When Fields, Forests, and Rivers Fed Us

Notes from Sambalpur on Gunjer, Kuler, and Jarda

I

I returned from Sambalpur with three unique tastes lingering on my tongue — the crisp sweetness of Sarsatia, the gentle bitterness of Kuler (Kachnar) bud, and the silken flesh of Jarda fish simmered in mustard gravy. One was festive, one seasonal, one drawn at dawn from the vast waters of the Hirakud Dam reservoir. Yet beneath their differences ran a single thread: each carried the memory of habitat made edible.

In western Odisha, the forest, the river, the pond, and the paddy field were never distant landscapes. They were generous providers of food.

What I encountered in Sambalpur was less cuisine than recollection — of a time when land and water translated directly into sustenance, especially for those with little cash but much knowledge.

The Sweet That Begins with a Twig

Sarsatia is a unique sweet, made by a few families in Sambalpur, for which there is local demand for Geographical Indication tag.

The sweet’s distinction lies not in rice, sugar and ghee; but in a tree.

Tender twigs of Gunjer (Grewia asiatica) are soaked overnight. By morning, the water thickens into a translucent gel. The twig is squeezed; the mucilage folded into rice flour and sugar. Fingers dip into the runny batter and trace wiry spirals into hot ghee.

What emerges is crisp, faintly aromatic, lightly sweet — a texture achieved without yeast or chemical enhancers, but through patient familiarity with plant behaviour. Long before the vocabulary of food science arrived, sweet-makers in narrow lanes of Jhadua Para were drawing natural binders from a plant. The method was empirical, passed from hand to hand. One family traces its practice back nearly two centuries.

No laboratory identified the compound; the forest supplied it.

Sarsatia is thus more than confection. It is a quiet collaboration between tree and grain, between memory and method.

Cooking a Bud as a Saag

Every spring, before it bursts into orchid-like blossoms, the buds of Kuler — Kanchan in Odia, Kachnar in Hindi (botanical name: Bauhinia variegata) — appear in local markets, gathered from the forests. 

(Kuler buds on a plate)

Slightly bitter and faintly astringent, they are nutritionally wise greens. Rich in dietary fibre, they aid digestion and gently stimulate appetite. The buds provide vitamin C, modest amounts of iron, calcium and plant protein, along with antioxidant flavonoids and polyphenols that help counter oxidative stress.

In an age of packaged “superfoods,” Kuler remains humbly local — plucked fresh, cooked simply, and eaten with dal and rice. It reminds us that good health need not arrive in glossy wrappers. Sometimes, it blooms quietly on a forest tree, waiting to be gathered.

"Phatai khailin bela, Kukila re,

Mahakila kia phula, Kukila re,"

Translation:

O Cuckoo (or Saheli),

I cracked open a ripe wood apple and savoured it,

Embraced in Ketaki's voluptuos fragrance am I, O Cuckoo.

Those are the opening lines of a popular Sambalpuri folk song from Bhukha filmed on nubile girls returning from the forest with headloads of firewood and baskets of fruits and roots. Why does a love song begin with mention of a common forest fruit and eating, readers unfamiliar with the culture and cuisine, love and life of the tribal and forest people, may wonder. 

Because food is a paramount concern inseparable from life.

Odisha’s wild edible plant flora includes 193 species across leafy vegetables, fruits, tuberous roots, flowers, seeds, shrubs, climbers, and herbs. These plants are integral to tribal diets for nutrition, food security, seasonal food, and cultural use.

The tribal and forest people never took lessons in botany, but their intimate knowledge of the edible and medicinal plants is a survival kit they acquire early in life.

A Protein-laden Conveyor-belt

If the forest yielded plant food, the river offered protein.

In monsoon months, small fish once shimmered in the shallow waters of western Odisha. The much-loved Thuro, also called Turu or Turi (Amblypharyngodon mola) could be scooped up in a gamcha. Slender and soft-boned, it made a quick curry or was fried crisp and eaten whole — calcium, iron, and oil in one small body.

There were others — maharel, kutri, tengni, patpania, magur, and jarda; the last one a little longer, firmer and amazingly delicious.

(Jarda -Reba Carp -Cirrhinus reba from Hirakud Dam Resevoir. Photo by Sajina A M and Deepa Sudheesan, Source-fishbase.se)

These were not commodities transported in iced trucks; they were intimate presences in ponds and canals. Children caught them in ankle-deep water. Men set bamboo traps at field outlets. Women cleaned and sun-dried them on woven mats.

The knowledge required was modest but precise: when the water would rise, where fish would gather, how to set a trap without exhausting a stream. Skill substituted capital.

When Fields Held Fish

Not long ago, the paddy field itself was alive with movement.

Before intensive chemical inputs became routine, the flooded rice field functioned as an ecosystem. As monsoon waters spread, fish from rivers and canals entered the fields. The shallow expanse, rich with nutrients, became nursery and pantry at once.

Farmers placed conical bamboo traps at drainage points. Overnight, fish accumulated. The catch could be generous enough to preserve — sun-dried under the open sky, smoke-cured above chulhas, stored in earthen jars.

In lean months, pakhal bhat with a sliver of dried fish sufficed. A small accompaniment flavoured an entire pot of rice gruel.

Habitat, quite simply, was food security.

The Ecology of Necessity

For the economically vulnerable, biodiversity is not environmental rhetoric; it is daily arithmetic.

The forest supplied edible greens, mushrooms, fruits. Water bodies yielded fish and snails. The field produced rice, millets — and fish. This integrated web required little cash. It depended instead on attentiveness: the ability to forage, to time migration, to weave bamboo into funnels.

Cultivated and wild were not opposites. They were complementary.

The Silence of Paddy Fields

Today, many paddy fields stand quieter.

Overdose of fertilisers, insecticides, and weedicides has altered the micro-ecology of flooded fields. The small fish that once darted between rice stalks are rarely seen. Bamboo traps lie unused. What was once gathered freely must now be bought, if affordable.

The change arrived gradually, almost unseen. Yet it reshaped diet and memory. The disappearance of small fish is not merely the loss of free protein for the poor; it is an unmistakable signal of ecological degradation.

I recall monsoon mornings of childhood when farmers returned on their bullock carts with a laden ludar - U-shaped bamboo baskets - brimming with fish.

Rustic Ecological Intelligence

Western Odisha’s culinary habits archive the understated ecological intelligence of rural and forest people. Gunjer twigs are gathered without stripping the tree. Kuler buds are taken seasonally. Fish are dried for scarcity. These practices evolved under uncertain rainfall and fluctuating river flow. They were responses to vulnerability, not to fashion.

They preserved habitat not because of global campaigns but because sustenance depended upon it.

A Lingering Thought

It is futile to romanticise that past. Rural life involved hard labour and huge risk. Yet the integration of forest, field, and river created a distributed safety net — modest, resilient.

Whether some of that ecological complexity can return remains uncertain. In parts of Asia, rice–fish systems are being revived. Hopefully, such recalibrations will find ground along the Mahanadi River basin, too.

As I left Sambalpur, the aroma of delectable dishes still clinging faintly to memory, I felt both gratitude and unease. Gratitude for having tasted cuisines rooted in habitat; unease at its narrowing base.

Human ingenuity did not invent these foods. It noticed them. The forest offered mucilage; the fig concealed blossoms; the river released fish into fields. People learned to recognise these gestures and shape them into nourishment.

Some of that conversation between land and kitchen still survives — in a twig soaked overnight, in a bitter bud softened by heat, in fish still nourished by our depleting water-bodies.

And sometimes, in remembering the taste, we remember the relationship.

***

II

During a recent trip to Sambalpur, I was overwhelmed by the warm hospitality of a dear friend with whom I stayed. His wife - a versatile home-maker, a compassionate, ever-smiling empress at her home, began her day at 5.00 AM with a brief morning walk with a friend, a cup of ginger-cardamom-black pepper milk tea, and a yoga session in her beautiful roof-top garden. Thereafter, she gave all her day to manage the modern, compact, tastefully done house, and cater to the diverse, and persistently conflicting culinary demands of her family of five who had different schedules and came to the dining table at different hours. One was a vegetarian, another a foodie, two abhorred vegetables, while the other two were omnivorous senior citizens focussed on healthy eating.
Assisted by a part-time cook, she served an amazing variety of desi, home-cooked fare – aromatic Sonepur (now Subarnapur) moong-dal lightly roasted at home, santula – a mildly-seasoned vegetable stew, tawa-fried drum-stick fingers, badi, and saag – my all-time favourite -  personally procured by my friend the first thing in the morning from the daily market not far from his home.
The saag is, indeed, very tasty. I complimented the lady. ‘Well-made, no doubt,’ said my friend, taking care not to annoy the spouse, ‘but the raw material, procured by yours truly, is excellent.’
‘Do you know, a bunch of saag with a faint fishy odour taste the best?’ I didn’t. In fact, I never bought if the saag smelled. Try it next time, he said, you won’t be disappointed. I made a mental note.
But the best came a day later. Fresh catch of Jarda, a delicious fresh-water fish, from the Hirakud Dam Reservoir, only a few kilometres away from the town. This fish is so much in demand that the day’s catch is sold out in less than an hour. My friend had placed an advance order and got it from the fisherman especially for me. Nearly twice more costly than Rohu.

My friend’s wife made a curry in mustard gravy, and a tawa-fry; both delicious, especially as I savoured it after decades. During my childhood in the village, the fishermen regularly harvested jarda, thuro, and mahrel from Jira river and Palsha Jor (a seasonal rivulet).
She also served a Guler-phool curry which I ate for the first time.
My friend got for me home-made rashi and moongphali laddoo, and Sarsatia. I had graduated from G.M. College, Sambalpur, and had taught there for about two-and-a-half years; yet I had never heard of Sarsatia – a unique sweet made by a few families in Jhadua para, and not found in the small eateries on the college street which we frequented.
Thanks, Dear Friend, for your wonderful hospitality - for the food and the food for thought.

***