Rural Living

An intimate look at how foraging restores our connection to the city’s forgotten ecologies and rewilds the urban palate.

An intimate journey of how rivers shape the way we cook and eat.

From bustling morning auctions at Bunder to quiet monsoon days along the estuary, Mangaluru’s food culture is inseparable from its waters. A sensory journey through the dishes, people, and rhythms that define coastal Dakshina Kannada.

"Taste of Bathukamma", a nine-day festival where each day's offering of a simple, seasonal dish represents a different phase of life. The food mirrors the rhythm of the land—from uncooked rice flour on Day 1 to a feast of five rice dishes on Day 9. Offerings symbolize core values like strength, sharing, care, patience, effort, and rest. The cycle culminates on Saddula Bathukamma with a communal meal, representing harvest, gratitude, and the full spectrum of life's flavors.

A nostalgic reflection recalls Deepthi’s journey from playful childhood flower hunts to a mature understanding of the Telangana festival’s deeper meaning. Once a joyful dance of colours and songs, Bathukamma becomes a prayer for life’s renewal — celebrating women, nature, and harmony between people and the earth.

In Coorg’s monsoon, the author encounters maddu thoppu — a rare “medicine leaf” that appears for only a few weeks. Foraged from shaded forest corners and boiled into a deep indigo liquid believed to heal, it’s folded into rice or sweet payasa. For the author, tasting it feels like the forest’s quiet permission to belong — a fleeting gift offered only at the wild peak of the rains.

Nisha Thomas, a city-dweller-turned-farmer, reflects on the fleeting joys of foraging wild kumm in Coorg and the deeper belonging she’s found in the mist and memory of monsoon rains.