Sustainability begins at home

27.10.21 07:29 PM

Earlier this year, we were asked in one of our courses, ‘what has been your most sustainable food experience?’ After much deliberation, I concluded that it would be difficult, in fact, impossible for me to select just one. My love for food is rooted in my home, in India, in my family. Food experiences at home have been the most sustainable food experiences in my life, from a time when sustainability was not yet a matter of global discourse. It was just the way to be.


Both my parents came from large families, both had several siblings. We were particularly close to my father’s side of the family. It was the side which instilled in us a love for food and in many ways, moulded our outlook towards the world in general. My grandmother passed away when I was little but, stories of her culinary skills continue to live long after. She had a little wood fire kitchen, she knew how to do more with less and nourish a very large family with simple but, delectable food. She passed her legacy on to her children and especially, to her daughters; my father’s sisters. My aunts were the most loving and nurturing humans I have known and they were incredibly gifted cooks. What was second nature to them was in essence – respect for food, a desire to make the most of it, knowledge of how to make it flavourful and enjoyable for others, an endless curiosity to learn and ultimately, a great love for life. 


We spent a lot of time on the weekends and during vacations, at the home of my father’s youngest sister. Her name was Sudha and everyone who knew her called her Su. My earliest and most memorable experiences of food and sustainability are with Su. 


We lived in Santacruz, a quiet residential suburb in Mumbai and we always took the train to reach her home in Dombivli, approximately two hours away, usually arriving in the middle of the morning. Even though it was a late hour for breakfast, she would always make a little extra breakfast that morning and put it aside for us, knowing that we would be hungry. It would usually be a hot, savoury, spicy Indian breakfast – kande pohe, flattened rice flakes with onions and tempered with spices and chillies or upma, semolina cooked with vegetables and also, tempered with spices or our all time favourite, thalipeeth, a savoury pancake made with a multigrain flour, spices, onions, fresh coriander leaves, flattened with the hand, cooked on a cast-iron pan and eaten with homemade white butter. 


After this late breakfast, she would get down to the main business of the day – a big lunch. Su looked after a large family and her hands were always full but, she would rarely plan meals in advance. In hindsight, I marvel at this sense of leisure or perhaps, it was a quiet confidence – there was time for consultation, for democracy, particularly for participation from the youngest members of the family, to decide what would be cooked for lunch that day. If a particular ingredient or vegetable or fruit wasn’t available in the house, one of us would walk to the nearby farmer’s market along with her, armed with a cloth shopping bag which had also been sewn at home. We would buy just enough for the meal; it could be just one or two egg plants or one large banana stem or just a bunch of coriander and curry leaves. Sometimes, we would stop at the little sugarcane juice stall in the market. It was a special treat because we were told that it was safe to drink sugarcane juice only in some seasons. I would watch with fascination, as the vendor crushed the sugar cane stems through the wheel of the pressing machine, over and over again, until there was absolutely nothing left in the stem. He would then add a touch of grated ginger to the juice. If it was a particularly hot day, we would ask for crushed ice but, Su always discouraged it. She used to say that the ice may not be safe because we don’t know where the water came from but, the sugarcane juice was perfectly good, straight from the earth and into the glass!


The banana stands out in my memory, as a shining example of sustainable and nutritious food. Bananas are unique because every part of the banana plant can be consumed in its entirety. We learnt from Su, how to love the banana.


The ripe banana is a common fruit and we often ate the small variety called the velchi or yelakki, to douse hunger pangs between meals. The raw banana is dark green in colour with a thick skin and it was cooked like a vegetable. The skin was peeled and diced banana was then tempered with spices, dry red chillies, some turmeric, chilli powder and finally served with freshly grated coconut. But, the most interesting and flavourful preparations came from the banana flower and the banana stem. These were not always available, it took great effort to clean and cook them and frankly, not everyone knew how to cook them well. Su was not a trained cook. Like most women cooking at home, she had learnt through experience and observation and to us, she was divine because she could make a delicious banana blossom curry and fresh, tangy koshimbir or salad with banana stem. 


Banana blossoms are concealed in a large banana flower, which looks like a slender and closed lantern. We would buy one or two of these lantern-like flowers from the market and bring them home. They would be gently peeled and the blossoms would be carefully removed from each layer until there were no more. Each blossom would be individually cleaned and quickly soaked in salted water, to prevent oxidisation. The cooking was quick – tempering with cumin seeds, turmeric, chilli powder, sautéed onions and finished with a generous amount of freshly grated coconut. Banana blossom curry was enjoyed with freshly made roti, Indian bread made of wheat flour or bhakri, a more rustic Indian bread made with millet flour. 

Banana stems were more intricate and hence, more exciting. They are white or pale yellow, thick and cylindrical and need to be cleaned with technique. They are particularly sticky and Su would always use the large slicing blade, attached to a wooden board on which she would sit or squat. The outer skin would be peeled in circles to minimise wastage and to retain the shape of the stem.  As she peeled, she would keep rolling the fibre around her finger and occasionally, dip her hands in a bowl of water to keep them clean. The cleaning took a while but, it was done in a relaxed manner accompanied by her continuous banter. The clean, tender stem was chopped into small cubes, lightly steamed and then mixed with some soaked moong dal, yellow lentils, tempered with mustard seeds, red dry chillies, asafoetida and then finished with lemon juice and freshly grated coconut. It was tender, crunchy, fresh and was a great accompaniment to any meal. Even though koshimbir or salad is a small side dish in Indian meals, on days when the banana stem salad was made, it was the hero of the meal. 


On festival days when puja was performed at home to offer prayers, bright green banana leaves would form the plates in which we would eat our meals. My father and my uncles would buy banana leaves in the market or cut them from a homegrown tree, flatten them, wash them clean and arrange them neatly in rows, as plates. A small prayer was chanted just before the meal, to offer gratitude for the meal and then, everyone could start eating. Needless to say, all food on the plate had to be finished, wasting was not permitted and after the meal, the banana plates were folded and collected. Soon after, someone would carry all the banana leaves to a nearby field and offer them to the grazing cows and buffalos. Nothing from the banana ever went to waste; whatever was left went back into the earth or as food for another living being. A banana always completed its circle of life. 


The meal was an experience which transcended the food, went much beyond. Even when I was very young, I felt the warmth of the shared experience, the selfless love which flavoured everything that Su cooked, dishes would be licked spotlessly clean by those who enjoyed them the most and and there was a sense of contentment and security that all was well in the world. At the end of the meal, someone in the family would always say ‘anna data sookhi bhava’. These words in Sanskrit mean, ‘may the provider of this food always be joyful and peaceful’. In Food in the Vedic Tradition, Dina Simoes Guha wrote that in the Vedas and in the Upanishads, food is a sacred substance. It is cosmic, spiritual and it is divine; it is the prana, the very breath of life. The sharing of food was a both a human and a divine action. Anna which means food was enjoyed, never by eating alone but, in fellowship and brotherhood with others – family, friends, guests, monks, mendicants and even beggars. The more you gave, the more there was to give. This collective understanding was guided by the principle that it was the only way to preserve and continue the growth and production of food. All beings on earth need food, they absorb food and they turn into food. Hence, the attitude to food was wholesome because of the world-view of the oneness of things. 


In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Kimmerer says, ‘we show our children our love, each in our own way, by a shower of gifts and a heavy rain of lessons’. The more I think about my food experiences at home, the more I realise that they were expressions of deep love and as we learnt to receive and give this love, perhaps we learnt what Kimmerer calls reciprocity. We learnt how to be grateful not just for the food and the people we shared it with but, for the fact that it came from ‘somewhere’ and it was given to us by ‘someone’. In small everyday actions, we saw the opportunities for reciprocity between ourselves and our immediate surroundings. Just as banana leaves went back to grazing cows and to the earth, carrot peels and tea leaves were gently distributed across the many planters which lined the small sunlit balcony in Su’s home. It was not just good home economics. The actions and the gestures were intentional, deliberate, performed with care and attention, towards nature, towards other beings. 


So when we said anna data sookhi bhava, who were we giving thanks to? We certainly felt a sense of gratitude towards Su because to us, she was the divine provider. But, I realise now that we were learning a greater lesson. She taught us to be grateful to nature, to a power greater than us, for the food on our plates – for the subsistence and even more for the happiness.

Priya Joshi