There’s nothing better than a burst of sweetness in your mouth. Sweetness that’s like fresh breeze on a hot summer day, a taste so wonderful that it enthralls your taste buds and fills your heart with joy. It’s a treat that you wish will linger forever.
Such divine sweetness does exist, and I bet you’re thinking Alphonso, Alphonso, Alphonso.
I grew up eating dozens of Alphonso mangoes every week in summer. My maternal grandmother bought (no, hoarded) several boxes and force-fed the mangoes to everyone at home or anyone who dropped by. On a typical summer day, we had Alphonso mangoes at breakfast with mango milkshake, chopped Alphonso mangoes after almost every meal, then Alphonso with ice cream or whipped cream, or mango yoghurt-based cheesecake for dessert.
And outside the home, there were more mangoes to be had. Restaurants, ice cream parlours and mithai shops across Mumbai would be flooded with seasonal mango delicacies like the Gujarati-style aamras with deep-fried puris (mango pulp with deep-fried Indian bread) or mango shrikhand (strained yoghurt dessert). Oh, and the super sweet mango mishti doi (fermented sweet yoghurt). Or the subtly-flavoured mango sandesh (cheese-based confectionery).
So yes, I’d had hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Alphonso mangoes in the first two-odd decades of my existence. After my grandmother passed away a few years ago, our memories of her fondness for mangoes stayed on. But the sweet essence of Alphonso mangoes seemed to rescind into the past as well. The flavour has changed from sweet to weirdly-sweet-and-bit-sour, and they got more juice and less pulp. I lost interest in Alphonso mangoes.
It was with a heavy heart that I privately acknowledged a shocking fact about myself a couple years ago: I just didn’t like Alphonso mangoes anymore. And mangoes in general didn’t beckon to me anymore.
Last June, S and I discovered Sein Ta Lone mangoes in a Yangon fruit market. I wasn’t too keen on trying them. I mean, how can any mango beat an Alphonso?
But I tried it anyway. Turns out Myanmar’s gorgeous Sein Ta Lone mango is at least a gazillion times better than the Ratnagiri Alphonso.
I fell in love at first bite. Sein Ta Lone mangoes are a perfect hue of orange and gold, they’re juicy and pulpy, wonderfully aromatic, with a smooth non-fibrous texture, and, of course, richly, delightfully, gloriously sweet. Each bite is pure heaven.
Grown around Myanmar, these mangoes are fleeting visitors in local fruit markets—they’re available for only two months a year (April to June). The name is just as beautiful – sein means diamond and ta lone means one piece. So Sein Ta Lone is the precious diamond solitaire of fruits.
What an apt name.
These mangoes don’t cost as much as a diamond of course, but are still fairly expensive (by Myanmar standards). A high-quality Sein Ta Lone mango weighing 300 to 400 grams will cost around 400-600 kyats per piece. (That’s between 35 and 55 cents for a mango). But they’re totally worth the indulgence if you have the means.
The Sein Ta Lones are so sweet that I made mango chutney at home, bottled it all up, gave some to friends, and sold some as well. The best thing: the chutney is sweet, but I didn’t need to put any sugar in it. 😀
Besides the Sein Ta Lone, Myanmar has several other delicious varieties of mangoes as well, and many fall off trees on to the streets of Yangon. I’ve seen people around Yangon picking them up and taking them home to eat. What a delight!
After decades of being cut off from rest of the world, Myanmar has thousands of secrets unknown to the world and these divine fruits are one of them. I can’t imagine summers without Sein Ta Lone mangoes anymore.
