Neha Sinha: Wild food is always shared food

The Curry patta plant had just drunk up sudden April showers when I noticed something moving on the leaves. It was mottled, creeping, possessing a largish head—something that an onlooker is programmed to shakingly dismiss as “disgusting”. Perhaps it was bird poop made runny by the rain (indeed disgusting, my mind told me). But looking again in nature often brings its own rewards. I looked again. The thing’s motion was circumspect, ponderous rather than fluvial. It was the motion of a small thing with many legs making its way through a gigantic world. The thing was a caterpillar, and it was about to eat Curry pattas.

Our diminutive Curry patta plant was a breakfast champion. It stood a little crookedly in a white pot on the third floor of our balcony garden. It was frequently shat on by pigeons, and because it needed a sunny spot, it sat on the edge of the quadrilateral that was the balcony, subsequently whipped by winds. Still, it cheerfully provided bough upon bough of leaves, a sort of olive branch that soothed morning hungers, crackling its way into upmas and steeping into quick, breathless curries. And now as I watched, I realised the leaves were being shared. Between me and the caterpillars (I noted there were two), though no contract had been drawn up between us. I observed how many leaves had already been eaten, and how many yet remained for further insectile exploration. I took it all in, and shut the door.

In the Delhi Ridge, a group of us walked in March sunshine. It was a lovely day, and deciduous trees were beginning to change colours and shape. The semal put out new leaves—a tentative pink, chased with green. The kusum tree waved with zesty, tomato-red foliage. I thought wistfully about my defoliated Curry patta, and then turned my attention back to the forest. Ahead of me, a glorious tree exploded from a clump of high Aravalli rocks. The tree trunk was a monumental column, and its roots trailed down over the rocks, serpentine and sinuous, touching the ground like a benediction. Little green things waved from the crown of the tree. They had a glossy shine, but these were seeds, not leaves, of the Papdi tree, Holoptelea integrifolia. To be able to experience the tree even more closely, we’d have to wait a few more weeks.

In April, we went again. The seeds had warmed from a glossy green to a sombre nut brown. They were flat, shaped like UFOs—a kernel sat in the very middle of the disk, sandwiched in a light, wing-like cloak. If you broke away the cloak, you could eat the seed. As many people indeed do, heading to the Papdi tree annually for a wild, sun-warmed snack.

The thing about wild or natural edible foods is that it usually comes from a story. If you know where the wild food is, someone told you about it, or showed it to you, a story passed on as words before it became real and took the form of a tree, a bush, root or fruit. Foraged food is also aligned with seasons—you have to wait for just the right time to pluck or gather what you would like to eat. That day, we stood on a clump of rocks and stretched our hands out for the Papdi disks, and then sat down for the happy work of peeling and cracking.

The sun was in our faces. As we crumbled the wings of the Papdi between our fingertips, the disks turned to biscuits, and things sloughed off our bodies too, layers of exhaustion and fatigue.

At our feet between the rocks, more Papdi seeds had deposited themselves in little natural partings or crevasses, carried by the wind. In some spots, they were stacked side by side, checkerboard pieces lined for nature’s play. When it rained, one of them would germinate, utilising even the spaces which contain absences. One day there would be a big tree where we stood. A few kilometres away, we went to monuments and road sides, looking for a buttery-yellow flower lying on the ground—scores of sweet Mahua dropped by birds. On the tree, Alexandrine parakeets, House crows and Grey hornbills feasted. I think we all knew what the Mahua tastes like when you wait the whole year for it—chewy, sweet, with no bitter aftertaste. We gathered and ate the leftovers from avian feasting.

It was a reminder that there is no instant gratification in wild food: We have to wait for it and embrace the beauty of its imperfections. Fruit on a bush will not ripen at the same time; some, like the Mahua, will be chewed at by other animals. Wild food is always shared food. And so, when we reach for food that is foraged, we may remember we are animals too.

In her writing, scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about picking serviceberries, also loved by birds. The act of finding the berries is an act of feeling at one with nature. Yet she also writes about reciprocity, and giving back. If we eat a Mahua dropped by a bird, we learn that we have to give grace to each other.

And we also have to give back. We have to plant native Papdi trees, and Mahua trees, and leave pods and flowers for the birds and wild creatures. We have to let a new pod become an old tree. We should let fallen deciduous leaves lie on the ground, leave the leaves, so to speak, so they can become homes for insects.

Wild food teaches us the delicate aspect of taking, not hoarding, of letting the sun and the rain do their work without pesticides, that we are not alone in delighting in nature’s offerings.

That day after eating the Papdi seeds I went back to my Curry patta. Most of the leaves were gone, and so were the caterpillars, gone in the way wildlife often is when you’re specifically looking for it. On a neighbouring lime plant, I found one fat caterpillar, lime green, the fifth instar, or morph, of the Mormon caterpillars. The rest were probably in a pupa, waiting to transform and emerge, to start another cycle of egg-laying.

I could have purchased some Curry leaves for morning upma, but that day I hesitated. It would be nice, I thought, to wait for the plant to turn sunlight into glucose, and shoot out new leaves, which I would carefully take, just a little, just sometimes, sharing with the Mormons. Buying at the store was always an option, but waiting for something seemed immeasurable in its value.

Neha Sinha is a conservation biologist and author of Wild Capital: Discovering Nature in Delhi.