Extra sweet corn kernels, boiled whole and spiced, have become a popular cinema hall snack (pre-Covid, of course). Roasted bhuttas, or corn on the cob, is a much-loved monsoon treat, especially when eaten hot and slathered with butter and masala on a seafront in Mumbai, with salt spray adding to the taste. But dishes are made from it across India, like Punjab’s hearty makki ki roti or corn upma made from broken maize, and similar breads and porridges, particularly in hilly regions. Most of it goes for animal feed and industrial use, like making starch and industrial alcohol. In 2018, India was the seventh largest producer, marginally ahead of Mexico, one of maize’s centres of origin. Maize is India’s third most grown grain, after rice and wheat. Yet, using an American plant in a dish inspired by ancient Indian rishis is also deeply strange, because they would never have known maize. Before oxen and ploughs came from the Old World, native Americans just hand sowed or scattered seeds.
Corn, or maize, as it is more accurately called, fits because it was developed in the Americas where there was no practice of ploughing with animals. It can include yam, amaranth leaves and stems, pumpkin, arbi roots and leaves, raw bananas, peanuts, ridge and snake gourds and fresh corn, often cooked with the cobs cut into chunks. The slow-cooked dish has a deep, vegetal taste that takes getting used to, but can be oddly appealing, not least for the range of textures it offers.
Instead, rushichi bhaji uses roots, leaves and vegetables that rishis could have foraged from the forest, and which are at their best at the end of the monsoon. The recipe calls for ingredients grown “without the labour of the ox”, which essentially means no grains from ploughed fields. In Maharashtra a dish is made for it, called rushichi bhaji, that recalls their living in the forests. Rishi Panchami is a festival near the end of the monsoon (it falls on August 23 this year) that venerates the great Hindu rishis.
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