00:02So this takes me back to my childhood.
00:08There is not enough in the forest for, say, 20 million people in Bombay to eat.
00:17This is wild foods activism.
00:24Financial advisors, programmers, tech consultants.
00:28Today, they are outdoors, collecting wild plants.
00:34So this takes me back to my childhood when we used to, you know, do a lot of plucking around
00:40from the gardens or from the nearby places.
00:42So similar, and this was a forgotten activity for all of us, for the grown adults.
00:47So when we came here, it was like, you know, getting that childhood memory back to us.
00:51And we are just plucking mulberries and air potatoes and a lot of organic and, you know, jungly vegetables, if
01:01I would have to put that way.
01:02I have done foraging before as a concept.
01:04So during my travels, I'd gone to Belize.
01:07There's a tribe called Garifuna over there.
01:09I'd done it over there.
01:09But I did not realize this is done like as close to home as in Mumbai.
01:15We are in Aire, a large forested green area in the northern suburbs of Mumbai.
01:20It used to cover 3000 acres with the woodlands punctuated by fields and hamlets home to the Adivasi indigenous communities.
01:29But now only some 800 acres remain.
01:36Mumbai cuts 40 trees a day.
01:38This is a statistic minus the coastal road, minus all the projects and everything.
01:43So Mumbai is losing a lot of greenery and a lot of greenery is going fast.
01:48So for a lot of people in Mumbai, Aire is also about preserving that greenery.
01:53And in terms of ecology, the importance of Aire can't be underestimated because Aire is
02:00the southern chunk of what is the world's last surviving forest inside a megacity.
02:06For almost six years now, Sanjeev Valsan has been taking groups from the city on excursions
02:12to Aire.
02:13The idea is that participants should see, taste and feel their surroundings and get to know
02:18long forgotten plants and the flora, fauna and the people at home here.
02:26You will not conserve what you don't love.
02:28Okay.
02:29So the first step is creating that love.
02:31And the thing is that this love is in every human being because all of us at one time used
02:37to be indigenous people, you know, all our cultures used to be a forest based culture.
02:42So there is still something in our genes that really gets activated when we forage.
02:48As is often the case, the activist is joined on today's tour by Vanita Thakre.
02:54A Varli Adivasi, she has been fighting for the rights of her community for years.
02:59Like other villagers, she lives from fruits growing in Aire.
03:03The 45 year old can also identify which plants are toxic and which ones might have medicinal properties.
03:23And the shared meal is also part of the walking experience.
03:39It's also part of the walking tour. Vanita's family welcomes the group and dishes up wild fruits and plants from
03:44Aire.
03:46The air potatoes that we saw were like small hard potatoes, but when it's cooked in the stew,
03:52it was really, really different, like subtly different from regular potatoes that you eat.
03:58And here too, a host of whole new tastes for some visitors.
04:02We are at the Wild Food Festival, less than 20 kilometers from Aire.
04:10This time, the Adivasi have made the journey to the city, bringing more than 200 different ingredients with them.
04:30Thomas Zakarias has been a culinary partner at the festival for four years now.
04:34He thinks too few people realize where their food comes from.
04:39And wonders how places like Aire can be protected if many don't even know that they exist.
04:46But Zakarias also wants to avoid turning wild plants into the latest urban superfood.
04:53You have to be cautious because it shouldn't become a trend where then there's exploitation of these
04:58communities, exploitation of these ecosystems. There is not enough in the forest for say 20 million
05:04people in Bombay to eat. So the idea is not to popularize these wild foods. The idea is to
05:08introduce people to the idea that there's so much diversity to open up their eyes.
05:13Some 500 visitors are here to try the 70-plus dishes on offer here. The festival is a gastronomic success.
05:23I've learned a lot of new veggies that I didn't know existed. A lot of new
05:28produce that obviously I wasn't aware of. That's the most beautiful part of the experience to know
05:33that this was growing somewhere close by.
05:35At the moment, foraging doesn't play much of a role in urban planning. Land and water pollution
05:41is a problem in many Indian communities. That puts many people off the idea of wild plants,
05:48according to researcher Sukanya Basu.
05:51But then at the same time there are communities or people from certain sections of the society
05:57who are dependent on this. So for them it's not luxury, it's not just an experience
06:03of going, nature experiences. It is for them, it's their livelihood and it's their kind of source of nutrition.
06:12To help protect the indigenous communities and their green homeland, Sanjeev Valsan and Vanita Thakre
06:19regularly hold guided tours here. It's a matter close to their heart. The walks take about seven hours,
06:26including and eat till you drop lunch. Each person pays approximately 2500 rupees.
06:32That's about 23 euros. Sanjeev uses some of the money to pay for new seeds that are planted during the
06:39workshop.
06:41After all, this is not just about feeling and tasting new things, but about preserving this heritage.
06:49So let's go to the next page.
06:51So let's go to the next page.
06:54So let's go to the next page.
06:54So let's go to the next page.
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