To the Goan consumer ‘Mango means Mankurad’ when eaten fresh during summer. It is now a memory till next summer. The Mallika and Neelum mangoes available on sale in Goa are being raided by FDA for artificial ripening and improper storage in illegal bat-infested godowns in remote areas. For those who still want a taste of mango, and do not want to eat Alphonso mango ice cream, the best option is the mangada of Monserrate or Musorat mangoes. This jam is best when made from Salcete Monserrate or Saxtti Musorat mangoes. It is with these mangoes that Roque Carmo de Souza and his wife, Maria Vaz, took off with the Macarflys brand after he stopped service on the ground as airport manager of the Indian Airlines at Dabolim airport.
Playing football for the ‘Independent Football Club of Margao’ in his teenage days taught Carmo all about teamwork. Most of the achievers effortlessly learn teamwork through sports. He learnt discipline and office management while serving with TAIP, the Portuguese airline before the liberation of Goa. He also built a good rapport with the business houses, customs officials and people travelling by air while he was serving in the airlines on either side of liberation. When he quit his job in 1971 and began marketing the stuff that his wife produced on a home-scale, these contacts helped him and encouraged him to expand his business.
Starting off with three bottles of homemade lemon syrup that added flavour to urrak, it also made a fizzy drink with the local soda in marble-stopper bottles that was popular then. Maria soon added pineapple, ginger and raspberry syrups to the product range. The mango season follows urrak and the mango chutney of mature but unripe Saxtti Musorat mangoes took off and thus began the brand Macarflys coined to represent Maria, Carmo and the family. The mangoes began to ripen and the mangada, or Goan mango jam, became a household favourite. If the iconic ‘Hotel Mandovi’ in Panaji added the mango chutney or sweet pickle, to its serving of rice and pulao, Vithal Souza was its stockiest in Mapusa. That is how I enjoyed the Macarflys mango chutney, sometimes even in preference to the tasty chutney that my aunts made. It was sold from home in Borda de Margao. There was no looking back. They even added the pickled-in-salt ‘chhepnne tor’ raw mango specialty of Goa to their product range.
Goa is the land of fish, curry and rice. The important item on the shopping list at the purument was kharem or sundried salted fish for the monsoons. It was either stored in airtight tins or made into para, dried mackerel or kite fish pickled in vinegar and masala and stored in a ceramic or glazed clay bharni or buyao. That was the next product that Maria added to Macarfly’s. Naturally, the prawn balchao and mole followed suit. The scooter was no longer big enough to deliver the products to the market. The family invested in a second-hand Vauxhall car from an auction by the Indian Navy at Vasco. They also registered the company as ‘Macarfly Industries’. In 1980, the company obtained a MFPO license for production and marketing of Goan Choris or pork sausages.
From bottling syrups in reused bottles to having its own bottling unit, the company advanced to plastic retort pouches by the mid-1990s, Macarfly’s has made steady progress. Maria juggled her routine between looking after two daughters and the production of syrups, pickles and jam when she was just twenty-nine years of age. From 1975, she even made Christmas sweets like Doce and Dodol in the traditional alloy-coated copper vessels and Bebinca in kunddi or huge clay ovens. As the business grew, they added staff and labour. When Carmo was laid in bed by a liver cyst, she tended to him and carried on the business as usual. After forty-five years of handling the business, the parents have handed over the reins to their son, the Carmo Jr, named as Joaquim Carmo de Souza.
The State of Goa has ten ‘Geographical Indications’ or GI to its name starting in 2009 with the cashew feni which even has its own conformity assessment board (CAB) to certify products since 2025. Mankurad has GI since 2023 and on May 25 last year, it became the first mango of Goan origin to be exported from Goa. The Cardozo Mankurad is registered under the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, (PPV & FRA) with the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, New Delhi, and is a potential candidate for GI. The Agonda Boar is a registered breed of pig identified in Goa. Bebinca and Khajem have GI and the Goan Choris application is under process. Young entrepreneurs in Goa have many things going for them if they can build up their brand as Macarflys was built by Maria, Carmo and family.
