Shruti Tharayil talks to The Locavore about seasonal foraging, how she became a self-taught herbalist, and the Musumusu Kai Keerai Rasam that she ate during her recent cycle yatra.
In October last year, Shruti Tharayil announced her South India Cycle Yatra on Instagram. Her intentions, she stated, were to learn about wild foods found in these states—from the communities who are most familiar with it—and document associated culinary traditions.
Keeping a close watch on people’s changing relationships with food in India is not only implausible but also disorienting. While on the one hand, industry experts discuss the future of cloud kitchens, on the other, the cost of something as rudimentary as tomatoes is rising (at nearly rupees 80 in July 2024) due to the heat, making it unaffordable for most of the population.
To make sense of India’s food systems, one needs to not only be curious, but also have a sharp ear to the ground. And to find someone who takes joy in cycling for a month, with the sole objective of meeting people along the way and understanding lesser known culinary practices is rare. But Shruti’s no stranger to any of this. Since 2018, she has been documenting India’s wild edibles through Forgotten Greens, an initiative focussed on showcasing India’s uncultivated foods.
Excerpts from an interview with her:
Do you remember the first wild food that you ever tasted? What was it, and how did it taste?
The first wild foods I remember tasting were fruits of Stinking passionflower (Passiflora foetida) and Indian jujube (Ziziphus mauritiana). During school hours, I would sometimes bunk classes, jump over the school fence, along with a few partners in crime, and we would cycle to go pick up these berries. The jujube fruit had a tinge of sourness that lingered in my mouth, and the sticky texture of the passionfruit was something I would play with before savouring it. But my shenanigans of bunking classes came to an end one day when we got caught. However, I’d always say it was all worth it.
When did you start thinking about wild edible food in a serious way, and why did you want to build awareness around it?
Back in 2011, while working with a non-profit organisation, I engaged extensively with Adivasi, Dalit, and pastoral communities in Andhra Pradesh and present-day Telangana as part of my work. I spent time with women farmers from these communities and began noticing their use of wild foods in their daily diets. These would sometimes be just “weeds” growing on the farm that were foraged or something foraged from deep within the forest. They would lovingly cook it for this wide-eyed city girl, who was going gaga over their food. It was honestly some of the tastiest food I had ever eaten.
One of the things that bothered me growing up was that all of us mostly eat the same type of vegetables irrespective of the geographical diversity [across India]. My parents were travel connoisseurs, and made sure we visited different places, always seeking out local food. These experiences helped me appreciate biodiverse food, and wild foods fit perfectly into that equation. The beauty of wild foods is that their preparation, cultivation, and taste change every few kilometres.
Amidst the ongoing climate crisis, I feel it’s imperative to amplify efforts towards local and seasonal food systems, as a way of doing my part towards a sustainable future.
You refer to yourself as a “self-taught herbalist”. What does this mean to you today?
I came up with this title because people often wanted to know how I acquired my knowledge. They would ask if I was a botanist, essentially wanting to know if I had studied this professionally. The knowledge I have comes from my intrinsic love for local and seasonal foods, as well as the generosity of people who have shared their knowledge with me. I personally believe that the modern education system requires radical reforms because, unfortunately, it often produces educated people who have degrees, but lack practical knowledge.
My grandfather was a herbalist who never studied it professionally but healed people. For me, this title is a way to reclaim and recognise knowledge systems that are not confined by the four walls of the colonial education system.
“Self-taught herbalist” as a title challenges the notion that you need a degree to prove your knowledge. My grandfather was a herbalist who never studied it professionally but healed people. For me, this title is a way to reclaim and recognise knowledge systems that are not confined by the four walls of the colonial education system.
You address the topic of caste in many of your conversations around food. What are some ways in which caste appears in unexpected ways when you interact with food?
Caste is omnipresent, especially in matters of food, if you pay close attention. Whenever I speak to people from oppressed castes about their food, there’s often a tone of apology or they sanitise their answers, presuming it’s what I want to hear. Internalised shame underlies many of these conversations. I relate this to my own childhood experience, where I felt internalised shame regarding the food cooked in my home. Until my early twenties, I never disclosed the consumption of pork and beef in my household to my peers. If these meats were cooked at home, it was done discreetly, despite their sacred significance in our festivals.
Caste realities became more apparent after my marriage, as in my partner’s household, separate vessels are used for [eating] meat and vegetarian food. Despite my partner’s and my efforts to reform household practices, it feels like fighting a losing battle. As an educator who addresses caste through my work around food, I experience casteism in these nuances. It’s glaringly evident in my life, so it’s no surprise how pervasive it must be for others.
When it comes to food, there will always be practices and traditions that vanish. What do you think is worth preserving?
I don’t think there is a definite answer to this question, especially for a generation that is witnessing such rapid transitions in their socio-cultural fabric. It’s a challenging question since context is highly relevant. In my personal context, my caste community moved away from toddy-tapping or folk herbalism because it was the only way to mobilise themselves upward in the caste and class hierarchy. After three generations, I want to revive that knowledge because I felt rootless. From my ancestors’ perspective, it is knowledge that should be forgotten, as it reminds them of an identity that only brought them misery and oppression. So, reviving and reclaiming this knowledge is my way of reconnecting with my ancestors.
With the passage of time, it is inevitable that some knowledge will always be lost. However, the sad part is that it often ends up being the knowledge of those who are often oppressed, who don’t wield hard power.
When you think about the future of Forgotten Foods, what are you hoping it will be?
Ideally, I envision a conscious market that consumes seasonally procured food. We need more discourses around lesser-known foods, but these narratives should be framed within the right context of caste, class, gender, biodiversity, etc. We cannot have a revival of wild mushrooms during the monsoons without acknowledging that the mineral-rich landscapes where these mushrooms or wild foods grow are being ravaged in the name of development. It is also important to consider and recognise those who forage these foods for us. Real food is never grown in isolation, especially wild foods, and my hope is that as we move forward in building this discourse, we emphasise its intersectionalities.
We cannot have a revival of wild mushrooms during the monsoons without acknowledging that the mineral-rich landscapes where these mushrooms or wild foods grow are being ravaged in the name of development.
The act of foraging, and conversations around foraging are central to your work. How did you learn to forage, given that you grew up in an Indian city?
I believe foraging runs in my blood. My community elders practised seasonal foraging in Kerala; I grew up hearing stories of how they gathered wild mushrooms, molluscs from paddy fields, colocasia stems, bamboo rice, herbs, and more. I had the opportunity to experience it firsthand while working closely with farmers, observing their methods. Upon moving to the city, I felt a disconnect from nature and gradually began reconnecting by foraging. It became a way to reclaim my ancestral practices and explore public spaces in cities abundant with wild edibles.
Initially, I learned through trial and error. For instance, I started by harvesting mature leaves, which were challenging to digest. Over time, I learned to select tender leaves instead, and foraging gradually became central to my life and work.
Many say that the mainstreaming of wild foods and foraging can be dangerous. In a world where food systems are already overburdened, what value do wild foods bring and how should one engage with it?
In Tamil, there is a saying that goes, “Even amrit can turn to poison if overconsumed.” Overconsumption of anything can be dangerous. And yes, I believe that mainstreaming wild foods would spell the end of wild foods. Many people contact me asking for ways to monocrop these wild greens so that more people can access them, and my only answer is that the day we decide to “cultivate” wild foods for the larger good, the whole purpose is lost. Additionally, mainstreaming often leads to communities being deprived of these foods of their primary source.
I feel it is our mindless urge to control foods that led to practices like monocropping and bringing in harmful chemicals that turn our food poisonous. The only sensible and sustainable way forward for our food systems, or anything else for that matter, is to localise. Local solutions can be the only way we engage with food. If we ensure that a large percentage of our food is local and seasonal, we will be able to achieve a balance.
Through an article in Atlas Obscura, we learned that for some of the indigenous communities in the United States, the term “foraging carries negative connotations related to class and relationship to the land. Instead, they prefer the word “gathering”. Have you come across that in India as well? And how is the act of foraging referred to in some of the Indian languages you are familiar with?
This is a challenging question, particularly in the Indian context, where communities access land for food in diverse capacities. To me, “gathering” suggests a certain abundance in the collection of resources. However, my personal observations reveal an inconvenient truth: there is scarcity in access to resources.
In urban areas, there is a growing scarcity of wild foods due to rampant real estate expansion, misconceptions about greenification, and the general lack of undisturbed or unexploited empty plots of land. In rural villages and forests, while there may be an abundance of wild foods, access is severely restricted, particularly for oppressed castes who historically have been the knowledge bearers and traditionally dependent on foraging for their livelihood and survival.
I understand the impulse to rename the term to acknowledge stereotypes and class connotations linked to land access. However, when referring to food collection among oppressed castes, I still consider it “foraging”. This is because they lack free access to land and often gather from fallow or common lands, or from lands where they work as labourers. Their reliance on wild foods stems from the absence of access to nutritious foods from established societal structures, rather than from abundance in nature.
Changing the terminology alone does not address the underlying issues of inequality and scarcity. Despite India’s rich biodiversity, unequal access to natural resources distinguishes between gathering for food and foraging for survival. The use of these terms in this context feels political, acknowledging the inequities in land and natural resource access.
You recently did a month-long cycle yatra through some parts of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala. What did you set out to do?
The cycle yatra was a push to explore stories from the ground up. I feel that no matter how much one talks about things on social media platforms, the ground realities are always different. The yatra was an attempt to spend time with communities and learn about their food stories. It was also a way to learn more about what is happening in the food systems that do not get reported or aren’t considered relevant enough. Additionally, I wanted to learn more about uncultivated plants, as I believe knowledge and learning is a living process that should happen constantly, otherwise, it often becomes stagnant. During the yatra, I spent time with elderly women foragers, folk herbalists, farmers, and toddy tappers who shared the varied roles uncultivated food plays in their socio-cultural ecosystem.
During the yatra, I spent time with elderly women foragers, folk herbalists, farmers, and toddy tappers who shared the varied roles uncultivated food plays in their socio-cultural ecosystem.
Can you tell us about something you ate on the yatra that will stay with you, for good or even difficult reasons?
Musumusu Kai Keerai Rasam (rasam made from the leaves of Cucumis maderaspatanus).
During the yatra, I spent time with a toddy-tapping community near Villupuram in Tamil Nadu. My host, Pandiyan Anna, is the leader of the toddy-based lifestyle movement in Tamil Nadu that is working towards lifting the ban on toddy tapping in the state. He took me around his farm, which had toddy trees on the edges, and spoke about how each toddy tree supports a guild of smaller plants and herbs that grow around them, creating an ecosystem of its own. He emphasised how the ban on toddy tapping is leading to the erasure of not just its knowledge in situ but also the knowledge of these wild medicinal and edible plants.
One of the herbs he introduced me to is musumusukai, which grows as a vine around the palmyra tree. I knew of this herb and had tried it earlier in my own explorations, but experiencing it in its social-political context felt like tasting it for the first time. My hosts, including a seven-year-old girl named Dharani, showed me how to forage the greens, and we made the rasam together. The dish stayed with me because when you cook and eat with a community for whom the ingredient is part of their culinary heritage, the way you experience the dish is completely different. It roots you to the land and the socio-cultural realities of where the ingredient comes from.
Do you have any guilty-pleasure dishes? The kind of thing you crave in the middle of the night?
The first thing that popped up was chocolate cake. I love a moist chocolate cake and can eat it for three meals a day and as a midnight snack if I am awake!
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