OXLAEY

Remember all those old delicious foods your grandma made? If I close my eyes, I can almost smell my Nana’s delicious chicken pie. I’ve tried to replicate her chicken pie, but I can never get it to taste just right. Her secret is lost.Right now, in India, the secret recipes of the Soliga tribe are disappearing. They’re one of India’s indigenous peoples and once nomadic. The Soliga harvested plants with the changing seasons from an area in India called the Male Mahadeshwarabetta Hills (or M. M. Hills, for short). In 1973, the Indian government turned much of the Soliga’s traditional lands into a national park. They were forced off and no longer allowed to hunt and harvest as they once did.
The Indian government now gives Soliga families free rice in an effort to compensate them for their loss. Even longer-lasting harm is the destruction to their hard-earned knowledge. Most of the Soliga’s traditional diet comes from wild edible plants, many of which only the Soliga know how to harvest and use.

Since 2009, the Indian NGO, ATREE, has been working with the Soliga to document their secret knowledge. Mr. Harisha, with ATREE, has run several studies, noting the plants found in the M.M. Hills and how the Soliga use them for food, drinks and medicinal purposes. I was lucky not only to meet Mr. Harisha and Mr. Narinyan from ATREE. More exciting, I was invited by Chikkmadaiah to come with him on the hunt for plants and then to dinner with his family.

Kaddisoppu, the plant highlighted in the video, is a real staple in the Soliga’s food. When used in cooking Uppusaru, it adds taste and is valued for working wonders on stomach infections and guarding against coughs and flu. You can find the Soliga’s recipe for cooking Uppusaru HERE.

As the tribe is dragged into modernity, the Soliga’s culinary knowledge is being lost. “The new generation is not at all interested to learn what the older generation has in the way of knowledge,” said Mr. Harisha. And why should young Soliga learn the old ways? They get part of their food from the government and are prohibited from hunting and harvesting on their old lands anyhow.

The real losers aren’t the Soliga, however. They are the Japanese, the Dutch, the Brazilians – all of us, really. Think of that tasty dishes, made with a spice only a Soliga grandmother knows how to prepare? What about all the medical benefits, the Soliga’s wild plants might have but which are unknown outside of the M.M. Hills? There are loads of reason why we should preserve disappearing knowledge!

Read more about the work of Mr. Harish’s and ATREE with the Soliga in India’s M.M. Hills.

M.M. Hills, February 2013

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On my first day, riding south from Bangalore, I had neglected to plan where I’d sleep that night. Truth be told, I didn’t think about it in advance, because I just assumed I’d find a hotel or a place to park my tent. After so many past adventures, why be afraid now?
It was growing dusky and, passing thought a village, I was running out of daylight. On a hill in Denkanikotta, I saw a little government health clinic. The guard waved at me. I took the opportunity to cycle inside and ask (mainly with hand signs) if I could pitch my tent in the yard for the night. The guard motioned for me to wait, walked off, and then returned with a young man, the health inspector. He just happened to be in town that day and spoke beautiful English. I saw on his face that he was a little baffled why a white guy would show up at his village clinic.I asked him about camping. Then he punched a few numbers on his phone, had a few chats and then walked me to a small, cleanly-built village home. His friend, the town pharmacist, rented a room on their rooftop. The pharmacist had agreed to take me in for the night. Now before you get the idea that this was luxurious bachelor pad… it wasn’t. But it was by far my most cherished night in India. The pharmacist was a very small man, a devote Hindu. He as wearing a dhoti over a red-checkered shirt. The room he rented equaled the size of a king-sized bed. With an enormous smile, he rolled out a thin blanket next to his for me to sleep on and showed me where the shower was.

The house was owned by a merchant family. They ran the equivalence of a small convince store out of the front of their house. Before we went to sleep, the family’s kids came upstairs and offered me a meal. We chatted for several hours, the kids trying in their broken English to understand my world, and me, theirs. I started to nod off, tired from cycling all day and they took the hint. I laid down on my small blanket next to the pharmacist and was fast sleep. The next morning, the merchant family’s mother cooked me breakfast downstair before the entire family, plus pharmacist, gave me a smiling-waving send off.

I’ve told this story a few times to friends and they always marvel at my bravery. I think, how wrong. It wasn’t I who was brave. Rather, the pharmacist and merchant family were brave. They took me in without knowing anything about me. I could have been a serial killer, a thief or a sexual pervert. How many times I had walked the streets of Berlin, my old hometown, and crossed the street when I saw someone coming towards me who seemed threatening….

An incredible THANK you to M. Krishnappa, Savithiri, Vishwanath, Umashankar and Kirankumar – for living without fear. You allowed me to experience joy and comfort in a foreign land.

Denkanikotta, February 2014

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