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The bustling, polluted, crowded city of Bengaluru might not be a place that most people associate with the foraging of wild, edible plants. But they would be wrong. All around us, pushing their way through the sidewalks, in the little strips of soil beside the road, in the drains, in the lakes, in the parks — just waiting to be discovered — are edible plants. The act of gathering such edible plant species from private or public spaces in the city is called urban foraging, and it is a common practice across the globe.
— From ‘Chasing Soppu’
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FOR OVER FIVE YEARS NOW, Seema Mundoli — author, researcher and faculty member at Azim Premji University in Bengaluru — has been studying the city’s lakes, along with other researchers at the institute’s Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability. Mundoli and her colleagues have been looking at these lakes as part of their ongoing project on ‘urban commons’ — those few and far between spaces in our largely disconnected cities where the rich and the poor citizenry still run into each other, children across economic classes play together, and community-based collaborative conservation work takes place. Think: beaches, parks and playgrounds, river fronts, and other unoccupied land. One of the amazing by-products of their research has been the downloadable book, Chasing Soppu: a field guide to the wild, edible plants and weeds in and around the city of Bengaluru, along with a few recipes illuminating the use of these leafy vegetables in our own kitchens.
During the course of the centre’s research on the practices of communities around the edges of the city’s lake in 2018, Mundoli noticed a multi-tasking woman who, besides keeping a keen eye on her grazing cattle nearby, was using the sharp edges of clam shells to harvest leaves off of a flat creeper growing on the lakebed. “I saw her cutting leaves with the shells and folding them into her sari,” Mundoli recalls, in our phone conversation. Curious, Mundoli walked up and asked the woman what she was collecting, and was told it was “honagonne soppu” [Scientific name: Alternanthera sessilis (L.). Common name: Joy weed.] Soppu is the Kannada word for “leafy vegetables”. The woman told Mundoli she’d use the leaves “to make a saaru, or sambhar”, and that they were not only nutritious but also “good for the eyes,” Mundoli remembers.
It wasn’t the first time Mundoli had seen leaves being foraged. “Growing up in Kerala, I’d seen my grandmother walk into our backyard and pick up a few leaves every evening to make a bitter kashayam [water decoction or water extract of a single herb or group of herbs] for her diabetic grandfather. I’d just never seen it in the urban context until then,” she muses. While urban foraging has become a growing movement, gaining popularity across the world and India, for these women from the lower economic classes, foraging for these wild edible plants and weeds has always been a way of life, and it isn’t something new at all. “In fact, these women are losing their access to these plants in the urban landscape and have to resort to scaling fences surrounding lakes to get to these plants,” Mundoli rues.
Why do people continue to forage in cities, especially when almost everything is available in the markets? In the introduction to Chasing Soppu, the authors explain, “People forage for a variety of reasons. In Bengaluru, we know that people collect wild plants to use in cooking, as medicine, and for cultural practices like ritual bathing, warding off evil spirits, or religious worship. The leaves of some plants are added to the bathwater used by new mothers, and leaves and pods of specific plants are used as talismans to protect infants. Wildflowers are used in worship, especially during certain harvest festivals like Sankranti. Mixed green curries (bas saaru, uppina saaru and massoppu) are staples in many homes, and wild plants, leaves and fruits can be turned into delicious chutneys and pickles.”
While this book acts as a guide, Mundoli warns us that we should be careful while foraging for these plants for ourselves. “Some of them can be very similar to their inedible or poisonous varieties. These women have learnt to distinguish these plants from their grandmothers, aunts and mothers, and know what they’re doing,” she tells us. And some of these plants are even tended within the city’s neighbourhoods. “You’ll always see aloevera or tulsi plants, which are considered the first doctors for these folks. Another common crop is basale soppu [Common name: Malabar Spinach. Scientific name: Basella alba L.], which grows as a creeper over the roofs of their homes. These species have been chosen for their low investment of time and water — a precious resource in these neighbourhoods, and vines are generally preferred because they take up less ground space,” Mundoli notes.
For Mundoli and the team of researchers at the Azim Premji University, this is just the beginning. “It is fascinating to know how they use these plants that are largely unseen or disregarded within the urban context. And it would be exciting to find out the many wonderful ways women across the country forage (for) and use these plants in their daily diet,” she concludes. Chasing Soppu is a wonderful reminder that nature is ever-present and nourishing us, even amid the most concrete of jungles.
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LISTED BELOW are the 50-plus varieties of edible plants included in Chasing Soppu, under the three broad categories of climbers, and spreading vs erect plants. Some of these greens are sold at the Banashankari, Mavalli, Madivala, KR and Russell markets in Bengaluru, while street vendors near Halasuru Metro Station and Lalbagh are also a good source for these foraged finds.
Climbers:
Basale, Bude gida, Dhagadi balli, Kadu seege, Kukke balli, Thonde balli
Spreading Plants:
Acce gida, Bili suli gida, Chelakeerae soppu, Dodda gonni soppu, Dodda huli soppu, Gabbu sanna shaavanthi, Gargale soppu, Gonni soppu, Honagonne soppu, Huli soppu, Ilikivi soppu, Kaddi gida, Kanne soppu, Komme soppu, Mullu honagonne, Neggele mullu, Ondelaga soppu
Erect Plants:
Agase, Anne soppu, Arkberike soppu, Bharngi, Chakota soppu, Chowdangi soppu, Dantu soppu, Dhaturi gida, Hal soppu, Halumulangi soppu, Hunase mara, Kadu palak, Kadu sasive, Kamakasthuri, Kashi soppu, Kiru nelli, Kolikalina soppu, Kuppi gida, Mudre gida, Mulluharive soppu, Naayisasive, Nelabasale, Nelabevu, Nelanelli, Sundekkayi, Thagache, Thumbe gida, Uttarani, Vayunarayani
