Mango Diplomacy

It's the height of summer in Pakistan, and everywhere you look, you're bound to be surrounded by mangoes. Small ones, large ones, green ones, orange ones, yellow ones, anwar ratoles, chaunsas, Sindhris, raw ones, ripe ones... The koels are roosting everywhere, their distinctive cries announcing the arrival of the seasonal fruit. The hotels in the city are advertising summer mango festivals that offer mangos served in every way known to man: sliced, diced, pureed, in ice cream, sauce and soup, baked in pies. I wouldn't be surprised if someone offered me mango sandwiches one of these days, or mango kebabs.

God may have made Pakistan a difficult place to live, but to make up for it, we are showered year after year with an abundance of what's affectionately known as "the King of Fruit". The mangoes are reputedly what make Karachi's summers slightly more bearable. They are seen as justification for the horribly hot summers that we have to endure; they are a special treat after each meal, or an extra luscious snack just before going to bed. Mangoes make life bearable for everyone in Karachi. That is, for everyone in the city except me, because I have one small problem: I don't like mangoes.

Confessing to not liking mangoes is not the same thing as confessing to not liking tuna fish or tomatoes. Everyone can understand not liking some kind of food. But admitting that you do not like mangoes is tantamount to declaring yourself a traitor to Pakistan. If you don't like mangoes you might as well hand in your passport here and now, buy yourself a plane ticket, and defect to some country where the fruit is small and tasteless. Disliking mangoes is, in most people's eyes, the same thing as rejecting your motherland, your mother, and your mother-in-law all in the same breath, because for most Pakistanis, the mango is as dear as your family members, often more so. My sister and brother are more than fond of mangoes, which convinces me there must be some recessive gene in my DNA that makes me the black sheep of the family, while my father insists that I can't be a Sindhi if I don't like mangoes. I always consider telling him that I don't like lassi either, but that would be going too far!

As a child I never got used to the taste of mangoes, overbearingly, achingly sweet. It was a sweetness that made my eyes water and my mouth twist with overstimulation of my taste buds. I also didn't like the way the juice dripped down over my hands and mouth and fell everywhere. Although most people describe this as the most enjoyable part of eating a mango, I found it unbearably messy. I would watch in horror as people would go through a whole crate of mangoes at one meal and end up covered in orange-colored juice and pulp, making them look like they'd actually taken a bath in the mangoes, not just eaten them for dessert. When urged to try a mango by my various aunts and uncles, I would refuse politely, but elders being elders, they would grab me and pinion my arms to my sides, then hold the mango slice to my face and insist that I take a taste. I'd screw my eyes shut, open my mouth hesitantly, dab the mango with the tip of my tongue, and then gag heart-rendingly for the next half an hour. I could never understand what in heaven's name people found so appealing about this terrifying fruit.

As an adult, however, I have discovered that the secret of the mango's popularity is not just its renowned taste, its excessive quantities of Vitamin C, or its unique texture. The eating of mangoes is a family ritual, one that brings family members closer together at the dining table. Rather than running away from a hastily consumed meal to watch Baywatch or get on the Internet, family members during the summer will linger at the table, enjoying the mangoes. This is an extra half-hour of bonding time that we don't get in the months when there are no mangoes. The simple pleasure of cutting mangoes, distributing them amongst your family members, sharing the love of a food that everyone can enjoy no matter what their age, is what makes the mango so dear to every Pakistani (except me, of course). I have watched many relatives initiate their children or grandchildren into the world of mangoes, often with hilarious results, but everyone gets to be a child again as they let the juice drip on their fingers, lick their lips, suck it off their fingers.

In the US, a popular logo of the FTD Flowers company is "Say it with Flowers" but in Pakistan it's "Say it with Mangoes"; people who are connected to the agricultural business will always send crates and crates of their mangoes to their friends and neighbors as soon as the fruit ripens in the orchards. Giving mangoes in this manner goes beyond advertising; it is a token of goodwill and friendship, a way of remembering your near and dear ones by sharing with them the results of a year's hard work and perseverance against difficult climactic conditions. When I was a child the mangoes used to come by the boxloads, first in large brown crates, and now in slickly-produced packages with bright colors and fancy logos of various farms printed on the covers. In fact, Pakistan's agriculturalists are joining the 21st century, there are already Web sites for several of the major farms in the country and quite a few of them use the Internet to promote their mangoes for export!

Mangoes have even gone beyond the domain of friends and family to the realm of the political. There's a famous poster of Chairman Mao Zedong in which a man holding a plate of mangoes can be seen in the far-left corner, underneath two Chinese flags. These mangoes were in fact given to Chairman Mao by a visiting Pakistani minister in 1968. According to a Web site describing the poster, "the mangoes were presented to carefully selected factories, where they were revered as sacred relics. The gift of mangoes signified that Mao's sympathies had shifted from the students, who had started the Cultural Revolution, to the workers."

So even though I don't like mangoes myself, I do understand their importance and the place they hold in every Pakistani's heart. Mangoes serve as delicious food, as cultural symbols, and even as tools to forge political alliances. Which Pakistani could resist smiling with pride to know that Pakistani mangoes are being snapped up in Harrods' Food Hall this summer? Perhaps in the upcoming summit President Musharraf and Prime Minister Vajpayee will find their moods sweetened by a plate of delicious mangoes, thus bringing peace to South Asia – “mango diplomacy”, anyone? And as for you, Dad, I promise I'll try a mango next ear.