This buttery mango is not as
famous as its cousins, but it is a connoisseur’s best-kept secret. One of the most scenic gateways
to the temple town of Srirangam — with the Rock Fort in the background and the
Cauvery bridge ahead — is through Mambazha Salai, or Mango Street. Roadwork may
have thrown traffic a little out of gear here, but Mambazha Salai, lined with
shops selling mangoes, offers a hint of what the fruit means to Srirangam.
In Melur, not far from the
imposing southern gopuram of the Ranganathaswamy temple, is a family-run
orchard, Thathachariar Gardens, which has, since the 1940s, been synonymous
with the Imam Pasand mango.
The 100-acre property was
originally part of a vast, overgrown patch called Nawab’s Garden, which was
auctioned in the late 19th century by the British government. “My
great-grandfather bought the land in the 1890s, and for many years the family
just maintained the garden as it was. It was in the 1940s that my uncle S.R.V.
Thatham decided to clear the vegetation and create an orchard here,” says M.S.
Nandakumar, who has been managing Thathachariar Gardens since 1989.
Laying down roots.
A bank employee, Thatham read up
on farming and visited farms in other States to look for the best saplings for
his orchard. This was when a friend from Andhra Pradesh gave him a graft of the
Imam Pasand mango, native to that region. The variety that would soon go on to
win many accolades. The Imam Pasand has a fibreless,
buttery, soft pulp inside its thick peel, which makes every bite a juicy treat.
But the fruit is elusive: you will only find it in the market for two months of
the year, May and June. It’s grown in a few places in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana
and Tamil Nadu. Soon enough, Thatham’s
transformation from hobbyist to horticulture expert drew hordes of visitors to
his orchard. He received the Udyan Pandit award from the National Horticulture
Board in the 60s for pioneering the Melur orchard, where he inter-cropped mango
with coconut.
Fertile ground
About one-fourth of the 1,000
mango trees in the orchard are Imam Pasand, followed by 25 other varieties such
as Banganapalli, Neelam and so on. . “Our soil seems to be ideally suited to
the variety, even though the fruit is not native to this area,” says
Nandakumar. It is believed that nearly every Imam Pasand tree grown in this
entire belt has its origins in the Thathachariar Garden variety.
At the orchard, the day’s harvest
is laid out on the hay-covered floor of amandapam or hall. Helping
customers pick the best Imam Pasands from the growing pile is A. Ganesh, who
has the contract to protect the fruit and ensure its collection and marketing
every year — a job that keeps him busy from
April to July.
This year, the yield has been
slightly lower. “It’s the intense heat and the lack of rains,” says Ganesh, as
he sorts out the fruits with a practised eye, “but the demand is always high.”
The big fruits, which can weigh up to 500 gm, are priced at Rs. 150 a kilo,
while the smaller ones are Rs. 120 a kilo.
Picking the mangoes is no mean
feat. Labourers armed with a sikkam — a bamboo pole with a hooped net
— have to scale the gnarled trunks and ensure that no mango is bruised from
falling to the ground. Another worker, with a sack, collects the fruits that
will be finally laid out in the mandapam .
Despite its fame among mango
connoisseurs, the fruit is still a local phenomenon. There are no plans yet to
export the mango. “Right now, the domestic demand keeps us busy,” says Ganesh.
Imam Pasand means the Imam’s
favourite. Nobody knows quite how or when the fruit got this name but it’s easy
to see why.
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