Sprig break: Meet the urban farmer selling ‘weeds’, and ancient recipes for them too
From curries to chutneys, there are countless ways people traditionally used the greens that are today disposed of as waste, says Suresh Kumar G.
Suresh Kumar G doesn’t like the word “weeds”. It’s problematic, he says.
A lot of “weeds” are simply hardy plants we haven’t found a use for, he adds. And in some cases, an ideal kind of use is staring us in the face. Many are, well, delicious.
Kumar, 52, a visual artist and urban farmer, grew up eating a range of vegetables and wild greens at his maternal grandparents’ home in Volagerekallahalli village, about an hour from Bengaluru.
He would only later realise these weren’t widely eaten outside the villages; and often weren’t even acknowledged as food. Now, even in places like Volagerekallahalli, these plants are disappearing from people’s plates, Kumar says, and this concerns him.
What could he do about it, he wondered?
In 2019, the answer came to him, when he saw wild greens sprouting in his terrace garden. If it was that easy, shouldn’t people know, he remembers thinking.
The thought set him on an unusual path. For five years, he has been working to popularise wild greens, and document traditional recipes that feature such produce.
He named his initiative Sarjapura Curries, after the region on the outskirts of Bengaluru where he now grows such produce on a rented 2.5-acre farm.
The initiative received a boost when it won a ₹5 lakh grant from Bengaluru Sustainability Forum (BSF), in 2019. “From curries to chutneys, there are countless ways people traditionally used greens that are today disposed of as waste,” he says.
The plants he is referring to include spreading hogweed, horse purslane and water spinach. On his farm, Kumar also grows amaranth, moringa, spinach and tomatoes, because the wild greens often sprout alongside.
In an unexpected benefit, because his farming model allows native plants to flourish with minimal intervention, Kumar says he has found the biodiversity on his 2.5 acres rebounding. Over the past two years, he says he has spotted more native snakes, birds and insects here.
The wild greens, meanwhile, are harvested and delivered to retail buyers in and around Bengaluru. It’s a way to raise awareness about true farm-to-table eating, he says.
Taking stalk
The second half of the Sarjapura Curries mission, the part that involves preserving and promoting rare recipes for wild greens and other local specialties, goes back much further than five years; it goes back, in fact, more than a decade.
In 2014, Kumar lost his mother, Shantamma, a homemaker, at the age of 60. Amid his grief, he realised he had also now lost all the treasured meals she had made for him through his life. He had intended to document her recipes, but hadn’t yet got down to doing it.
This made him determined to gather traditional recipes where he could.
So far, from conversations with friends, relatives, and home cooks in the Sarjapura region, Kumar has gathered recipes for anne soppu majjige huli (a curd-based curry made with water spinach), massoppu saaru (a foraged-greens curry), berake soppu saaru (a mixed-greens dish), miram saaru (a curry starring wild greens and pepper), and pulgurakku (a dish of wild greens and tomatoes or tamarind).
He intends to showcase these on the Sarjapura Curries website. Uploads have begun, in the form of art and videos created with the help of students from Azim Premji University, where he delivers lectures on foraging and food waste.
Such archiving serves a vital purpose, says Manasi Pingle, coordinator with the Bengaluru Sustainability Forum.
“When one talks about edible wild greens, one is also talking about culture, because this is a glimpse into the way humans in a given region have eaten for generations,” she adds. “It’s a way of life and it’s also about food security. People once knew where to find certain edible greens in specific seasons.”
We’ve become increasingly disconnected from the food we eat, Pingle adds. “It comes in packages, and we often have no idea where it was grown, how it was produced or who was behind its cultivation. Sarjapura Curries makes you stop and think about all this. It questions why we stopped eating certain traditional foods, and where those recipes have gone.”
Foraging is healthier too, Kumar says. It introduces a greater diversity of nutrients, and a range of seasonal produce, into a diet.
We knew this once, he adds. “My mission is to resuscitate people’s memories.”
