“Mangoes are just like human beings,” says Haji Kalimullah Khan, the 84-year-old “mango man” of Malihabad as he shows us a 125-year-old mango tree laden with the fruits of his hard work. This grandfather tree produces 370 varieties of mango in Khan’s 22-acre orchard in Malihabad, Uttar Pradesh.
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“I don’t eat the same variety of mango twice,” Khan told Village Square, beaming with pride, and took his bicycle to take a round of this giant tree. “My grandfather planted this tree and I started looking after it when he passed away,” added Khan, who was honoured with the Padma Shri for his contribution to the field of horticulture in 2008.
Accomplished horticulturist
Khan has been using grafting techniques since 1957 to get hundreds of mango trees.
“People tell me that I’m a self-taught scientist. No, it’s the trees that have taught me,” said the horticulturist and fruit breeder, his humble voice turning serious as he looked at the nine-metre tall tree. “How would I know how many trees I have grown in my life? I’m gifted with this knowledge and I’m sure if I am given a chance, even desert landscapes would taste the sweetness of mangoes,” he added.
Khan despises axes. “A tree cut and uprooted from the ground is like slitting the neck of a human being,” he said. “I have a habit of giving mangoes to people. Once, I had to deliver a tree sapling to the former president of India, KR Narayanan. I realised that uprooting them would hurt my heart. So I dug the earth, took the tree from its root and then gave it to him,” Khan recalled.
“In mangoes, I see myself. I suppose that by now mangoes have started seeing themselves in me as well,” he quipped. “We have mutually lived the years.”
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Khan has studied up to class 7, but he calls the orchard his college. “For a visitor, it may just be a mango orchard. But it’s the biggest mango college in the world for me.”
A mango by any name
Khan names the varieties of these mangoes after the most downtrodden people in his area, including mendicants and fakirs. It’s his way of according to them a status. Khan says he does this to record the names of the people sidelined by society.
There is however a mango he named after himself. Called ‘Dushehri Kalim’, it is a crossbreed of dushehri and sinduri varieties of mango, with the taste of the former and the texture of the latter. It took him 16 years to develop this fruit because climate change was altering the taste of the dushehri and Khan took his time identifying the right flavour. Then one day, it was an eureka moment for him!
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He also names these mangoes after popular personalities in India. There is a ‘Sachin Tendulkar’ mango which is short, like the chausa. ‘Amitabh Bachchan’ is a longish totapuri mango. ‘Yogi Adityanath’ and ‘Narendra Modi’ mangoes are slightly orangish just before ripening. With a tinge of red, sharp yellow and overall green, the ‘Akhilesh Yadav’ mango is sweet.
He calls the ‘Aishwariya’ mango, named after the Bollywood actress, his best creation. It weighs about one kg each. Another of his favourites is ‘Anarkali’, which has two different skins and two flavours. He has also named a mango after Congress leader Sonia Gandhi.
At home with his mangoes
India, says Khan, is home to over 1,000 mango varieties. And it is amid these fruits that he is the most comfortable. Earlier he used to live a mile away from the orchard. Now, he has a house near the ‘grandfather’ tree.
“I live with mangoes. I will die next to my trees. I keep the orchard in my heart,” he said. “Human beings should hold mangoes dear because both have a common history.”
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The lead image on top shows Haji Kalimullah Khan standing in his mango garden in Uttar Pradesh’s Malihabad. (Photo by Kumar Gaurav)
Kumar Gaurav, a Village Square Fellow 2023-24, is a multilingual audio-visual journalist based in Bihar.
