Mumbai Mango Hunt: How to identify good mangoes?

Mangoes for sale in mumbai

If you are a mango lover, cutting open the fruit only to find it rotten from the inside may look like a crisis. Until and unless your mangoes are from premium mango sellers that you have bought at exorbitant prices, there is a huge chance that your bag of mangoes will have a mix of both good mangoes and bad ones.

So, how can we pick the right mangoes on the streets? After we figure that out, tasting good mangoes becomes even more possible for the common man rather than a rich man's privilege. After all, India is the land of mangoes and boasts of so many different varieties and everybody should get the chance to taste good mangoes.

Setting out on a quest to find the person would mean talking to someone who deals with the ‘King of Fruits' and that is easily a mango wholesaler. The mango cartons outside Vinod bhai's small godown gave way to heaps of mangoes inside right where the wholesaler from Walkeshwar in Mumbai, stood proudly over his handpicked collection of mangoes.

Curious about how he picks the best mangoes, we asked him how he knows the good mangoes from the bad? Handing a mango over from one of the baskets, he asks, "Can you identify if this mango is good or bad? The mango seemed good from the outside, so we replied positively. He sliced open the mango to reveal the rotten pulp and declared, "Aap nahi samajh paaoge". "Picking the right mangoes is a craft that comes from years of experience and this is not everyone's cup of tea," he declared. The only solution Vinod gave me was to buy from a known seller even if he gives at expensive prices.

A little clueless and disappointed, we headed to a few mango sellers on the streets. While some of them claimed they themselves didn't know how to identify them, the others simply iterated, "aap nahi samajh paaoge".

On a quest to get an answer, we headed to Crawford Market next in a kaali-peeli. Turns out the driver with grey hair and freckles on the forehead screamed decades of life experience, was a lover of mangoes. Amidst nostalgic tit-bits on picking mangoes to his unique way of enjoying the fruit, he couldn't share much constructive information on the art of picking the right mangoes, however, it was worth the ride as it only inspired us more to find the answer.

Through the narrow lanes of the market, formerly known as Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Market, lined up with veggies and fruits, we reached one of the biggest exporters of mangoes in the market, Rajaram Laxman & Co. Established in 1954, the exporting company under the brand name, ‘Dial a Mango' is renowned for selling some of the highest quality of Alphonso mangoes.

Ask Anil Karale, the owner, about his mechanism to sort and select the best mangoes came with interesting answers and he says, "We not only have mechanised thermal scanners but also human mango detectors." Getting to know about humans who had the knack for actually selecting the right mangoes certainly intrigued us. One of them proudly declared, "We identify the mangoes by feeling them and this comes with years of experience" and like others, even he said, "Aap nahi sikh paaoge". Repeated attempts to understand some tips were only met with grins and denials with the only answer - buy from your trusted seller. Either picking the right mangoes was a craft that these human mango detectors had developed with years of experience or a secret that they didn't want to give away. Making us think, "Aam ko samajhna nahi tha utna aam!"

On our last stop, we headed to a street-side mango seller in Bandra. After all, these mango retailers are the ones who have the maximum face-to-face reach to the consumers. Prakash, the fruit seller, was more than glad to share his piece of knowledge. He explained, "Yeh aam agar dab raha hai to tayyar hai, agar zyaada dab raha hai, to kharaab hai…'. He further shared how the look and feel make a difference when it comes to identifying the right mangoes. What Prakash shared may or may not be a golden piece of advice but the honest willingness with which he wanted to share his knowledge, feels like he is the trusted seller everybody talks about. Now, even if every nook and corner of Mumbai does not have a trusted seller for you like Prakash bhaiya, maybe his little tips can go a long way, who knows?