UKHCA 2022 - Annual Brochure

Sharodiya Durga Puja 2022
শারদীয়া দুর্গোৎসব ১৪২৯
The Taste of Indian Summers In UK (Rama Karmokar)
Having been resident in the UK for the last ten years, my fond memories of the past are always of the
ones from India. And these become stronger in the summer season when the kids and I are taking a
break from school and office for a holiday of some sort. All throughout my childhood, the summer season
started with the availability of sweet and delicious mangoes in the market. Being from a middle class
family, my father always waited for a few weeks for the first lot of mangoes which arrived in the market
to end, so that the price of this precious fruit that everyone liked came down and he could bring home
a constant supply of the yellow “amrut phal” ( Indian word to resemble a heavenly drink/object). As the
youngest child, I always was the first one to receive the mango in the house and also enjoyed the many
extra portions from everyone in the house. I think every Indian in some way or the other remembers
Indian summers mostly by the thought of eating mangoes. For me, among the many favourite things I
love, “Alphonso Mango” tops the list even today in 2022.
In 2012, when my husband and I arrived in the UK to make it our home, I was pregnant with our first
daughter. Being pregnant meant not eating a lot of food items which could “potentially” harm the baby.
This meant a “NO” to my most favourite things. I was upset, but controlled my urge to eat mangoes
by making a promise ( or made my husband promise me) that in 2013, after the delivery of my child,
I would receive a continuous supply of Indian Mangoes, Alphonso (Hapoos, our Marathi name for this
mango), no matter what! To my worst fears, in 2013, the export of Indian Mangoes was banned in the
UK ( or that’s what I was told ) and there was not enough or minimal availability of mangoes in the
market. Over the next few years, we managed to get some Indian mangoes even if not Alphonso all the
time, to satisfy our hunger for this yellow fruit.
Farmers sorting mangoes before packing them into boxes
Packed set of Mangoes ready
for transport to UK from
India
Packed set of Mangoes ready for transport
to UK from India
In 2017 , as we moved our family base to Kent, I came across many Indian communities who I eventually
grew very close to over the years, due to festivals or events that we all celebrated together. One such
community brought me in touch with a gentleman of Indian origin, Mr Nikhil Shinde who works
as an IT professional as his day job, but also does the business of selling Indian Mangoes to Indian
Communities across London and Kent . I still remember calling Nikhil excitedly the first time, to check
how he could deliver the Indian Mangoes on a regular basis to my house in Kent . To my surprise, I
learnt that this whole business or trade worked better if there were a lot of people ordering from the
same area so that it would become cost effective for sub-dealers like Nikhil to supply mangoes directly
to everyone's home. Being in IT myself, I never imagined myself gathering a group of families within
my own resident community , for the sake of mangoes! But I had to try something before losing the
opportunity of bringing my favourite Alphonso mangoes home! Nikhil was already running a successful
mango delivery group all around Kent and London for over a year, from 2016 at that point. He very
nicely explained to me how volunteers from different areas came forward to be the collection points
of these mango deliveries and how the distribution was subsequently achieved. Now I not only had to
decide how to bring many people to order mangoes from Nikhil but also think about being a collection
point for it as well.
They say if you taste Indian mangoes once, you can never forget it. Maybe it was this that convinced
me to talk to my area members who would be interested in ordering mangoes from a known dealer
and surprisingly many of them came forward to form this group. I volunteered to become the collection
volunteer for the area of Dartford in Kent. Nikhil was kind enough to start with our new area with
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