The joys of urban foraging – Deccan Herald

What? Its become a trend? a colleague laughed in disbelief when I told her people are going on foraging walks worldwide, top chefs are cooking with moss and nettles picked from pavements and thickets, and apps are guiding people to free ingredients near them.

She was familiar with foraging, the practice of collecting food in the wild, which our ancestors depended on before farming arrived and urbanisation flattened natural spaces. Growing up in the 90s, she would see her grandmum run to the backyard of her house in Shivamogga, Karnataka, and return with unfamiliar leaves in the pallu of her saree to make curd-based dishes.

The growing interest in local food and surroundings has inspired foraging among urban dwellers, more so since the pandemic, says Kerala-based Shruti Tharayil, who organises wild food walks. But many people who migrate from villages and small towns continue to forage in cities, she adds.

Treasure hunt

I arrived at a farm in B Hosahalli, a village in Sarjapur hobli in Bengaluru, 5 km short of Tamil Nadu, where mostly Telugu is spoken. I was meeting Suresh Kumar G, an artist-cum-farmer.

He is trying to revive kitchen gardens and local food, which also made use of weeds plants we toss away from farms, sidewalks, and building cracks because they grow unwanted, uncultivated, when, in fact, many varieties are edible. His project is called Sarjapura Curries.

Weeds love a good soak and the June rains had brought them to life. Perfect season! he had exclaimed when I called him to ask if he would teach me how to forage. And so it began.

Suresh walked to an abandoned plot behind his farm. It was overgrown with parthenium. A blue tanker, Mahogany trees and lantanas stood out in the chaos. Suresh stepped in, hands behind his back, shoulder forward, and eyes searching furtively.

This is aane soppu (celosia), he tapped on a plant to his right. On the left, he spotted kashakku (black nightshade) sprouting at the base of a mound. He hopped over to show its white flowers and green berries that ripen to purple-black. Packaging foil and broken bottles lay half-buried. My feet sank as I lunged forward to see daglakku (wild amaranthus), senchalakku (false amaranthus), kanyakku (Bengal dayflower) and attika mamidakku (horse purslane). They grew under, behind, next to each other. We had barely scanned 10 metres of the two acre-plot.

A dispute broke out. The leaves of kashakku and amaranthus look the same without flowers, Seema, Sureshs friend accompanying us, said. The leaves on these two kashakku plants look so different, I pointed out. Suresh, can we make out the difference by sniffing? Can we tell the poisonous weeds from the edible ones? I asked.

Sorry, there are no shortcuts in foraging, Suresh said curtly. You must observe keenly. Practise with people who have done it. Develop a visual memory as plants look different at each stage (sprouting, before flowering, and after flowering/growing thorns) and every plant has different variants in the wild. I have spotted seven types of wild amaranthus in the village.

Consumption also differs. People prefer the lakebed variety of hongane (joyweed) as it is more tender and nutritious. It is so tasty that people cook it exclusively. As opposed to pulsakku (oxalis) that is used moderately in mixed curry. It is a ground cover weed instantly recognisable by its heart-shaped leaves.

Suresh is not a botanist but has learnt foraging from his aunts and women who graze cattle in the village, who learnt it from an earlier generation. Even within joint families, women who stay at home and cook cant identify weeds while women who go foraging can, he explained.

After surviving ant bites, catching ladybugs, discovering that tender shoots and flowers of touch me not are edible, I asked Suresh if his family foraged because it put free greens on the table. My aunts would forage weeds because they gave nutrition and immunity to the family season after season, he replied.

Taste was secondary as most greens are cooked as one-pot, mixed curries, he said as he pulled budaaku (balloon vine) out of a thicket. He burst a dried fruit to reveal the beautiful white seed with a black heart motif. Balloon vine is good for joint pain, he said. Our eyes fell on uttarani (rough chaff) with holey leaves. If insects are eating, its not poisonous, Suresh said.

As we trudged back, he spotted two varieties of pal mullangakku (similar to Dandelion) and quipped different communities eat different varieties. But the rules of foraging were consistent harvest baby leaves from the top, and tender stems.

He located 15 edible weeds at the plot and at his wild farm. There, Seema ate the yellow bud of vanmugali and her mouth went numb. Say hello to the toothache reliever, we teased.

I have identified some 25 edible weeds around the village. There used to be more but modern farming practices like removing the weeds and cultivating all year and change in land use have affected their growth cycle, he rued. Weeds were indestructible, I had thought! Weeds thrive in sites that have a natural flow of water, air, soil and seed dispersal, he said. So where do you find such sites in a city?

Lets practise

I arrived at Jakkur Lake at 6.50 am. I inspected the grass cover and shrubs flanking the walkway leisurely as I waited for Suresh. Both my gait and gaze were different from those of the walkers huffing and puffing to get in shape. They looked at me suspiciously. I decided to chill. I clicked selfies and trashed emails.

Suresh arrived. The lake was to our right and we were walking to the left. We crossed flowers, trees, fallen leaves, lawn grass, but found no weeds. Blame it on the beautification of lakes, he commented.

Suddenly, he crouched down near a manhole cover. I opened my phone camera. Walkers did a double take at us. See, joyweed, amaranthus, and spinach have sprouted around it. They must have desilted the drain. Such soil carries seeds, he surmised. We would pass more manhole covers dotted with weeds!

A little ahead, he forayed into a tree cover and plucked some pulsakku for us. We rubbed it clean and bit into its tanginess. Our breakfast for the day, I joked. But Suresh, can we pick weeds from lakesides? I lowered my voice to ask because Americas-go-to-forager Steve Brill was arrested for allegedly eating a dandelion he had plucked in New Yorks Central Park, I had read.

A little is fine, Suresh thinks. To my relief, an old man appeared, holding big bunches of balloon vine. We grind it in dosa batter. It is good for joint pain, he said. Sir, next time, dontuproot the plant. Take the tendrils, Suresh told him gently.

Balloon vine was in abundance so was the shrub bearing wild passion fruit. Suresh plucked the tiny, sweet, orange fruits for a couple to try. I saw another orange fruit here. But Google Lens flagged it as poisonous, the woman said. Dont try until community people call it safe, Suresh cautioned them.

We were late for Destination 2. As we waited for our cab, Suresh spotted some punarnava (spreading hogweed) on the roadside and then jumped behind concrete debris to admire kar kodullu (cape dates).

The cab pulled over at the National Centre For Biological Sciences (NCBS) in Kodigehalli. This campus, as also that of the adjoining GKVK (Gandhi Krishi Vigyana Kendra), are lush and wooded. Surely, they must be rich in weeds? We spotted pulsakku on the manicured lawns of NCBS and that was that.

GKVK is full of tall trees, growing densely. You dont find many weeds under tree cover because they hog the sunlight, he explained. We did spot a few along the sidewalks but Suresh felt it was not diverse enough for an agricultural studies centre.

Our last stopover at Cubbon Park, the green lung of Bengaluru, was short because it had started pouring. We could trace colocasia, pulsakku, joyweed and kashakku near the water treatment plant. The park was too tamed for any wild growth, Suresh moaned as we concluded our 13 km-foraging walk.

Doing it solo

Three weeks later, I was back at the abandoned plot behind Sureshs farm to forage alone.

For two days, I had zoomed the weed photos in and out several times to study veins, margins, gloss and texture of the leaves, the colour and shape of the stalks, and the position of the flowers. I had also mugged up names senchalakku reminded me of the song Chinchinakki babla boo from the '90s sitcom 'Just Mohabbat'.

The test began and Neelima Ramesh, a permaculturist volunteering on Sureshs farm, was my invigilator. Seven minutes up nothing. Pulsakku was my breakout moment. Kashakku gave me a hard time. An orange mushroom was a surprise. At the end of the viva, I had identified 12 of the 15 edible weeds I had harvested, Suresh confirmed. But I hadnt picked the tender parts, he cut my celebration short.

Time for a treat

Suresh had invited his auntSunandamma and her daughter-in-law Lakshmi to prepare a lunch spread with local weeds. We needed a substantial amount for cooking, so Suresh, Neelima, my photographer colleague, and I scooted to a wild patch a kilometre away only to find it had been ploughed! Thank god, we had Suresh, the experienced forager, on our side.

If local weeds have become fewer, the number of dishes made from them must have fallen or their taste. Not much. Because we make mixed curries, no? the daughter-in-law said.

A rat snake zipped by as we sat down to eat. We could not care. We were hungry. Everything from the bassaru (stock of the cooked greens) to palya (stir fry) tasted heavenly with red rice. Thats more than 20 weeds on your plate, Suresh said.

This is so tasty, so why dont locals forage as often as they used to 20 years ago, I wondered. Do you realise it took us one-and-a-half hours to forage for one meal? Suresh said.

Been there, done that

A colleague grew up in Manila, a village near Mangaluru. After school, she would take a detour with her friends through a hilly patch to feast on wild fruits. Since jamun would stain our teeth purple, we would immediately eat a fruit we locally call kepula hannu. It would remove the stain, she said, explaining how she hid her escapades from her parents.

Foraging isnt always like instant grocery delivery. It requires patience. Monsoon is half over and my friend Kavita Chatar, from the Ho tribe in Jharkhand, hasnt yet found potke. These are pebble-like mushrooms that grow underground, mostly near the roots of sal. You scrape the soil randomly to find potke (also called rugda). Some women, Im told, know the secret but they keep it within the family, says the web developer. We make a chicken gravy-like dish with it. Its the tastiest mushroom.

Imran loves to forage and cook when he is leading treks He is currently enjoying lingde (fiddlehead ferns), bichu saag (stinging nettle) and chenu (mushrooms) that show up near streams, on roadsides, and inside the woods when it rains in Uttarakhand, where he is from. They go in salads, sauteed dishes and curries. I have learnt foraging from fellow villagers. See, there are two varieties of bichu saag. If you eat the one with bigger leaves, its a direct ticket to god, he says, guffawing.

Our ancestors would try the jungle food on cats in the house first to determine if it was safe, said Dawa Lhendup lepcha from Dzongu valley in Sikkim, reserved for its oldest tribe, Lepcha. An awkward silence followed but Dawa moved on to a foraging ritual. In my grandparents time, people would make up riddles to bring attention to 'pukzik', a fern they would strip the stalk of, dry, grind to make rotis during famines. Calling it by name could rot the fern, they believed.

My questions drew blank responses from Bengalureans, young and old. Where is the wilderness? most rolled their eyes. That was until a colleague said, I forage in abandoned plots around my house in BTM Layout on Sundays. My daughter comes along."

Beginners guide

Books: Edible Weeds and Naturally Growing Plants in Auroville by Nina Sengupta, and Weeds as Food and Medicine by Hector Andrade and Lancelot DCruz.

Instagram pages: sarjapura_curries, forgottengreens, geeta_4u, odiafoodstories, paticheri, plantswalksgoa.official, chef_anumitra, harame.co,thesaagarchive, greensofkanakapura.

Dont forage near sewage drains or polluted roads or on private premises. Dont uproot plants (take a little at a time as animals and insects need food too). Dont eat anything unless elders or experts say it is safe.

(Recommended by Shruti Tharayil, who educates people about foraging)

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The joys of urban foraging - Deccan Herald