Mumbai: When the golden fruit earned silver medals – Times of India

MUMBAI: Bombay’s Real Alphonso’ and ‘Queen of Alphonsos’ were among the many juicy varieties of the golden Indian fruit that had won a farmer named Ganpat Abaji Bodke seven silver medals at the Crawford Market 95 summers ago.
Raw and ripe dozens of them had travelled in proud crates from Panvel, Ratnagiri, Goa and Dharwar in May 1928 to help Bodke beat close competitor Framroze Batliwala, whose artillery comprised seven of 60 rustic varieties he grew ranging from the famous Pyree to the forgotten Cowasjee Patel-a sweet, non-fibrous, jam-friendly reminder of the 18th-century fruit-growing ‘Patel of Bombay’ who had built CP Tank.
Long before mango wars erupted on social media–when Alphonso sellers from Ratnagiri used to strike bargains with the elusive fruit buyers of Bombay by touching fingers under a piece of cloth and when cold Indian mangoes would wash up on English shores shrivelled and sour–the city had witnessed a first-of-its-kind raw-yet-fleshy two-day mango battle called the Bombay Mango Show. Baskets and boxes, pickles and preserves, jams and jellies from various firms had lined up near almost 60 varieties of mangoes including Dilkhush and Bhasim from Madras, for this seemingly-fluffy competition slash “experiment” that-like the mango-had a stony core.
Organised by a committee helmed by Dr G S Cheema, then horticulturist to the Government of Bombay, it sought to not only understand the types of mangoes best suited for exporting to countries such as England and Cairo but also the best methods of packaging mangoes for shipping.
Unlike the mouths in India’s prime mango market, Cairo, in which the lucrative Indian fruit would slide just-ripe after its eleven-day journey from home, tongues in England would find almost a third of the imported batch unfit for eating after the month-long voyage. It didn’t help that the cold storage on ships had to be kept at a far lower temperature than the more ideal, under-40-degrees-Celsius refrigerators in which mangoes could endure for days.
Three years after the show, though, six dozens of scratchless, tissue-wrapped mangoes–meant to be offered to the king–had sailed to England inside an airy box made of very light wood which was, in turn, placed in a cool room onboard in which a thermograph had been placed to gauge the range of temperature.
Perhaps this idea had come from the Bombay Mango Show, where half the mangoes had been deliberately kept in a cold room and the other half outside of it to test their endurance in various conditions. The judges including H B Clayton, then municipal commissioner had dropped in at 7 am on the first day of the show on May 12 1928 when the Alphonso of Salsette and the Alphonso of Ratnagiri monopolised the first two of three tables inside the garden of Crawford Market’s compound.
Jutting out amid rows of ‘batlis’ from Bulsar and ‘Tumrods’ from Dharwar was the pineapple-sized “lame mango” or Langda Banarasa that made its first appearance in the city at this contest, instantly transporting then superintendent of markets CM Flanders to the time he had glimpsed even bigger mangoes in Vasai.
A “double-bodied” Alphonso sent from Malvan by fruit dealer Abdullah Hashambhai won a special prize in the contest where other silver-medal-worthy curiosities included one Gufur Kazi’s sweet-even-when-raw Pawsee mango and smallest-stone-sporting Awbee mango. While the event that spawned other editions in the 1930s and 1950s, was deemed fairly successful, one TOI report sensed a missed opportunity: “It is to be regretted that the programme does not contain a competition on eating mangoes..”