Story behind the idea

This project is a dedication to a Mango Affogato that never came to be.

Growing up, my parents would bring Mangoes when returning from work and I’d eat one almost daily during summers. Every day, the Mangoes would taste different and I’d wait in excitement to eat them. I guess while I did know that different varieties of the same fruit existed, I hadn’t internalized it back then, so the different tastes of the same fruit, seemed like magic to me.

Fast forward to 2024, when Mangoes started coming to the market, through quick commerce apps – Zepto being the first, if I remember correctly.

I didn’t know which Mango to purchase, so I ended up ordering a kilo of each variety… there were 5 to 6 varieties on the app. I had to overeat for a few days, but I managed to finish the Mangoes.

A month or two later, after the loss of Mango Affogato, while I was grieving, I heard that Lalbagh Botanical Garden was hosting a Mango Festival where different varieties of Mangoes were being sold at a bulk rate.

So as I recovered with the loss of Mango Affogato, I leaned on my everlasting love for Mangoes for support. And boy did I lean hard…

Mango shopping

I made two trips to the park on two separate weeks.

Trip 1:

On a Sunday, I was at a friend’s place playing Dungeons and Dragons. It was near Lalbagh, so when the game session ended, I planned to visit Lalbagh.

I took an auto to the park and then a ticket and walked in with Rahil, an amazingly creative D&D player and a good friend. We spoke about the new playstation his girlfriend had bought recently and how setting it up was a challenge due to poor wifi connectivity.

While we chatted, I purchased the first load of Mangoes.

Then, as we started to walk out, it started raining. At first, it was a drizzle, but slowly, it grew into a shower. And yet we walked, searching for an exit. An exit that we had clearly misplaced.

So now it was quite late in the night, and we didn’t know where the nearest exit was and there were no strangers or other people walking around. It seemed as if the park had been deserted by everyone.

Somehow, we managed to find an exit and get out. Rahil had to dash because he had to pee, something that in hindsight, I realize that even I should’ve prioritized. I had to be at a board games meetup, and it started raining heavily so I had to take cover under a paan shop.

With the very little battery left in my phone, I still managed to book an auto before getting completely drenched.

I took the games to the meetup and then eventually, reached back home after the meetup.

Trip 2:

I learned an important lesson during trip 1 → Transporting Mangoes in bulk is hard.

So one week later, I roped in Yashaswi (my sister) and Preeti (her flatmate) to visit the park and buy more varieties of Mangoes.

The journey was still tough, and it did rain this time as well, but I had fun company with me and that made everything better.

Yash going from shop to shop to find the last 3 varieties left – Banganpalli, Chausa, Katela

The haul of trip 2 was significantly larger too!

Other logistics:

Of course beyond the purchase of mangoes, such an undertaking involves also other operational tasks like cleaning, cutting and serving them. All of these were responsibilities I duly fulfilled as an honorable host for my friends that had gathered at my place for this endeavor.

The Contest:

Since I’m a sucker for data and keeping everything organized, as soon as I had so many mangoes at hand, the first thing I did was to open a spreadsheet.

Contest Parameters and Scoring Logic

To have a structured, quantitative and rigorous approach towards deciding the finest mango of them all, I chose 4 key parameters across which each Mango would be scored. Each parameter then had a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 symbolized the parameter being Bad (in the relevant context of the parameter) and 5 symbolizing that the parameter is Good (again in the relevant context).

Here are the details:

1. Intensity of Sweetness – This was just a measure of how sweet the Mango was. A sour Mango would get a lower rating than a sweet Mango. Of course some Mangoes can be ‘extra sweet’ and in such a case, since this was Bad in the context of sweetness, so an extra sweet Mango would get a poorer score compared to a regular sweet Mango.
2. Type of Sweetness: Each Mango’s sweetness tasted different. Dasheri, Langda, Kesari sort of had a similar borderline over-sweet sweetness that seemed a bit artificial to me personally. Whereas, Amarpalli, Malgova, Imam Pasand were a more natural and balanced sweetness to me personally
3. Texture of the Bite: Here, the scales can invert based on personal preferences. For people that preferred firm bites, giving a 5 meant a more firm bite, while for people who preferred a more juicy and squishy bite, 5 meant a bite that was soft. Again, there will be deductions for being extra chewy or extra mushy
4. Color of the Mango: Since different mangoes looked different colors at their peak ripeness, we decided to go with the color inside the Mango.
5. Smell of the Mango: This was perhaps the simplest of the parameters

Finally, apart from the scores on these parameters, we also collected any special comments the judges had for each Mango.

The Participants:

I understood the gravity of this endeavor and the importance of the supreme Mango being chosen, so I also understood that the judges of this contest need to be unbiased, passionate and dedicated.

Here are the chosen ones:

1. Me – Supreme leader of the group and of course the organizer
2. Yashaswi (My sister)** – Given how many Mangoes she’s stolen from me while growing up, I knew she had a love for Mangoes and an appetite for it larger than mine. Inviting her triggered the trauma of all those childhood fights over the last bite and the center stone in me, but I chose my duty over my past.
3. Samyak (My flatmate)** – I’ve lived with Samyak for over a year now and every time I’ve eaten a Mango, he’s eaten one too. So I trusted his expertise, in fact, I had seen it develop. And as you’ll see later, his observations were the wittiest
4. Preeti (My sister’s flatmate) – Preeti was chosen as the wise one. She was also available to carry the bag of Mangoes for trip 2. So yeah…
5. Rhythm (My college batch mate) – Before this project began, Rhythm already had 14 kilos on Mangoes in his fridge. A hardcore Banganpally fan, he’s at one point threatened me with a knife to change my scores for a particular mango variety.
6. Shrey (My college batch mate)** – Only those that see him eat a Mango live will know why he’s been chosen. Each bite he took was with patience, the nuance in his judgement was visible in the expressions and sounds he made.

Data and Results:

Raw dump:

For the more curious and initiated ones, the complete file of all the scores and comments is below:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1R7f4RIZ0N1rbt8_llzjkkVdIpnQ9bM2N4KB9HlU-sGM/edit?usp=sharing

Note: Some of the raw data is super NSFW, so proceed with caution.

Results:

For everyone else:

Here’s a distribution of the final spread of scores:

Here are some interesting comments across different varieties:

And here are the winning three Mangoes:

1. Imam Pasand
2. Raspuri
3. Amarpally

The sweetest Mangoes are:

1. Raspuri
2. Imam Pasand
3. Amarpally

The Mangoes with the best type of sweetness are:

1. Imam Pasand
2. Amarpally
3. Raspuri

The Mangoes with the best smell are:

1. Imam Pasand
2. Raspuri
3. Dasheri

The Mangoes with the best color are:

1. Sindura
2. Bainganpally
3. Kesari

The Mangoes with the best bite are:

1. Imam Pasand
2. Malgova
3. Mallika

Acclaim and Spread:

During the contest and then after it was completed, I put up stories of the contest on my WhatsApp status.

Messages had started pouring in from the trip 1 analysis.

And unexpectedly, people reached out more to this story more than any other story I’ve put before.

Quite a few of the responses were thank yous because I had helped people identify the right Mango type to order.

One special conversation was with a friend from old times, Surbhi Guha where we went at length in discussing the varieties. Through her I learned the nuance of a Totapuri mango. We also bonded over being team Imam Pasand!

The mangoes that weren’t ripe during the contest were later made into a juice and distributed to my friends. This helped to spread the word of the contest even further.

People showed great interest in being a part of this.

Season 2 and Beyond!

Given the interest and acclaim showed towards season 1, I’ve decided to make this an annual event and conduct a season 2 in 2025.

Season 2 will be bigger and better. Here are the changes we will make:

• More varieties: Some very important varieties like Chausa and Langda were missed in this season. Next season, we will travel if needed to get all the Mango varieties
• More judges: Any statistically significant data needs at least 30 data points. So this analysis is only statistically significant if we involve more people as judges. The new judges will also bring in more representation of different age groups and taste preferences
• Peak ripeness: Some Mangoes didn’t get to put their best foot forward because they weren’t ripe yet. To solve this, next time, we will only cut a Mango when we know it’s perfectly ripe to eat.
• Robust scoring system: There’s definitely room for more nuance in the scoring system. The parameters themselves can be made more objective and additional parameters can be added to define personal preferences of people.
• More awards: Category level awards and winners can be announced. So instead of just the Best Mango award, there can be the sweetest Mango award, the nicest smell award and so on..
• More coverage: We’ll also involve people more proficient with a camera and make a video of this! So the next Kings of Kings League might be a Youtube video or even better, a live stream!

In the end, when everything was done a fortnight or so had passed, this project made it to my sketch journal. Here’s the entry: