Sustainability, swaad anusar

For readers who seek sustainable eating choices mull over dietary changes scout for undervalued yet rich ingredients and experiment with tasty biodiverse recipes climate cookbooks are a current favourite These guides provide tips alternatives and suggestions in appetising colourful ways to engage the reader in a dialogue on climate actionThis columnist was treated to a rather unique and petite book in this genre It has a deliberately misleading titlemdashClimate Recipesmdashand it doesnrsquot contain cooking directions in the conventional sense It doesnrsquot have star chefsrsquo recommendations or any other attractive salesdrivenelements eitherClimate Recipes is akin to a conversation starter It is an emerging archive of organic ideas the first edition focuses on Goa drawing on the wisdom of cooks poets immunologists naturalists researchers of indigenous culture and farmers The book is part of a residency collaboration supported by Pollinatorio Delhi the Socratus Foundation for Collective Wisdom Bengaluru and the Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts Panaji Though the 25 contributors hail from the coastal state and their lsquoclimate solutionsrsquo emerge from their native experiences the book has a panIndia appeallsquoMake sure to use grandmarsquos coconut graterrsquo Assavri Kulkarni artist photographer and author of the photobbook Markets of GoaFor instance food historian Fatima Da Silva Graciasmdashrespected writer of many books on the Goan cuisinemdashdwells on the susegad afternoon tea Her remarks on the impact of migration on inherited culinary habits ring true for most parts of India where certain eating rituals such as the elaborate paan gilori have died out due to the loss of clienteleSimilarly Vikram Doctorrsquos take on imported toor dal is not Goaspecific This problem may remind many of those dreadful periods when the pulse goes off the grocery rack He is pointing towards the rising demand for traditional foods in populous cities Restaurants in Mumbai often use yellow peas instead of costly toor dal Doctor drives home a universal realitymdashlsquoexotic demandrsquo for food local or otherwise is unsustainable and that we as inhabitants of the Earth need to find the right balance between traditional and globalised practices of food consumption and productionLet me offer an example of food exotica which addresses my occasional guilt of being a voracious fish eater Fish is admittedly a great source of omega3 fatty acids calcium phosphorus and vitamins Fish eaters go to great lengths for the best catch fine dining restaurants fleece sea food fans all over India However it is a truth that largescale fishing operations trawlers nets deepdiving vessels endanger marine life in oceans as well as smaller water bodies A pertinent and oftasked question is should this form of exploitation have a bearing on the large amounts of fish we savour Or is it wrong to raise environmental or moral issues before fish and meat eaters The same is true of millet eaters who purchase the lsquosuper foodrsquo from multinational companies which doesnrsquot necessarily benefit the millet farmerrsquoMy house in my village will not be taller than the coconut treersquomdashthe motto shared by Damodar Mauzo novelist critic and scriptwriterClimate Recipes awakens readers to the entire gamut of unanswered questions around climate ecology conservation and ethics These recipes are ldquoentry points for an adaptable liferdquo as well as efforts to ldquocreate sites of refugerdquo in the wake of climate adversity From forest truths to a grandmarsquos advice to internet gyaan conspiracy theories industry scams marketing gimmicks and freak factsmdashthe editors curators designers and visual thinkers of the book Srinivas Aditya Mopidevi and Srinivas Mangipudi have included diverse voices and themesThe duorsquos ldquoresearch expeditionrdquo began in Goa in May 2023 They spoke to an eclectic mix of state residents for two monthsmdashforagers academics chefs planners and architectsmdashabout their lived experiences who in turn shared their recipes of life Every oneonone conversation was captured in the form of ldquovisual notesrdquo by Mangipudi and Mopidevi which included scribbles doodles pointers graphs and a visual mapping of the expertrsquos core message work and future pathThey asked the experts to share a recipe for climate change in the context of biodiversity loss and planetary boundaries pushed by humans ldquoWe would allow offshoots of other conversations and then circle back to the recipe Post the conversation Aditya Mopidevi and I would synthesise the messages and key phrases to figure out an interesting entry point to the wisdom of each personrsquos life and workrdquo says Mangipudi an artistresearcher based in Goa Born into a Telugu family in Nagpur he grew up in different pockets of the worldWorking as a visual thinker for several climate initiatives Mangipudirsquos interdisciplinary art practice rests on a fusion of drawing painting video sound urban intervention and generative algorithms After the Goa edition he aims to tap into the recipe magic in Bengaluru Mumbai too is on the horizon The duo is also in the process of setting up an online interface which will have recipes from all contributors alongside a visitor recipe feed comprising submissions from readersLeandre DrsquoSouza program director of the Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts one of the stakeholders behind the book has placed it at the centre of thisgeneration an ongoing exhibition at the Panaji space that focuses on codebased generative practices which include languages music and the culinary arts thisgeneration is an effort to make algorithms and code accessible to all especially those excluded by technology ldquoWe see the recipes as codes a set of instructions that have a different outcome in different contexts For example training the tongue has a different meaning to someone who has only lived in cities as against someone who grew up in the forest The beauty of these recipes is the diversity they can generate in terms of responses and yet address the climate urgency in the current contextrdquo says Mopidevi who was born in Andhra Pradeshrsquos Machilipatnam raised in Hyderabad and Delhi and is currently the Principal Investigator at the interdisciplinary lab Pollinatorio Previously chief curator at New Delhirsquos Nature Morte he is a visiting professor of Visual Arts at Ashoka UniversityClimate Recipes is an expansive documentation of conversations which people are free to interpret in their own ways At the root of the project is the enlarged definition of what a lsquorecipersquo can be A recipe holds a spell a charmmdashthe mystique of wisdom transmitted across generations When a recipe is lost the loss is not just of an individual family but that of a neighbourhood a society There is also an invisible generational loss of knowledge systems often a mother tongue This project is an attempt to condense the wisdom into diagrammatic jargonfree guideposts which are accessible to the lay person who doesnrsquot mouth terms like geologic sequestration and ozone precursorsThe 132page book R265 sold only at Sunaparanta for now resembles a collection of mindmaps or notes on a classroom blackboard which can be read in any sequential ordermdashclockwise or anticlockwise either in terms of phrases that stand out or as a series of line drawings In fact the editors have hinged their drawings on key phrases that spoke to them intuitively As one leafs through the drawings the phrases stand outmdashlsquoMake Green Warrior Coolrsquo lsquoMy heart is BIG so I will buy a Bigger Carrsquo lsquoNo bed for fish to sleeprsquo lsquoCovid brought awareness aliversquo lsquoFad eating is dangerousrsquoAside from these capsulelike selfexplanatory constructs the mind maps lead us in several directions Permaculture practitioners Musharraf Hebballi and Praveen Yarramilli ask us to treat the body as an extension of nature For them ldquolistening to the landrdquo is to absorb the forces of the environment Poetwriter Mamata Verlekar speaks of the loss of foodfun memories in the Konkani language She says languages ldquocarry philosophies and metaphors of nature in stories and poemsrdquo Litterateur Damodar Mauzo is also deeply invested in local languages which are a medium for local recipes He misses those fruits which are no longer seen in Goamdashzagam plum adaon Adamrsquos fruit or seasonal mangoes all destroyed by foreign seedsDivya Sehgal professor at the Goa Institute of Management adds a todo task to her sustainability lecture For her sustainability begins with mending habits and changing individual practices She asks her students to sew a button and repurpose old clothes to bring down their carbon footprint Enterpreneur Paresh Shetgaonkar spells out a recipe for collective wellbeing he has built a network of coconut farmers who nurture trees which produce highquality organic oil To him Goarsquos true wealth lies in its coconutsMauzo too underscores the average Goanrsquos love for the coconut tree He proudly shares the ancient unsaid understanding among village folk about not building houses that are higher than the tallest coconut tree This practice signified the ceiling an individual put on their aspirations and status Mauzorsquos recipe for a favourable social climate is worth a shotmdashin Goa and elsewhereSumedha RaikarMhatre is a culture columnist in search of the subtext You can reach her at sumedharaikarmiddaycom