Alphonso Mango Season and Aamras Tradition

For eight or nine weeks each summer, Greater Mumbai reorganises itself around a single fruit. From late March the first crates travel up the Konkan coast from the orchards of Ratnagiri and Devgad, and the city's fruit markets fill with Alphonso — hapus in Marathi — alongside Payri, the softer, earlier variety many households prefer for pulping.

• The mangoes arrive in shallow wooden boxes lined with straw, sold by the dozen rather than by weight, and graded by size, scent and the estate they came from.
• Prices open steeply in the first weeks, ease through April and May as the harvest peaks, then vanish with the first serious monsoon showers in early June.
• The most theatrical place to watch the trade is the fruit section of the Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Market, still universally called Crawford Market, a high-roofed Victorian hall of the late 1860s whose stone relief panels are generally attributed to Lockwood Kipling.
• Vendors stack boxes into walls, slice a sample for you to smell, and argue cheerfully about which taluka's fruit is sweetest.
• Smaller versions of the same scene play out on the pavements around Dadar and Matunga and at neighbourhood fruit stalls across the western and eastern suburbs.
• Short-lived mango festivals are sometimes staged in the city by state agricultural bodies; dates tend to be announced only a week or two ahead, so ask locally rather than planning around them.
• Aamras is what most of the fruit becomes.
• Ripe pulp is squeezed by hand or briefly blended, sweetened only if the fruit needs it, and lifted with cardamom, a thread of saffron, a grating of nutmeg or a spoonful of milk or ghee, depending on whether the kitchen is Gujarati, Marwari or Maharashtrian.
• It is served cool in a small steel bowl beside hot, puffed puri, and for these few weeks it becomes the centrepiece of the summer thali.
• Many Maharashtrian families mark Akshaya Tritiya, in April or May, with the season's first bowl.
• Buy whole fruit rather than pre-cut, and let firm mangoes rest a few days in newspaper until they scent the room.
• For eating, the vegetarian belt is a short walk north.
• Kalbadevi, Bhuleshwar and the lanes behind Zaveri Bazaar hold long-running Gujarati and Marwari thali houses and farsan counters where aamras-puri appears the moment the season opens; many are vegetarian by tradition, but menus and owners change, so look for a board that says pure vegetarian before you sit down.
• Udupi-style South Indian cafes near CSMT are another dependable stop for dosa, idli and filter coffee — several eateries on the same streets do serve non-vegetarian food, so check the signage first.
• Inside the market, juice and fruit-plate stalls are an easy pause; confirm that only fruit is handled at that counter, and ask for it to be cut fresh in front of you.