Burma, my Grandad and Alphonso mangos

Burma, my Grandad and Alphonso mangos
I followed food to trace my roots. 

I was brought up eating the sweetest Mangos in London. Every Friday, my grandad would buy Alphonso Mangos from Wembley and bring them over to my family in North London. 

They were Alphonso Mangos, originating from India. There are thousands of different types of mangos in India and there are several different varieties of Alphonso. I remember grandad cutting them open and my sisters and I would ravish them down, splattering juice everywhere without a care in the world. We’d demolished these sweet pieces of heaven and suck the skins dry. A beautiful saffron and bright yellow golden coloured coat layered the mangos but inside was a different story: The inside was the colour of the most vivid of Burmese sunsets, tender, creamy, rich… 

My Grandad is an Iraqi Jew, however he was the second generation to have migrated to Burma, Yangon, which is where he was born and raised until 14 years old. When the Japanese invaded Burma in 1941, my Grandad with his family got on the last boat out of Burma, to Calcutta where he lived for 3 years. From there he went in search for a better life, travelling by train to Mumbai, boat to Marseille (France) and from their he got on a boat to Israel in 1946, where he stayed for 5 years. My Grandad with his aspirations of making more money, left Israel and moved to London which is where he spent the rest of his life. 

Although I'm not a huge fan of the word, my Grandad was a relatively 'crazy' human. He would tell women how beautiful they were but he was shockingly honest when he thought someone was ugly. The name he gave me was Motek (מותק), which means sweetness in hebrew. It may sound sweet but not when he called me 5 times a day on the house phoning asking to specifically speak to me. Being that I was the youngest in the family, he decided I was the 'special' one. There was always ridiculous amounts of food stocked up in his house and his favourite thing to do was to keep filling peoples plates up with food even when they screamed "NO MORE!!". No one really knows how my grandad made money so it was easier for me to pretend he was in the mafia. 

Grandad

My Grandad passed away two years ago and before he died I often asked him questions about his own childhood in Burma. He didn’t speak too much about his experiences, understandably, however he did describe with a huge grin on his face how he used to sneak into his neighbours garden, climb their trees and steal their mangos. This childhood story spoke to me. At a time amongst such brutality, my grandad remembered what made life so sweet. 

Photo of Grandad and family in Burma

What a life to have lived, to have travelled so far. I wonder about all the things he’d seen, all that he endured, people he’d lost on the way. I wonder how all these cultures influenced him. Grandads way of expressing love was through food, and Mangoes where that one food that took him right back to his own childhood. After reading the culinary book The Hundred Foot Journey by Richard C. Morais, the words “Food is memory” resonated deeply. 

I started to question these cultural influences and it led me to think of my own food memories to exploring my own roots. So I travelled to Burma in search for the sweet mangos that my grandad once ate.

I found the road which he lived on and finally, I ate the Mangos from Burma. 

I’d like to think that one day I will visit Iraq if/when it’s more peaceful. For now, I must make use of this imagination and keep wondering. This is how we sustain our roots. 

For Grandad.