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“Come down from the tree. Look at the mess you’ve made, go wash your face. Lunch is ready” - my mother would exclaim on a hot summer afternoon during my summer holidays in Kerala. After playing with my slingshot, I would climb up the branches of the family Mango tree and gorge on this curvy, voluptuous fruit. The tree, stood proudly, a few feet away from the entrance of my father’s home, smiling at the visitors who would occasionally come over and the passersby who were curious to know what was behind the gravel stone walls of the family home.   Have you ever plucked a mango from a tree and devoured it as a whole with your teeth? The fresh scent of the mango skin hitting your nostrils as you peel through it with your teeth followed by the rich pulp giving you a vitamin c adrenaline as you lust over the mango till the last bit of flesh is left. It is this personal satisfaction that makes summers memorable and made my grandmother pack a dozen mangoes from the celebrated tree for me to devour later. The word has it that the hotter the summer, the sweeter the fruit. All I know is the advent of summers means a mango a day. Okay, let’s say two mangoes a day. History has judged the Mango as our National fruit of how it has been celebrated over centuries and rightly so. With over 248 different types and many more unaccounted varieties, Mango to an Indian household is a very personal and intrinsic experience. Big or small, raw or ripe, there are so many versions being celebrated of this lustrous versatile fruit. We almost forget how unique it is to our culture.  Mango to me celebrates the uniqueness of India. And India in return celebrates the goodness of this fruit not just through the different cuisines which decorate this vast landscape but also through motifs weaved deftly in silk, in intricately shaped ear loops or as mehndi in brides to be. Isn’t it true that food brings people together, in this case particularly the mango? Now with that, we take you through a histor