MUMBAI: There are two main seasons for gifting mangoes. The first is early in the year, February-March, when they really aren’t in season yet. The mangoes that appear are mostly freaks, and unlikely to taste good, but they fetch huge prices and make for a prestigious, if rather pointless, gift.The second is now as the monsoons are about to set in. This is actually peak mango season, with the markets awash with Western Indian varieties, like Alphonsos , which are only now approaching a fair price, and Eastern varieties, like Dussheris and Langras , that are just reaching their perfection. (This is also peak season for fruits like lychees and cherries, but mangoes in India overshadow them all).Mangoes are native to India and we have always adored them. Something so prized would always have made for good gifts, but often with the slight twist shown in one of the oldest printed accounts of them. This is in the Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India (1563), the excellent, surprisingly accurate account of the fruits and herbs of India by the Portuguese botanist and physician Garcia da Orta (which has recently been reprinted by the Asiatic Society of Bombay).During his time in India (1534-1568) Garcia da Orta was granted tenancy of the island of Bombaim, which he in turn rented out. In the Colloquies he writes of his tenant, Simao Toscano, sending him a basket of mangoes to present to the Governor. This is notable not just for being an early reference to what would become Bombay, but also because Garcia da Orta explains that “They ought to be cut with a very sharp knife that the slice may not be injured, and I want to taste them first....”Then there is the legend of Karaikal Ammaiyar, the Mother of Karaikal. Kusum Buddhwar, in her wonderful collection of mango lore, Romance of the Mango, relates how she was the wife of a merchant of Karaikal, who once sent two fine mangoes home.Before he came to eat them an ascetic came to her door and she gave him one. Then when her husband ate the first mango and asked for the second, his wife made a fervent prayer and a mango miraculously appeared. She realised the ascetic had been Shiva in disguise and this persuaded her – after producing more mangoes to convince her husband – to devote herself to his worship, becoming in time the saint worshipped in Karaikal.The Mughals encouraged both the planting of large orchards of mangoes and the sending of the best fruit as tribute to the court. In time Osman Ali Khan, the miserly seventh Nizam of Hyderabad, made use of this tradition by passing on the fruit he received to the nobles of his court, demanding a substantial nazr, or tribute in return for this ‘gift’.Benjamin Cohen, in his Kingship and Colonialism in India’s Deccan, notes the maharaja of Gadwal receiving mangoes with a note pricing them at two sovereigns. A cart of mangoes was sent to the Court of Wards, which administered the estates of nobles who were not yet of age, with the Nizam’s demand for payment: “Officers of the Court sold the fruit from their desks…”Maharajas and mangoes went together. In the 1930s when JRD Tata launched Tata Aviation, which would later become Air India, the government of India had little interest in developing the sector, so Tata had to depend on Indian princes to patronise his services. An article in the Times of India (ToI) in 1935 notes that the early air cargo consignments from the maharajas included pearls, papads, betel nuts and, from the rulers of Kashmir and Baroda, crates of mangoes.Mangoes were also going by sea. In 1933 Dr. GS Chima, official horticulturist to the government of Bombay told ToI that consignments were being sent as gifts to countries like Sweden and Holland, as a way to develop mango markets. In 1937, mangoes were the obvious present from the government for the coronation of George VI, and ToI noted that: “Elaborate arrangements have been made at Crawford Market to make the shipments successful. The alfonso has been selected as the ideal mango for export.” Two local fruit sellers were to accompany the fruit on the SS Ranchi and to oversee their final sale at London’s Covent Garden market.” This may have helped build the global reputation of Alphonsos.There was no dearth of Indians travelling to Cairo who wanted to bring in mangoes, but the Egyptians were strict about not letting these through. Their aim was to protect their own mango crop from the Nile delta, which had as it happens been originally developed with varieties from India. Indians bringing in mangoes were given the choice of surrendering them to be destroyed or eating them on the spot – which is what some chose to do!The airline decided to try and break this barrier by sending a Trojan shipment of mangoes as a gift for General Neguib, the strongman of Egypt at that time. They calculated on Egyptian customs not daring to stop a shipment for Neguib and this would “thereby establish a precedent to bring in more and more shipments.” Unfortunately, they were met by conscientious Customs officers who appealed to Neguib for instructions, and he agreed the rules should not be bent for him. The mangoes were destroyed.But the really big gifter of mangoes would be Jawaharlal Nehru. The Prime Minister was partial to the guavas that famously grew in his hometown of Allahabad, but he must have known that mangoes would make more of a diplomatic impact. Foreign dignitaries visiting India were plied with mangoes in season, and visits abroad were accompanied by mangoes, or even mango saplings.Like the Egyptian authorities, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) determinedly prevented Indian mango imports, but when Nehru visited in 1961 to meet President Kennedy, they had to allow an exception. India’s ambassador BK Nehru laid on a banquet that ended with kheer and mangoes, and the families of Indian diplomats weren’t forgotten. As one wife recalled, the ambassador’s wife, Fori Nehru (who only recently passed away) sent them all mangoes with the strict instruction to preserve the seeds which had to be returned to the USDA for destruction.Part of the mystique of the gifted mangoes lay in learning how to eat them. Foreigners didn’t know how to tackle the fruit, a fact happily taken advantage of by one Indian diplomat living in Geneva. He once met Dag Hammarskjold, the UN secretary-general, whom he knew from an earlier posting to Sweden. Hammarskjold told him he kept getting mangoes from Indians which he didn’t know how to eat.The diplomat was happy to relieve him of such troublesome gifts and take them for his own family. Prime Minister Nehru would give lessons in mango eating as part of his presentation of the fruit. The earthy Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev enthusiastically adopted the squeezing and sucking style of eating mangoes, but Chinese premier Chou En-Lai was shown the more formal slicing and spooning method. A ToI correspondent reported in 1955 that as Chou ate his mango “his beetling brow relaxed, his lips rippled into a smile… He had entered a new world of sweetness and goodwill. Thereafter, he ate out of Mr. Nehru’s hand and signed the famous joint declaration.”Since China would invade India in 1962 the lasting effect of the mangoes should not be overestimated. This might explain why India didn’t particularly pursue mango diplomacy in the decades that followed, until it was revived by Dr. Manmohan Singh during US President George Bush’s visit to New Delhi in 2006. Bush’s love of mangoes was credited with having inspired the deal that allowed Indian mangoes to be exported to the US (more plausibly it was the irradiation technique developed by the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre that satisfied the USDA).Pakistan was responsible for the most startling consequence ever of a gift of mangoes – to China, not India. This was in August 1968 when Pakistan’s foreign minister Mian Arshad Hussain arrived in Beijing with several cases of mangoes as a gift for Chairman Mao Zedong. This was two years into the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s attempt to create a vast sociocultural transformation in China.The day after Mao got the mangoes he passed them on to the Worker-Peasant Thought Propaganda Team as a sign of his esteem. The effect of this, in the fear-ridden, near-hysterical atmosphere of the Cultural Revolution was electric. The one clear effect of the Revolution had been to raise Mao’s image to near God like status, so a direct gift from him was like a divine benediction. This meant, of course, that they could hardly be eaten. Single mangoes were sent to factories and community centres to be contemplated with awe. When, inevitably, they started going bad, attempts were made to preserve them in formaldehyde and displayed in glass counters for viewing. One factory did consume it, but by placing their single mango in a vast vat of water and boiling it. Every worker was then allowed a spoonful of the water. A wax model was made of the mango for display.Wax models of mangoes became widespread. Shanghai started producing plastic versions. Mango motifs suddenly started to appear on posters, mugs, bedsheets. Mangoes, preserved or fake, were sent on lorries to tour the country. Songs were composed with lines like “Seeing that golden mango/ Was as if seeing the great leader Chairman Mao…”When his doctor informed him what was going on he noted that Mao just laughed. At parades organised that year giant portraits of Mao were often followed by floats with models of mangoes. China’s craze for Mao’s mangoes lasted for a little over a year, before being supplanted by new ways to express devotion to the Chairman.One wonders what Pakistani and Indian diplomats in China made of the craze. As China becomes increasingly important perhaps it might be time to try and revive the memories of Mao’s mangoes. It might have been the most unexpected outcome of our seasonal gift, but at some level Indians probably aren’t surprised at what a good gift of mangoes can achieve.