ALTAF HUSSAIN HALI, an ardent admirer of Ghalib and himself a poet, once had a very hotly argued debate with Ghalib’s friend, Nawab Mustafa Khan Shefta. Hali maintained that Ghalib was the only Indian poet to have tasted the largest variety of mangoes. Shefta disagreed. Hali was actually right. Ghalib had tasted most of the 4000 varieties of mangoes grown in India.

The poet mentioned various varieties of the fruit in his letters to friends. For instance, he wrote a short history of the mango to his friend, Maulvi Sadruddin Azurda: “The mango has been cultivated in India for over 4000 years and is so much a part of the Indian heritage and culture that it is almost an object of veneration in Hindu households. Down through the centuries, emperors have pledged their devotion to the mango...”

According to Ghalib it is a remarkable fruit in the sense that it can be cut with a knife, sucked or crushed for its juice. He asked friends living as far away as Calcutta, Bombay and Madras to send him local mangoes and, fortunately, they obliged him. To a friend living in Calcutta, Mir Sarfaraz Hussain, he wrote as many as 15 letters requesting him to send him Bengal’s famous Gulbakhsh mangoes. Sarfaraz Hussain finally sent him two baskets. To Ghalib’s chagrin, of the 200 in the baskets, only 83 were worth eating. The rest had evidently become rotten during transportation and he rued the fact that his friend did not have the foresight to send him unripened fruit.

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