LEAVES OF GRASS.

Joya Mitra

The other day Parthas mother from the village of Girat was eloquent about cooking of earlier times. She moved us in particular with a recipe she had learnt from her grandmother who acquired it from her mother in law; a dry dish fashioned from the horse - grass Mutha, easily a century and a half old. Tender leaves of this grass would be covered with wet hessian bags, within ten or twelve days, growing, its sheaves would turn crimson, gathering them one would mince and cook as one does the flower of the banana, adding half a cup of coconut milk before removing it from fire. The mention of coconut milk in this fable of grass startled me. Then, it dawned on me this jolt is rather of the contemporary. Though a limiting example, this particular recipe is one among myriad delights fashioned from everyday items when they were easily found around our hearth and home. Hence even in plight of running a household widowed at youth, Bisheswari Panchadhhayis mother from Midnapur used to garnish with a little Ghee, clarified butter, the Kolmi grass collected around ponds. It was possible because the homemade ghee came from the milk that was sold to earn a living. The other ingredients were strewn across in fields or marshes. Surely one knows that the Kanthaal, the jackfruit or Mocha, Thoer, flower or wood of the banana also called Varaali can produce some of the most delectable tastes come alive and yet, that it can be eaten is unheard of even to many ethnicities living in its abundance in India. Very little effort has gone into enumerating the different herbs, vegetables spread across our countryside except perhaps the obvious ones like the banana or the jackfruit. And yet why should there have been any; our mothers and grandmothers had no obligation to pen research works titled The Edible Greens of India. Their search lay in other directions. Whatever was available around was what they were supposed to cook. One cant but be amazed in thinking how these ancient housewives discovered which foliage to eat, what laudable qualities were present in them, even how to cook them up. And then again, is there just one way of cooking each ingredient? Bathua, the spinach that grows by itself in wheat fields; Punjab and Bihar cooks the saag in different ways, Bengal a third. The cooking of Sushni, the saag that commonly grows amidst rice, is poles apart in the hands of the wife of a high born medicine man from those of her poor peasant neighbour. To each one the produce from their fireside is no doubt as delicious as amrta itself. So elevating is the experience that Kavicancan Mukundaram reminisces in none other than the Lord of abandonment Shivas voice - the cooking of Shorshe , mustard saag, in iron tumblers, Bathua deep fried in mustard oil, or, Palang, the common spinach cooked with cumin seeds singed in clarified butter. And again in representations of better off households: after torment at the hands of her husbands other half Lahona, Khullona, in cooking to feed his, Dhanapati Saudagars, friends provides us with details of preparing; globules of dried pigeon pea with the pot herb Notye, leaves of the jute plant in clarified butter, Even the dull Hyalencha lightly singed in mustard oil, and thoroughly cooked with sticks of jute.[1] Kavicancan Chandi It is superfluous to add that each of these dishes will have myriad cooking procedures even in our surroundings. From economic quarters diverse there are so many different descriptions of preparation of pot herbs, lentils, bitter curries, fishes or meat laid out in Chandimangal that Mukundarams work can be considered as a sourcebook of cookery in itself. Just as Bibhutibhusans trilogy Pather Panchaali along with many of his short stories together can be said to be so. In most instances described in these texts the main ingredients of use are easily to be had around us. It is not necessary to shop for them. It is not merely coincidental that not only ancient poetry in bangla is about food but also the edible mentioned in it like Moili mantha, Nalincha gachchha , Gaika ghitta , Dhughda sajutta.[2] are all mere simple dishes from our everyday lives? Is it because of the way one has served that the savour has turned holy? Virtue or for that matter the taste of the dish is dependent on adroitness, which we refer to as the hand, of the one who cooks. Though the procedures had been learnt in personal care of earlier generations the ones who cooked often they themselves collected the items necessary for cooking. In this plebeian style, not only its taste but nutritional values as well were preserved. Using experience along with inherited knowledge from an earlier century, food cooked from simple items filled stomachs, provided for the convalescent, even worked as antidote for possible diseases. Nutrition and healing would thus be made possible from use of simple items around us with understanding. This skill of use is often plainly visible even in occupations of the simple middle class. The farmer knows from where to start the ridge-aal around his land; knows just how to do so to retain the necessary amount of water in the field during the monsoons. Everyone has seen the fishermen constantly stir the waters to keep abundant oxygen in all parts of the aluminum urns they use for transporting spawn. Some baby fishes inevitably die in the exertion of a long journey. In decapitation the dead might affect the living so miniscule bodies have to be fished out. Imagine a very large urn filled with water and countless tiny babies of fish within; in between, the dead spawn is separated by the use of a technological marvel. When a rope, about a metre long, made of the husk of coconut, is turned around in a certain manner in this water all the dead fish gets attached to it and gets easily separated from the living. Then again, eight

lengths of an arm eleven or thirty, at what depths water may be found the Kupshastra, manual for excavating wells, in Kerala says can be known by hearing the sound of the water inside the coconut of the palm adjacent to the site. There are thousands of such examples strewn around us. They are solutions to countless everyday problems. The use of simple articles available easily around us is characteristic of the plebeian technologies. The main onus lies in the adroitness of their use; prolonged experience, traditional knowledge, spirit of innovation. Mindless mechanical activity of a very simple kind slowly gives birth to a kind of neglect mitigating inventive powers natural to our kind, even drying them up. For ages millions of inhabitants of these lands have solved problems and satisfied their necessities by such methods. The huge surplus of natural wealth of this country could have developed agriculture and small industries and made them self sufficient unto themselves. Producers and consumers being in direct contact money were of little importance here. Though not wealthy the rural folk lived well. The modern notion of poverty had no bearing with peasant societies of those times. In this lifestyle, surrounded by people and things found locally they lived with relative ease. Calmly and able bodied. Since there was no desire over and above that which was necessary from habit; things that were readily available was sufficient to provide for the primary needs. The mind was not yet filled with thoughts of annexation and putting to use distant frontiers in desire and ambition for myriad things. He had time for thought and leisure for relationships, for curiosity about the rules of this limitless nature; this one life capital with which he had embarked on this strange journey; to explain it, to express the sum of his emotions in paintings and literature. The Himalayas, Vindhyas, or the ranges of the Western Ghats, rivers with billowing waves, the lust for life in flora, fauna and sentient beings spread across these vast plains; looking at them as if with unblinking eyes, forever, lots of men with the gift of nothing but their own senses have been able to feel the rules of the bearer of all life, nature, and to express that feeling in philosophical thought. Differences in ways of living, food, shelter, clothes, rituals and custom; in short culture stems generally from divergent nature and climate. There are eight different climates in this region though it has rarely been a cause for concern of the people living here. Each one has lived in their own particular zone for thousands of years. This vast land characterized by such variety in nature is luminous in many economic, social and cultural variations. Its vicissitude makes India so rich. Various sustainable ways of living has been its source of power. The ordinary people of this land has been able to arrange for their minimum needs of life, like food, shelter, water under all kinds of adversities simply by the dint of fascinating knowledge and experience of using the wealth of nature for generation after generation in a strange skillful manner without exhausting it. Any attempt to destroy this diversity natural to us is dangerous for this land. It is shortsighted and in contradiction with the laws of nature therefore unscientific. In this large country there are different ways of living and cultures that emerge from it with similarities here and there. Agriculture represents the major concern of life common to all. Agriculture is natural over other ways of production in this country where water from rivers and other sources, such multiplicity of organic life, warmth of the sun, fertility of soil in most places in sum such wealth of natural resources is present. The first need satisfied from wage labour, food, is produced directly in agriculture; practiced sustainably which has singularly provided occupation to the largest mass of people in India, thus protecting them from the aggression of prosperous modern civilizations that rapidly consumes all resources of nature. Rural societies dependent on ancient self perpetuating farming techniques is providing protection to natural wealth and the common people; often called impoverished and backward in the neologism of development. Its reflection is to be found in the food habits of the rural population. Agriculture does not mean the growing of rice or wheat alone. It is neither the practice of making the maximum produce marketable for its price in cash. Agrarian culture is an all encompassing idea in itself where human life harmonizes multiple layers of relationships between the soil, water, warmth of the sun, diversity of flora and fauna, the list could almost be endless. The labour that is directly spent in farming, for example in preservation of the seed of life, in procedures of tilling the soil, particular irrigation techniques necessary in accordance with the crop, harvesting, in hundreds of other rules that are followed while the crop is under observation. Just as each one is an important part of agriculture similarly of equal importance are those social rites, customs, habits even a certain ethic that even while being patron to these procedures grounds or bears sustainable agriculture perpetuating all round growth perennially. To produce one particular crop in huge quantities by use of technologies that rent asunder the laws of nature destroying the usual circle of life of animals and plants unique to each region; to measure profit and loss by the quantum of cash earned from excess production of a particular crop is like taking a yardstick to measure a river. It is the use of one unit of measurement for another. The difference of the shortsighted fascination with immediate profit in terms of cash is fundamental with sustainable agrarian cultures. They are two world views. The continuous expansion of the production of rice in abeyance of all laws of nature cannot be called agriculture in the right sense of the term. In this system rice has not only become a cash crop but farms in contradiction with natural laws have become rice producing factories. Where like any other large scale industry inevitably and with immense speed natural resources meaning water, soil, the flora and the fauna suffers irreparable loss. Production of rice in congruence with the natural laws continues being destroyed alongside. The traditional world of agriculture that we know is completely otherwise. In continuous evolution for thousands of years this practice of preservation has been developed in harmony with the laws of nature. In our country an agrarian culture based on traditional agricultural work of generations has emerged like self sustained life worlds growing around the bark of primeval trees.

The work that is directly related to cultivation meaning the separation and preservation of seed grains, preparation of the soil, farming according to the seasonal cycle, protection of the cultivated lands, even making the crop flourish just as on the one hand its immediate experience along with hundreds of rules that have emerged from observation made in the fields are important; equally the corpus of social manners , customs and ethics that provides the grounds while having emerged from this system of production. The civilization in India has been founded on this one indissoluble relationship; the agri cultural, it cannot be cleft. At least for eight thousand years this culture of production; civilization is alive in this lands and like any of its kind has had to evolve through continuous change. The more one has been able to comprehend the laws of nature in their totality the greater has been diversity in this production process and in accordance society and culture. The signs of bronze and copper tools used in agriculture around 5000 BC[3] in Mehergarh (now in Quetta, Pakistan) or the stone implements in use in Nagarjunkonda in Andhra Pradesh, Chanhudaro in Harrappa Mahenjodaro around 2700 or a little later with the Lothals are quite different from each other. More so are the mortars for removing the husk shown in Mughal paintings or the various kinds of oil crushers of various sizes used in the villages of Bengal as collected by anthropologist Sri Nirmal Kumar Basu.[4] Keeping in line with little differences in the quality of the soil then again equal varieties of the spade existed side by side in Bengal - the farm implements too have undergone change with the times. Beyond the things that we are able to see there is the history of their successive development even of tools that make them. From how far the waters have billowed imperceptibly and brought the waves crashing on the sands with a shower of foam is known to the attentive thinker. In truth even the embodiment of music, Saraswati, was never born as a fully formed image of a player of veena, even before that shes a giver of delight, embodied in cultivation. Isnt the knowledge of the infinite Brahma somewhere fleshed from the knowledge of food? The great mother image; is she not the goddess in whom nutrition is embodied for all life. Without knowledge everything else is futile hence the giver of grains Saraswati turned into a worshipper of knowledge and music. That fire which in one form burns its self and blazes up as the poet is also the protector of all ashramas; the slayer of all evils. In the culture of this country even today a part of the food is sacrificed to it. In ancient imagination that energy which in the skies is the sun, in air thunder, in the belly of the earth that is fire: the original protector of life. This energy nourishes all life. Reminds me, in1924, a little before his death, poet Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), a young soldier in the British army, in the face of death of his just deceased friend combatant had opined Move him unto the sun, If anything can arouse him now, The kind old sun will know. Think how it wakes the seedsWoke, once, the clay of a cold star.[5] Filled with wisdom of how to fill the rays of the bearer of all life in the offerings of the soil is Indias agriculture and nutritional science. Hymns are sung to the morning glory, which wakes up everyone and sends them to the field or in rearing the flock, from which the trees gather in its leaves and branches, in all its forms. From the times of the Vedas to the present day Itu or Chhat, from the Singboma of the adivasis to the Doyni polo faith in the North East (Doyni- sun, Polomoon) Indian culture resounds in adoration of the sun. Rivers, life blood, source of prosperity, for cultivation; in the Yajur Veda those have been worshipped as Suryabarchasa or Suryattochosa meaning. And what is being prayed of them. Waters that flow in the depths of the rivers and near the banks let thy kingdom come to my client. Whose complexion is as bright as the sun those rivers are being hailed as the giver of kingdoms, provider of the powers of kings. Even in actuality, from the banks of the seven seas to Saraswati, eight hundred years before Christ, after the discovery of iron, the spread of densely populated areas and cultivation in the indo - gangetic plains clearing dense forests, has shown that large and famous cities have grown along the banks of rivers where agriculture has flourished. How in earlier times depending on agricultural wealth apart from rice, from cotton, silk, kapok and other fibers, from sugarcane, confectionary etc, India was viewed as a prosperous land by the world has already been discussed at length. In those days there was no scarcity of food in the country. In the cave paintings at Ajanta or Bagh or temple sculptures dating back thousands of years the figures of men and women at work are neither emaciated nor wizened by hunger. Even during the first years of the East India Company in the works of British painters like Charles Doyle, Balthazar Solvyns, Mullivan and others the representation of the native boatman, the fisher, coolie, vegetable vendor, prostitute or the palanquin bearer none is seen as disfigured by malnutrition as in pictures dating a century onwards; of the famines, of Tebhaga which usurp the sleep from our eyes. The people of this country did not have to go about in empty stomachs. That they had food to satiate their hunger is well marked in their culture. Even today the giving of food to welcome the arrival of anyone is a natural response or essential custom of these lands, whether or not it fills their stomach. In any familial or social event the first issue that demands our attention is the communal sharing of food; Joy or sorrow, whatever the emotional mood. Even what is to be served as the main course flesh, fish, fruits, vegetables, simply confectionaries, or puffed rice alone is laid down in accordance with preset norms unique to the occasion at hand. Only a society prosperous in foodstuffs can bear to have customs of this order. Besides this there are numerous festivals in all parts of this country where the chief endeavour lies in having food commonly; to eat with all and sundry in society. In the treatise on agriculture

between the 6th and the 8th Century CE Krishi Parashar there is detailed description of Pushyayatra namely eating of delectable condiments made from milk and rice of all in the fields before reaping the autumnal harvest. In West Rajasthan during the Kharif crop: in various parts of the Himalayas, in rituals observed with one name or another, having food in the fields together is a common social tradition. In Kerala it is celebrated by observing Pongal to announce harvest of the new crop. In Bengal it is done through Nabanna in autumn. In Assam Bihu marks the same custom. Even today the first fruits of summer are offered to the gods in Ambubaci before their intake. (Once upon a time this was a ritual prescribed for the householder alone; Brahminism unburdened this load on the widowed and converted it into a rite of renunciation couple of centuries back). In large tracts of UP Bihar Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh the whole of society cooks and eats the first vegetables of winter communally in the Annakut festival. This list can be prolonged indefinitely, however can such a culture of sharing of foodstuffs be that of an impoverished mass without their daily bread? What were the constituents of these culinary celebrations? It is not as if only a single item of food was served everywhere. Anna is almost always the main ingredient of all cooking accepted universally. But it may not be rice rather Shyama, Kodo, Kaon, Nibar, Vasa, Gundlu, Kutku and various other kinds of grains which are not even cultivated separately. In the midst of rice or some other crop due to the humidity in the soil some grains automatically germinate from seeds that have been leftover from earlier years as if yielding to the warmth of the sun. Perhaps the conversation between the suns rays and the vapors of the soil wakes up the seeds more hence there are a larger variety of crops during the spring or the autumnal season. In large parts of the Himalayan region, Uttar Pradesh, Garhwal, Kumaon even today there is a way of cropping of twelve types of grains at a single go. It is called the Barhanaja- anaj signifying here foodgrains. The family of grains produced by cultivation however often members more than twenty one and there is no mention of rice here. Rice is of a different family altogether. In itself it is deity Annapurna meaning abundance of food. But even in this Barahanaja there is Marua, Ramdana, Makai, Kutku, Jowar and other foodgrains, pulses like black and white pigeon pea, beans, Arhar , Mugh, Kulthi and locally available oilseeds apart from Mustard like Jokhya . None of these grow in all the regions but each small area has its own crop of Barahanaja. In steep and in lesser inclines even at twenty degrees below ice point these crops or Barley or Bajra grow almost without farming and without irrigation. Festivities and customs are woven around these gifts of nature; even moral percepts. Like Lobia which is the only crop in the Barahanaja that can be eaten raw from the fields; is plucked by little ones while going to school, by the women while clearing grasses from the farms and eaten. No one takes it to their heart. This culture of plenty can survive so long as one does have to pay for it. Like once someone from Punjab, lands where people invite complete strangers to a glass of Sherbat on Baisakhi had rued inconsolably that all our rivers have been wasted, irrigating they have gone dry, our ponds poisoned, tell me is it possible to celebrate Baisakhi by buying Bisleri?

[1] [2] [3] Agricultural History of Medieval India, Ranabir Chakraborty,. [4] Banglar Gram, Nirmal Kr Basu,.. [5] Futility, Wilfred Owen, no. 153, 'The Complete Poems and Fragments, May 1918, England