CHOCOLATE WITH A HEART

What drives India's artisanal bean-to-bar makers to build an, inclusive, holistic future for the food that spells love? Smitha Menon explores

- Smitha Menon

On the day of Saraswati Puja, when everyone had left early, Saraswathy M, the factory head at Mason & Co’s Auroville unit, seized the moment to deftly swish and swirl the chocolate in the quiet of the cold room. She poured liquid chocolate gently into moulds and placed them in the freezer to chill. A few hours later, she had perfectly tempered and moulded chocolate that audibly cracked when broken. “That was when I fell in love with chocolate. Eight years later, I’m still here, despite my husband who tells me he misses me when I go to the factory,” she laughs.

Chocolate, synonymous with love, decadence and celebration is the stuff of dreams. But this delicious treat also has a murky past. For centuries, several systems of oppression, from slavery to child labour, have prevailed around the production of cocoa—the primary ingredient used to make chocolate.

In India, while wild cacao—the raw form of cocoa—has been growing in parts of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, largescale cacao plantations were introduced only in the '70s. Since then, cacao farmers in India, like those elsewhere, have been at the mercy of corporations and cooperatives alike, depleting lands by overloading them with pesticides and fertilisers to increase yields. Community-first chocolate businesses in India have been trying to change that in their own small ways by pushing for a more equitable and sustainable future of chocolate one that empowers women, enriches the environment and produces delicious chocolate.

AN INCLUSIVE WAY FORWARD