Wild & Foraged

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

Pravah, part of Pinch of South’s Story Table series, turned dining into an exploration of ecology. Inspired by Understanding Our Backyard: Rivers of the Western Ghats, it connected food, rivers, and community through storytelling and shared meals. Each dish traced a river’s journey, reminding diners that nourishment flows from nature — turning awareness into empathy and care for the living systems that sustain us.

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.