Keeping up with UP | Why have luscious mangoes lost their political flavour?

Thirteen century-poet Amir Khusrau, too, expressed his abiding love for mangoes in his verses. "He visits my town once a year. He fills my mouth with kisses and nectar. I spend all my money on him. Who, girl, your man? No, a mango," he wrote.

Khusrau's couplet is the most recited annually on National Mango Day (July 22), an occasion for bonding, visiting orchards, and plucking mangoes hanging from the trees.

Politicians, however, no longer throw mango parties, which once used to have prime ministers, governors, chief ministers, ministers, and other top politicians among attendees. Journalists would also be invited for fun and often free flow of information.

The mango parties have not always been sweet. Kalyan Singh, the then chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, chose a mango orchard to attack Prime Minister Atal Bihar Vajpayee in 1999. He called Vajpayee, who represented Lucknow in Parliament, a “Brahminwadi conspirator” in the presence of journalists invited to the party.

Vajpayee was livid and Singh was forced to quit although he tried to make amends at another mango party in Malihabad.

Singh's comments about Vajpayee turned out to be a tipping point and led to his sacking. The then Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Kushabhau Thakre had earlier warned Singh of the rising rebellion in the party against his style of functioning.

Singh also faced a rather embarrassing moment once when he relished chilled mangoes in an old-fashioned way — straight from a bucket with his teeth pulling the flesh from the skin of fully ripe mangoes. Others dressed in pure white kurtas followed suit in a circle on cots under the shade of a fully-grown tree. Each had a bucket full of mangoes. By the time they got up, their kurtas were sprayed with mango juice. The next day, they were scandalised to see their photos in newspapers.

Vajpayee, who too loved mangoes and the orchards, in 1996 finalised Poornima Verma as the Lok Sabha candidate from the Mohanlalganj seat that includes Malihabad, at a mango party. BJP workers at the party urged Vajpayee to field Verma insisting she had the potential to win the seat. The chorus in her favour impressed Vajpayee and Verma vindicated her supporters by winning the seat.

Journalist Vikram Rao said the mango parties have lost their attraction like Iftar in the Muslim fasting month of Ramzan after the BJP emerged as a political hegemon in 2014.

State BJP vice-president Vijay Pathak argued the political culture that included such parties changed in Uttar Pradesh after 2007 when Mayawati became the chief minister. "Mayawati did not encourage informal dialogues, which helped politicians understand the pulse of the people. The tradition of dialogue ended.”

Another BJP leader said the times have changed. "Now only sycophancy works."

Politicians once used to build bridges at mango parties. Some of them had farms. Others had friends who owned them.

Another journalist, who attended several such parties, said political workers and the public would get access to leaders at such events where different varieties of mangoes were served along with Kakori kebabs associated with a village in the Lucknow-Malihabad belt.

Siraj Mehndi, a Nationalist Congress Party leader, recalled a mango party organised for 15 ambassadors in 2012 to encourage exports. "The ambassadors and their wives loved a bullock ride through the orchards as well as the mango party and, of course, the kebabs. They, too, sat on a cot with a wooden plank used as a table under a tree. Some exports started and continue though the producers demand government attention and intervention on the pattern of Maharashtra and Konkan. Their main concern is the climate change, availability of the right pesticide, marketing linkages, and packaging,” said Mehndi, a former Mango Growers’ Association spokesperson.

Mehndi said he built long-lasting relationships through mangoes. He added once the late poet Munnawar Rana asked for mangoes when the season was almost over. “I knew the place where I could get mangoes but at a higher rate; ₹500 per kg. Munnawar was surprised. ...he quoted me in several of his writings after I told him: ‘Isn't it better to have one kg mangoes for ₹500 than sweets for ₹1000.”

Most mango parties had mangoes along with Kakori kebabs and jamuns or java plums, which are locally grown. Eating jamuns after mangoes is believed to be good for digestion.

Growers in the region rue their mangoes have lost out to Alphonso and Kesar, which hit the market first, even as people such as Josh Malihabadi have immortalised the local varieties.

Himanshu Bajpai, a dastango (Urdu storyteller), recalled how Malihabadi baffled people by naming the varieties of mangoes at a mushaira (poetic symposium) in Pakistan. "When a shayar [poet] on stage asked him if India had any fruit that could match angoor [grapes], he said Dussheri [mango]. He [the shayar] asked anar [pomegranate], and Josh said Chausa [mango]." The Pakistani poet got irritated and asked if they had fruits other than mangoes, Josh replied: "Ama, pehle aam ki nasal toh puri ho jaaye [let me first finish listing the varieties of mangoes].”

Sunita Aron is a consulting editor with the HT based in Lucknow. You can find her on X as @overto. The weekly column, Keeping up with UP tackles everything from politics to social and cultural mores in the country's most populous state. The views expressed are personal.