manner of people abandoned the usual the rigma
role and celebrated in a riot of communal joy and happiness.
And various parts of the country had their own rituals
(09:54):
that had to do with the spring festival. We've completely
forgotten that festival. All that remains is one little festival
of Bully. Out of that even that has been reduced
to a symbolic funeral pire. So from there it becomes
(10:15):
a parent that all religions in India have had the
mango deeply enmeshed in their stories and their practices and
their observances. Then it becomes a parent that all empires,
all kings were deeply invested in the mango. If they
wanted to let people know that they had done something
(10:37):
for the greater common good, they created mango growths. And
we know this from at least the marine times, if
not before. So from there, the Fruit of India ends
with an exploration of the scientific evidence available from paleobotany
(11:00):
of the mango's origin, and we find out that the
best evidence available currently makes it clear that the mango
evolved on the Indian plate at the time when the
Indian plate was south of the equator. Right, So this
is the Fruit of India. So imagine the sweep of this.
(11:20):
It begins with small personal accounts and it ends up
traveling across space and time millions of years, hundreds of kilometers,
thousands of kilometers actually, And you realize that if you
I realize this, that by holding on to the mango.
(11:41):
I was crossing fabrics of space and time in ways
that I never imagined. So that is the Fruit of India.
Book two is an account of the mango from nature,
from ecology, and that is called the Fruit of the Wilderness.
Now even the queue for this comes from the the
(12:05):
culture of the grove. It comes from there and it
becomes then Book two through to the Wilderness examines the
evolution of the mango, how fruits, fleshy fruits like the
mango are deeply linked to the to the mammal order
(12:29):
which produced us primates, from which it goes into mango's genetics.
Then it goes into ecology. Then from there it goes
into cultivation of the mango, from there to the markets
and finally it ends with exports. Book three is just
called the Fruit of the Senses, which is essentially travelogues
(12:52):
from across the country of finding out of eating really
good mangos in their own location, not sitting in the
market and buying fruit, but actually going to where the
best fruit is pun So that's the split of the book.
The Fruit of India, the Wilderness and the Fruit of
(13:14):
the Senses.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Wonderful and you know when I was reading your book
and when you just said it, I felt very wistful
reading about the mango groves and you've written that, you know,
they were just donated to the public and poor people.
I think you mentioned it happening in the past. They
ate rotea with mango pulp. Mangos were so common, so
(13:42):
it's it's very interesting, you know, and you feel very
wistful because you've also written about the Tundiesruck and now
you just find it in poems, you know, in poetry,
but earlier it was a real thing, and we don't
realize what tundies struck actually went, so maybe you can
talk about that.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
So I've had I've heard a lot of people wondering
while I was working on the book, asking me questions
about what is it about the mango? Why am I
putting in so much time and right? Why am I
asking them all kinds of questions, you know, questions nobody
(14:18):
asked them before this, and I really didn't have an
answer for them. But I do have an answer now,
and the answer is we don't realize how our culture,
our social life, our ecology is influenced by our passion
for them from the ancient times to now. And the
(14:43):
weird thing is, even as the large markets for mangoes
have emerged over the past fifty or sixty years, we've
actually forgotten how deep this fruit runs into our culture.
It's as if we we are completely disconnected with our
own country, with our own people, and this fruit was
(15:06):
a means of that connection. That connection traversed ecology, it
traversed regions, it traversed classes, it traversed casts. I can't
think of any one thing that represents all that is
India so comprehensively.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Yeah, you mentioned that even the transgender community they had
their dedicated you know, grows, mango groves.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Look at so many of our great wars have happened
in mango golds.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Right, So I spent a fair amount of time figuring
out what is it about the money? Right? The battle
of class is in a menum. Yeah, the first battle
of puneybirth mango, third battle of honey birth mango grow.
Most likely even the second battle of honey birth happened
in the manum. It just keeps occurring again and again.
And then I realized what was perhaps the most important
(16:06):
lesson of my efforts to understand the mango in India.
Wherever you were, you were never very far from mango world.
So you could do anything anywhere and a mango grove
would be close by. The mango grove was so ubiquitous,
(16:26):
it was a basic part of being Indian, of living
in India, and we've forgotten all of that. All we
can connect with today is a fruit that we buy
in the summer the market, and that is a disconnection
with our own ecology, with our own culture, with our
(16:48):
religious practices, with our cultural traditions. There is a great disconnect,
and the mango has become my way of joining the dots.
There is a there is a much bigger picture of
a subcontinent that emerges from merely chasing the mind. Yeah,
(17:16):
you you mentioned Amari is created by transgender people. The
Parsi Tower of Silence in Bombay has very old mango things. Now,
the Parsi community came from outside, but once in India,
(17:40):
they embraced the mango and that made them Indian. Likewise,
the Muguls are coming from an ecological landscape that is
very different from India. India is a subtropical or a
tropical region most of India. They were coming from Central Asia,
(18:01):
which is the temperate area. Then again, Central Asia is
right in the middle of two ancient gardening superpowers. It
was China to the east and Iran to the west.
So those practices have shaped Central as So when the
Mughal dynasty comes to India, it is coming with its
(18:26):
own fruit culture, but they embrace the mango, and then
their embrace of the mango turns them Indian to the
point where all manner of Mughal emperors and exemptions on
land revenue for mango groves and orchards.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Yeah, the the Moguls, I mean, which.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
The mango culture, the mango culture that we see today,
how mango is discussed today, that is entire barely a
Mughal tradition.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Yeah, but the way you mentioned each MgAl ruler, it
is fantastic. It's so amusing. They're craving for melons, they're
craving for the mango. And Barber was waiting for a
sign to enter Hindustan and somebody.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
So that was that that is actually that account is
actually fictitious, Okay. That account, that account comes from a
courtier from Jahanguese court who goes back and writes a story.
So he's trying to color Barber's entry into India with
(19:34):
the mango. Ah, okay, right, because the mango is so auspicious.
Anybody who's in India wants to connect themselves to the mango,
and by connecting themselves to the mango, they end up
connecting themselves with India.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Yeah, but it also loved mango's right you mentioned By.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
The time Barber's uh Humayu wasn't in India for the
most part of his life. He returned and he died
soon after his return Akabar onwards. The Mughal emperors are
absolutely crazy about the man. I mean or Zeb gave
(20:13):
sanscript names to two mango varieties, okay, right, Madhumlas and
Rasna Vilas. Right. Yeah, Orne used to I mean Shajana
used to get upset with Oranzey for not sending him
(20:34):
fruits from trees that he loved. When Barber came to India,
he used to be set up an elaborate career service
to get melons from Afghanistani. By the time it came
to shah Jahah, there was a career service established to
get good mangoes from the Maharashtra coast to Devii. They
(20:57):
were getting mangoes from Bengal to Delhi. There was a
great amount of patronage given to and what the mugles
ended up doing was they ended up transforming the older
culture of the article. Right, So the difference is earlier.
You know, since the ancient times, ordinary people had mango grows,
(21:21):
and people with resources like kings and merchants, they created
articas which were which had trees of both economic and
medicinal value as well as plants that had medicine. Now,
these varticas were very elaborate botanical affairs, right, and they
(21:47):
had high quality mangoes because people with resources could invest money,
land time into growing fine lines. Ordinary people have their
mangos from the MRIs. And this is weird because every
(22:07):
summer there's so many reports from Malihabad about the passion
of the Navabs for great mangoes and what on. But
when I was traveling in Malihabad, old timers told me
he made. They were trying to say that this is
a flute that belonged to all manner of ordinary, to
(22:29):
the community, right to the community. And they used to
say that when poor people are no other vegetables to
eat in the summer, they'd have their Chabati with mangoes,
no of You know, there's so many books written on
the mango. There's so many articles written on the mango
(22:51):
every year, but these details don't come out anywhere. All
we hear is stories of royal patronage. Now, if you
see the accounts from before the Mogul times, the obsession,
I mean, the mango has always been an obsession in
the arts in India. We sculpture, the painting, with epics,
(23:12):
the drama, but people were obsessed with mango flower.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Said and.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
It's not just Karmad's arrow, I mean the mango flowers
k arrow, but the entire mango tree is supposed to
be an embodiment of comedy. Mm hmm, right right now,
what that means is see ka is An is an
(23:44):
ancient Vedic gating and is very mischievous. He he has
this habit of getting people to drop their inhibitions and
do what their better sense prevents them from the right.
So he's a troublemaker and that is the trouble maker.
(24:06):
I mean, that is the trouble of excitement, which is
why the Spring Festival was considered Karmadeva's festival. And it
was said that Karmadeva, who had been rendered invisible by
by Shiva because because Shiva was upset with the kind
(24:26):
of trouble Karma Deva calls to all manneral people during
the spring festival, Karmadev comes alive in the mango tree.
An all manner of rituals associated with Karmadeva were associated
with the mango tree and also with the with the
(24:47):
Ashok tree. So we've completely forgotten all this. You know,
we keep talking about ancient traditions and culture, and but
we've forgotten the central sanity of nature in all our
cultural and ritual observations. I don't know. Does that make
(25:08):
sense to you?
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Yes, that's true.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
I mean, how did you How did you find these
these accounts that I found from either old material or
from academic sauces, or from accounts gathered from conversations with people.
Does it make sense to you because it is it
is material that's coming from a diversity of sources.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Yeah, of course it makes sense because it makes me
think it's not something I've really thought about because in childhood,
I remember all of us, have you know, plucked mangoes
from trees that you've written on one of your accounts
that you saw tree and you wanted to climb it, right,
so you know we've all done that, but now it's
just you go to the market and you pick it up.
So there is a huge disconnect.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
And it makes it Yeah, this is consumerism. Yeah, this
is consumerism at play, which will never give us the
kind of ay that we got out ordinary cultural practices.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
That's true. And you know, so when can we also
talk about you know what I mentioned earlier. You've mentioned
about the grafting techniques, and that was fascinating for me
to read about because you mentioned the Jesuit priests. You've
gone into the goa inquisition, Spanish inquisition, everything, then Uppar
wooing these Jesuit priests, you know, and leading them, misleading
(26:28):
them basically into thinking that you know, he may convert.
So it's it's very interesting. Then the Buddhist monks as well,
you know, they've also traveled and you know, propagated the mango,
so you know a little bit, you know, to people
who have not read.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
First of all, no religion is as deeply enmeshed in
the culture of the mango grows as was. Yeah, because
once Buddha renounced a domestic life. Once he became a renansi,
(27:02):
he could not live inside houses, because that was the norm.
Once you became a big who, once you became once
you renounced the world, you could not live inside the house.
So Buddha's entire life was spent under trees and especially
(27:24):
mango growths. So I mean that the spread of Buddhism
across this country and across South Asia, across East Asia,
across Southeast Asia, that's deeply enmissed with the mango. The
mango was an element of promoting Buddhism across Asia, and
(27:51):
the Buddha was the Buddha and his disciples were for
the most part living in mango growths of what is
today Bihar and Pradesh. Then the big change comes into well,
it wasn't that big at the time. We end up
overestimating a little bit, overestimating the change a little bit
(28:13):
in hindsight. But the mango is what scientists called in
a heterozygous organism, which means at the time of fertilization,
you don't know which traits the progeny will take from
which parent or from which ancestry. Right, a homozygous plant
(28:42):
is or organism is something that has a very predictable outcome.
The progeny is like the parents. But that doesn't happen
in human beings. You know, our children. We can never
say what will be the great quality of our children,
(29:02):
what will be the great limitation of our kids. The
mango is like that. It's it's highly heterozygous, so you
don't know what you're going to get from the seed.
So people who wanted a predictable seed, a predictable fruit
from new plants, they didn't have a way till modern
(29:26):
grafting practices were used. Now grafting, I mean the oldest
accounts of grafting actually come from China. In India, so
as you'll see in chapter two, there is an elaborate
list of the ancient texts that describe crafting practices. Even
the Karma Sutra. Karma Sutra describes grafting as one of
(29:49):
the key sixty four hours that a person should be right.
But for some reason, we did not apply grafting to
the mango because we accepted the wild characterism. See India
has had a great embryce of wilderness. That's something in
(30:10):
which we are different from your nature is seen with
some amount of suspicion in your wilderness is seen with suspicion.
In India, wilderness was kept close and that is another
reason the amarai was a great blessing because an ambraye
(30:31):
close to a village or a city was like having
a forest clothes. And people accepted that we cannot be
naturally joyous if we are away from wilderness, because we
come from the wilderness. And you'd see all the great
(30:52):
traditions in India, they are arnak. Yeah, there is a
great celebration of the forest. Now, if you look at
the Vedic traditions, the Astik traditionis the dishes build their
ushdums inside the forest. If you look at the Nastic traditions,
the ones that did not believe in the Vedans, they
(31:14):
had Ranazis who did the tapasia in the forest. Then
Fangul cultures have always been deeply enmeshed in the forest.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
We are.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Rabindranath says this beautifully in an essay titled Religion of
the Forest. He describes that all our cultural practices celebrated
the first the mango is what mediated our relationship with
the forest. But if you want a more predictable fruit,
(31:45):
you will not get it from the seed of the man.
So modern grafting practices actually begin in Goa. And the
people who brought those practices to India and applied them
to the mango were Jesuit priests. Now the Jesuit Order
(32:06):
Society of Jesus as it is called, we've all heard
of Jesuit schools because the Jesuits are very big on education.
The Order itself, I mean, it came about in France
in the early sixteenth century, and soon it became one
of the major orders of Christendom, along with the Dominicans
(32:31):
and the Franciscans. And but then it actually became more
powerful than all the other orders. And because the Order
had been created with a certain military zeal, there was
a great emphasis on secular knowledge, and the Jesuits ended
up doing what the Arab Empire had done maybe four
(32:55):
hundred five hundred years before them, which is uniting all
manner of knowledge traditions in the world, learning from everybody
and compiling it together. And that's why the Jesuit letters
were the Google search engines of that time, because there
were Jesuit centers across the world which reported to Rome.
(33:16):
So if you go through the Jesuit archives as set
as some historians and researchers have done, you can learn
about pretty much anything. I'll give you another example which
is not in the book, but this tells you how
deep the Jesuit story runs in the history of the world.
(33:37):
Africa is very close to Europe, but Africa wasn't colonized
till the mid nineteenth century, almost whereas both South America
and North America and Australia and large parts of Asia
were colonized by European naval powers much before. How did
(34:00):
this happen? Why didn't they first colonize Africa, which had
great resources, which had gold, which had many minerals, ivory forests, everything.
It's not that they didn't try, but nine out of
ten people who used to enter the forests of Central
(34:21):
Africa used to die of malaria. And until the Jesuits
found that the bark of the Sinchona tree in Peru
has properties that prevent malaria, from which comes the drakunin
(34:41):
or quinine as some people call it. That discovery comes
from the Jesuits. And once there is a once there
is a way to prevent malaria, then the colonization of
Africa begins. So we don't realize how these small discoveries
(35:02):
play a huge role in international history. And that's why
a careful, deep look at something like the mango is
important for us because it tells us things about our
own culture, about our history, that the standard accounts will
never provide.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Absolutely, absolutely the way we were And you said when
the railways came to India and in the Canal colonial era,
that's when mango groups were cut down.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Right, Mango groups begin to get cut down with Zamidari,
which is seventeen eighty to seventeen ninety three. That's when
Zamidari is established across North India, right, and the Zamidars
had no interest in the well being of the villages
(35:56):
that came under their administration. They were countable only to
the East India Company. That's when mango grooves begin to
get felled mercilessly. And there are accounts from British officers,
from revenue officers warning about the cutting of mango growths. Now,
(36:19):
this is also a key difference because the Muguls came
from outside, but they completely embraced the mango. Right. There
is no account from the Mugul times that I've been
able to find where mango grooves were disturbed in any way, Right,
I'm talking about groves which belong to ordinary people. Yeah,
(36:42):
And they promoted the mango orchards in a huge way.
So they take the culture of the Vatica and they
adapted to new practices, but they didn't touch the the
culture of ordinary folk and its association with the mango.
(37:05):
The amorais were thriving under Mughal rule and then they
begin to be cut under the British. So you see
that there is a there is a break between the
rulers and the idea of economic well being of the
(37:27):
masters that occurs after Zamidari. Before that, just like a
show was telling people. I mean, there's inscriptions left by
a show Emperor a Shoke describe how he invested in
mango broths. Right. He he has left back there inscriptions
(37:51):
from the third century BC describing that the emperor a
show has has granted mango growth to ordinary people for
their well being. So you know, there was a great
desire among kings two two spread the message that they'd
(38:16):
invested in the mango, right, and that comes down all
the way. When Shashasuri revides the Marian highways and the
Grand Trunk he planned, he gets mango trees planted along
the highway, which is which is an ancient practice. When
the British created their roads and railroads, they did no
(38:38):
such things. When it came to planning New Delhi. They
did not put the mango in Latian's Delhi, right, They
were not interested. They were interested in the fruit. British
administrators were bunkers about the mango as a fruit, but
(38:58):
they were not interested sted in either the the culture
of rich people in terms of vaticas and bagijas, nor
were they interested in the in the mango groves of ordinary.
So this shows a break in the relationship. And that
(39:19):
is how we see it today. Our relationships with our
own people are not determined by the old social relationships
that existed. We haven't improved on them. In fact, we
have turned away from our own Now we are only
(39:43):
interested in the fruit that we can buy in the market.
We have no idea where our food comes from. We
have no association with the land that grows that fruit,
that food. And that is the tragedy of the mango today.
Right while we continue to talk about it, we have
no idea why we are obsessed with the mango isolation.
(40:06):
We have no idea. That's because we have forgotten the
relationships that made us Indian. Right, we copied the British
attitude towards our land.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Very true because this season was you know, gifted some
mangos by a friend who got it from a farm,
and the taste was so different, nothing like you know
the ones that you order online or something, And it
was so different.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
Yeah, because the taste includes the relationship. Yes, you can
also taste the relationship, and when the relationship is good,
you can also taste the relationship with the soil, with
the pollinators.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
Right.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
There is plenty of evidence from from psychology, from research
projects in psychology that show I mean, it's a theory
called the habitat selection theory. It says that we cannot be,
we cannot thrive and prosper outside the environment in which
(41:10):
we bought.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Yeah, you've quote it in the book as well.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Yeah, it's it's the I mean. The theory comes from
a great biologist called E. O. Wilson, Edward O. Wilson. Yeah,
And there is ample evidence now from people who research
the design of cities that localities that do not have
any greens around them, the rate of violence grows up,
(41:40):
social relationships break down, the sales of medicine's goal. So
having greenery around us is an essential element of public health.
And that's the role that the mango grove played in
our villages and cities. Forgotten that we had three therapy
(42:01):
from mango groups, we had psychological therapy, we had we
had festivals, we had social joy. We've exchanged all that
for what for a funeral pyre in Boli growing synthetic
colors at each other for half a day and uh,
you know, maybe having a little bit of bound Whereas
(42:26):
the mango flower was supposed to be the great intoxicant
in India.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
You've written that you know, alcohol reminds you of mango.
It's the same association. You said, no, it doesn't remind me.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
I mean he is the so I mean. This theory
comes from from a scientist who whose own father was
an alcoholic and their family suffered a great amount of
damage from alcoholism. And he was part of a search
team in the forest of Costa Rica when he realized
(43:00):
is that primates were eating fermented fruits. Right if sugar,
if you leave sugar out in the open, any product
which has sugar, there is a yeast that arrives on
that fruit and it creates alcohol to protect the fruit
(43:21):
from bacteria and other pathogens. So alcohol is that yeasts
food security measure. Right, So fleshy fruits, when you leave
them out in the open, they will develop alcohol. So
he proposed a theory that we have a tolerance for
(43:42):
alcohol because we are obsessed with fleshy fruits. Later on,
other studies provided evidence of this, and there is evidence
now even from genomics, which shows that we have a
certain mutation that allows us to metaboli alcohol and drawn
nutrition from it. Now, this would have been a huge
(44:04):
advantage for our ancestors when they faced food scarcity because
if you can tolerate alcohol, what that means is you
can eat fruit that has fallen on the ground and
which has begun to permit. And alcohol is actually also
a good source of nutrition. So if you can tolerate
(44:24):
the alcohol in fruit, you have access to more nutrition
than others. And he proposed that this is how we
get our taste and desire for alcohol. So our addiction
to sugar begins with mother's milk, but it gets transmitted
(44:45):
to fruits because in the primate order. We are called
fruitgivory dominant omnivors, meaning we eat anything that is available,
but our chosen fruit. Chosen food is always fruit. Right,
So the desire for fruit actually runs deep inside us,
(45:09):
both culturally, which Book one, the Fruit of India Documents
and Book two documents that from a natural perspective, right,
it's been a great mystery in science for a long
time how the primate order has its eyes in the
front of the face. We don't realize this is actually
(45:32):
quite unusual in the animating room. This also gives us
stereous copic vision. Right. This is the reason we can
drive cars and ride motorcycles at three hundred kilometers per
hour on rattracks because we have excellent stereous copic vision.
We have very good depth perception. It's unusual in nature.
(45:53):
And it was proposed in the nineteen seventies that this
was a result of hunting, so this was called man
the hunter theory. And then in the nineties emerged a
parallel theory to this, which is now the dominant theory
of primate evolution. That are, the design of our body
(46:13):
is shaped by our desire for foods, for fleshy foods.
Another feature that we don't realize comes naturally to us.
We can see the color red. We are the only
order of placental mammals that can see red, and this
(46:34):
is linked to Scientists have theorized that this is linked
to please creating fruits in the in the orange, yellow,
brown color range, all of which requires the ability to
see red. We don't realize this. The cat family cannot
(47:00):
see red. We don't realize that that cattle cannot see red.
You know, antelopes cannot see red. We are the only
plus order of placental mammals who can see red. And
the trees knew this. The trees figured it out, and
the trees invested in us. The trees offered fruit to
(47:24):
us because the trees wanted realized that we were the
kind of pollinators that they needed in the tropical rainforests
of the Cenozoic early Cenozoic period. So the trees figured
out that we had certain key features that are advantages
to them, and the trees offered us rewards in fruit,
(47:48):
and those rewards have driven us since the time we
don't even know, right, that's how deep the desire for
fruit runs in us, right, it's it's there in our design,
it's in our eyes, it's in our brain, it's in
our opposable thumbs. Right, it's and that is what has
(48:11):
made it possible to make tools.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
Right, So the key features that define us, that differentiate
us from the animal kingdom, differentiate us within the animal kingdom.
They are linked to trees that both fleshy foods. And
that's the part that's the fruit of wilderness. That's the
(48:38):
story of the andreo sperm's evolution, and the story of
the primate order. The genetics of the mango, how crazy
they are, it's weird ecology. All of that follows from there.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
Yeah, it's wonderful how you've linked the mango to biology
and culture and everything.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
You know.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
This is why I really love your book. This is open.
You've tried to answer the question of whether the mango
had its origins in India. Can you talk about that
a bit.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
The first naturalists to speculate on this subject was Joseph T. Hooker,
our great friend of Charles Darwins. He had trained to
India in the mid nineteenth century, and he had also
traveled across Southeast Asia, and he realized that there were
(49:28):
more wild mango trees in the forests of Southeast Asia
than India, so he proposed that the mango very likely
came from Southeast Asia to India. Now, later, as evidence
began to emerge of wild mango trees in northeast India
(49:50):
and Bangladesh and Burma, it was said that the mango
originated in the Indo Burma region Indo Burma region extending
to Indonesia. Now, with time came a new set of
evidence that is fossils, and the oldest fossil of the
(50:15):
mango found outside of India is from Thailand and that
is about twenty three million years old. Twenty three million
years is about when India connected with Asia over land. Right,
the undersea collision between the Indian Plate and the Asian
(50:36):
Plate occurred fifty million years ago, but for about twenty
seven million years there was no land connection, so the
death Is Sea stood between India and the Indian Plate
and the Asian Plate. So the oldest fossil that is
outside of India is from a time after the land
(50:58):
connection had happened. But the oldest fossil of the mango
from India is has been found in Meghalae in sediment
that dates back to fifty nine to fifty six millienius,
and at that time, Indian the Indian Plate, was an
(51:19):
island south of the equator. There is now that is
a mega fossil. I've seen that fossil. It's a it's
a beautiful leaf, mango leaf. Beautiful, right, And then that's described.
I describe it as you know, as a tor and
(51:40):
I hang at the door of my mind. Oh lovely. Right,
So it is the oldest mega fossils are from India
and from a time when India was actually an island
south of the equator. Then there is another branch of
your botany. It's called peridology. They look at polan fossils. Now,
(52:07):
the difference between mega fossils and polan fossils is polen
fossils are plentiful, right, but polen fossils do not provide
a high resolution, sharp image, whereas a mega fossil is
a part of a plant, so it provides a high
resolution image. So both poland fossils and mega fossils show
(52:33):
that the mango existed in India on the Indian Plate, right,
So that changed the discussion, and then it came to
be accepted that the mango is perhaps one of the
(52:54):
trees from the Gondwana super continent that then arrived in Laura, Asia.
And there is a I mean a great scientist, RC.
Marotra in Lucknow at the beegburg Shani Institute of Paleosciences.
He he has a beautiful line to describe the role
(53:15):
that the Indian Plate played in a lot of these
in the movement of these plant families. He says, the
Indian Plate was a biotic ferry during its northward voyage
from Goa to Asia, and that biotic ferry carried many
gifts of zation and the mango was one of them.
(53:39):
To the best of our knowledge currently, yeah, we don't
know what fossils are lying buried in which part of
the world, right, But the best evidence available with us
today shows that the mango came into its own on
the Indian Plate when the Indian Plate was around the equator.
Speaker 1 (54:00):
Okay, so we can claim it.
Speaker 2 (54:03):
I'm sure we can claim it. We can anyway claim it.
We can claim it culturally. Suppose tomorrow there is some
fossil found in Japan that is older and that shows
that the mango was already in existence in Asia before
it collided with India. That doesn't change our cultural relationship
with me. It is still unique and it is incomparable
(54:25):
with any country or any flute. Yeah, India and the
mango is a unique relationship.
Speaker 1 (54:32):
Yeah, truly. Another things open. You know, you've also written
about how we're not aware of so many varieties of mangoes,
we just know the few.
Speaker 2 (54:40):
That are in vogue.
Speaker 1 (54:41):
Really, so there are how many, like sixteen hundred or
something you've mentioned.
Speaker 2 (54:46):
At last count around twenty ten eighty two mango varieties
have been documented across the world, okay, and of these
about one thousand hour available in India. So that has
to do with See you're asking me about the mango's origin.
(55:10):
So Manngifera indica is merely one species of the mind
they're about seventy odd species, and India has merely nine.
You know, Vietnam is thirteen, Indonesias thirty one, Malaysia has
twenty nine. So obviously in terms of in terms of species,
(55:33):
Southeast Asia has a greater number of mango species. But
the difference here is with Manjifera ala. Manjifera indiga, or
what is called the common mango, is highly heterozygous, which
means it changes a lot from you know, in time
(55:56):
and space, so it can within the same species that
can acquire the kind of variety that you do not
typically see in fruits that you do not typically see
in other mango species. And they're literally about seventy mango species.
(56:19):
Thirty one species occur just on the island of Borneo,
but they're wild and that their fruit is not as
good as Mangifera indica. Right. Mangivera indica is one species
which has you know, about seventeen hundred cultivars mm hmm, right,
and that that has to do with with its genetic instability, right,
(56:44):
it's not in its evolutionary journey. Mangifa indica has not
it upon a very predictable and repeatable reproductive formula. So
in biology you come across that's the role of sex
(57:05):
in biology. Sex is a big mixer. The other species
of the mango that can produce seeds that are asexual,
and asexual seeds are dominant over sexual seeds, so they
actually kill the sexual seed. In polymbryonic mangoes, which are
multiple seeds, the seeds that come directly from the mother,
(57:26):
which are clone seeds are stronger than the sexual seed
that is a result of a union between a male
and a female. So what that means is and Mangifera
indica has merely one seed and that seed is sexual.
So just like sex drives diversity, Yeah, you know, desire
(57:50):
is the code for diversity. It's manjira Indica which has
that kind of diversity, right, It's the limitation that gives
it diversity, right, And it's that diversity which gives us
this incredible cultural appeal of the mind.
Speaker 1 (58:10):
Yeah, fantastic. You know, we can just go on because
there's so much in your book, but I just want
to ask you, although this will probably also lead to
a long answer. Uh. You know, for the mango diplomacy
you've talked about even in current times, you said somebody
wanted their car delivered early, so they send a gift
of mangoes when nothing else worked, right, And in you
(58:32):
also mentioned in Nero's times he sent a basket of
mangoes to somebody who was considered a political opponent, you know.
So it's just going on.
Speaker 2 (58:44):
So this comes from the same cultural The cultural way
to the mango is such that even when India and
Pakistan open diplomatic channels. Right, the first thing that happens
is mangoes get exchanged. Yeah, so when you want to
spread goodwill, it's the mango. And to the best that
I've been able to find out, this tradition goes back
(59:07):
to Buddhism. Okay, right, the modern Empire began using the
mango as a gift spread the message of Buddhism. And
that's when people realize that this is a gift that
melts people's hearts. So you know, when you suppose you
(59:29):
and I were to have a fight and you stop talking,
when we try to re establish connection, we need to
do something to open the door. Nothing opens doors in
South Asia like the.
Speaker 1 (59:44):
Short answer, Yeah, short answer.
Speaker 2 (59:49):
It's disarming. You know what happens is I've noticed this.
You go and mentioned the mango to somebody who's in
the middle of a you know, intense work conversation or
this work on something, and you mentioned the mango, and
someday they drop everything and look at you and their
eyes dilate. The effect is the scene as meeting somebody
(01:00:12):
you love. The mango has that kind of effect on
people in selfish. It has a disarming effect. It has
a loving effect Suddenly. I mean, you might be tense
and really worried about something and a mango comes in
front of him. Suddenly you relax, you smile. The mango
(01:00:35):
makes a smile like nothing else.
Speaker 1 (01:00:38):
So you know, So when I haven't asked you finally
about your own relationship with the maggo.
Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
Well, I mean, as part of this book, I've tasted
more mangoes than most people. But because taste is an
element of memory, favorite mango is the sucking type. They
see mango found in Malva that my uncle used to
(01:01:08):
buy from the Munday and he used to sit all
of us children around buckets of water in which that
they see malbi mangoes was soaked. And he used to
massage the mangoes with his hands and give them to
us and used to watch our faces while we had
those meanings. And that was the greatest joy for my uncle.
(01:01:34):
Even when I met him the last time I met him,
the moment he recognized me, his eyes were going, his
body was going. He saw my face and the first
thing that he said was mango juice.
Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
Right.
Speaker 2 (01:01:49):
So, taste is deeply entangled with memory and smell and taste.
Smell especially is handled by the amig dilla in the brain.
And that's also where the primal emotions I have with
some in popular culture, it's called the lizard brain yeah,
(01:02:12):
or the most basic part.
Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
Of the brain, the fight or flight response basically yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
And fragrance is linked to that. So, no matter how
many expensive or rare mangoes, that taste to the mango,
that that dilates my eyes, that just leaves me with
a tear in my eye is the mango seed grown
(01:02:38):
mango from the Malgai, from where my family comes. The
memory of that taste is my connection with the soil
of Malba.
Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
That's a wonderful note to end on. Indeed, thank you
Sopen for doing this.
Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
Yeah, and thank you for taking out the time to
read the book.
Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
Of course it's worth your while, absolutely
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