Mango Diary #8

 
Commentary

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Name: Alphonso

Origin: India

Size: 10 x 7.5 x 7.5 cm

Weight: 234g

Eve was not tempted by an apple or a fig, it was an alphonso mango. The smell would easily have filled the Garden of Eden, and resistance was have been useless.

Few fruits have such a sense of place as this – it is the colour of an ancient dusty temple wall in the late afternoon sun. It surely grew for centuries out of hard, packed ground, storing the sun under its skin. Then it was picked by a boy standing on tip-toe and packed in a box with shredded paper. It glowed in the dark on its journey here, a promise in the night.

There is beaten gold underneath its fragile skin, and merely sitting in the fruit bowl is enough to release the days of heat and sun that it remembers, warming your room.

The smell is heady. Inside, the texture is completely smooth and soft, a spoon is nearly all that is needed. Deep orange, the taste makes you drunk.

The stone was 32g, with the skin a total of 78g, so an overall fruit

ratio of 67:33. Not so good, but with the mango season now drawing to

an end, this is the pay off.

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L. Shepherd