COME RAINS, AND IT'S TIME FOR 'SHEVALA'

The ritual of cooking the rare monsoon vegetable is part of the tradition of certain communities in Maharashtra

- Rituparna Roy

Every monsoon, my Marathi mother-in-law, Anuradha Deshpande, has mixed emotions about what to cook. There are days when she laments the unavailability of fish due to the ban on fishing. On other days, she is charged up about the edible greens and vegetables the change of season has to offer. But nothing can compare with her joy at finding shevala (dragon stalk yam), a tuberous vegetable integral to her cuisine. In the 12 years of my marriage, not one monsoon has gone by without watching aai toil in the kitchen, her small frame bent over the stove for hours, to prepare shevalachi bhaji.

Shevala, or sheval, is an uncultivated, wild vegetable that pops up with the first showers of the season. It grows sporadically in the forested and hilly tracts around Maharashtra's Palghar, Thane and Raigad districts. The colourful stalk has an outer leafy sheath that is peeled to reveal a mix of maroon, pale yellow or green hollow pods. Prized for its earthy, meaty flavour, it is typically cooked with prawns or meat. Though shevalachi bhaji is synonymous with the Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu (CKP) community, shevala is also cooked by the Saraswat Brahmin, Pachkalshi and Pathare Prabhu communities.

Shevala is also a raan bhaji, a diverse world of wild forest produce that remains at the heart of the culinary culture of Adivasi communities, who forage them during the rainy months for the nourishment and nutrition tribal wisdom suggests they offer.