The man from Constantinople

Tony Mango, Greece's honorary consul in Mumbai, passes away

Tony Mango had an extraordinary life. He was born a subject of the Ottoman Empire, in what was then Constantinople, and is now Istanbul, in 1915. He moved to India before the Second World War and witnessed the collapse of the British Empire in the subcontinent. He remained in India for most of the rest of a long and hyperactive life, working as an industrialist and serving as Greece's honorary consul in Mumbai for more than 40 years.

He was a keen bridge-player, an excellent cook and a generous host with a wide circle of friends. He never lost the great curiosity and energy that gave him an almost insatiable appetite for travel and of meeting people - in the last year of his life he visited the US, France, Switzerland, the UK, Greece and several places in India. He died on May 28 at the age of 92 while on holiday in Athens. He is survived by his wife Jeroo, his daughter Marie-Louise, his grand-daughter Anai, four step-children, and seven step-grandchildren.

Tony Mango's parents were French-speaking Greeks, for whom Constantinople, the 'polis' as they knew it, rather than Athens, was the centre of the Greek world. As the fighting during the First World War drew closer to Constantinople, Tony and his two older sisters were evacuated to Geneva. His father ran a family shipping business that lost money during the Depression, and Tony began working for the Greek trading company Rallis, which had sizeable operations in British India.

He travelled to India on the passenger ship Cilicia in December 1938 for what he thought would be a short posting — but he would still be living in India almost 60 years later. On that first posting, he was based in the remote town of Bellary in southern India as the Rallis representative. He described it only half-jokingly as "hell on Earth". He would later move to Chennai with his family — his first wife, Paula, and his young twins, Dimitri and Marie-Louise, before moving to Mumbai in the 1950s. 

He eventually became managing director of Rallis India, and an important figure in India's booming fertilizer industry. He was on the board of several others multinational companies — and had terms as President as the Bombay Chamber of Commerce, and as Chairman of the Fertilizer Association of India. He was appointed Honorary Consul General of Greece in Mumbai in 1965 — a role he always played with dedication and generosity to many penniless or beleaguered Greek travellers. He would later be awarded the Gold Cross of the Order of Merit by the Greek government.

In 1977, Tony married Jeroo in a ceremony in Athens. They settled at Jeroo's home on Juhu Beach — and he became a much loved stepfather to Jeroo's children: Bahram, Ardashir, Naoshirvan and Shireen Vakil. He and Jeroo would welcome first their spouses (of whom I am one) and then their children into the wider Vakil/Mango family.
(Anthony D Mango was born in 1915, and died on May 28, 2008, in Athens)