Like all true love, mangoes are messy

The Indian diaspora is mocked for their love of mangoes, but the fruit is a cliché that is hard to escape or deny

- Sandip Roy

My friend N turned out to be a mango smuggler. His family owned a mango orchard in Tamil Nadu. The Imam Pasand mangoes from that orchard were the stuff of family legend. But N rarely got a taste of the mangoes in their prime. For an Indian immigrant in the US, fresh mangoes from home were forbidden fruit. Mangoes from India, like most agricultural products from abroad, were strictly banned in the US.

One year while visiting home, N was unable to resist the temptation. He buried some not-quite-ripe mangoes deep inside his hand luggage. But over the course of the long transcontinental flight from India, they slowly ripened in the overhead compartment of the aircraft. When he landed in the US, his heart was thudding. He said he was convinced that every customs agent and their sniffer dogs would surely zero in on him and his contraband cargo. It wasn't quite a case of exploding mangoes, but close enough.

The mango has always been the ultimate distillation of desi immigrant nostalgia in one fruit. Because Indian mangoes were long barred from the US, desi immigrants had to make do with Filipino and Mexican pretenders while dreaming of Alphonsos, Himsagars and Langdas ripening in orchards back home.

It was the 2008 US-India nuclear deal that finally resulted in an Indian mango détente. President George W. Bush warmed many Indian hearts when he said, "The United States is looking forward to eating Indian mangoes." The shrink-wrapped mango with stickers proclaiming "Treated by Irradiation" (to eliminate pests and increase shelf life) is a far cry from the mango summers of India when pyramids of the golden, red and green fruit pile up in the markets, ripening slowly in the muggy heat. Only one or two varieties were cleared for import, like the Alphonso, from a country that boasted of some 1,500 kinds of mangoes.