The 82-year-oldKaleem Ullah Khan walks over a mile every day to see his 120-year-old mangotree, which he has coaxed into producing more than 300 varieties of the belovedfruit over the years.
¡°This is my prize of toiling hard in the scorching sun for decades,¡± Kaleem said in his orchard in the small town of Malihabad in Lucknow.
¡°For the nakedeye, it¡¯s just a tree. But if you see through your mind, it¡¯s a tree, anorchard, and the biggest mango college in the world.¡±
The school dropout was just a teenager when he conducted his first experiment in grafting or joining plant parts to create new mango varieties, AFP reported.
He nurtured atree to produce seven new kinds of fruit, but it blew down in a storm.
But since 1987,his pride and joy have been the 120-year-old specimen, the source of more than 300different types of mangoes, each with their taste, texture, colour, andsize, he said.
One of the earliest varieties he named ¡®Aishwarya¡¯ after Bollywood star and 1994 Miss World beauty pageant winner Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. To this day, it remains oneof his ¡®best creations.¡¯
¡°The mango isas beautiful as the actress. One mango weighs more than a kilogram (twopounds), has a tinge of crimson to its outer skin, and tastes very sweet,¡±Khan said.
Others he namedin honour of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and cricket hero Sachin Tendulkar.Another is ¡®Anarkali,¡¯ or pomegranate blossom, and it has two layers of differentskin and two different pulps, each with a distinctive aroma.
¡°People willcome and go, but the mangoes will remain forever, and years after, wheneverthis Sachin mango will be eaten, people will remember the cricketing hero,¡±said the father of eight.
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