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On Monday, after a long weekend, as I made my way back from Uttarakhand’s Jim Corbett National Park, the onset of the plains was greeted by a local lady’s tiny roadside cart selling ‘bhutte’. Among a handful of items that have no room for enmity, roasted corn is almost certainly one. Considering that the weather gods were in a good mood too as it drizzled throughout the drive, the arrival of the corn cart was most opportune.
We picked up four roasted ‘bhutta’, on which our amiable seller smeared Himalayan flavoured salt, ‘pisyun loon’. The latter involves salt flavoured with coriander, garlic and other enhancers of choice — and then pounded together to make a robust seasoning. It was also a pleasant surprise to see desi bhutta, instead of the American corn that has flooded the Indian markets and is available all year round. In turn, this changed the way we consumed corn through the ’90s and ’00s—and has recreated the ethos of this market today.
My first tryst with American corn was in Mumbai’s tourist spots such as Bandra Bandstand, Marine Drive and Juhu Beach — sold for a princely `20 a piece in the early years of this millennium. The kernels were stunning yellow in colour, and much sweeter than what I had ever tasted. It was the perfect corn that one would see on various animated shows.
Over the years, this immigrant variety of corn has replaced ‘desi makai’, which was cultivated and marketed in India’s monsoons. Today, sellers rue this change — as Bhagwati Rani, who runs a vegetable stall in Noida’s weekly markets, states, “Aaj koi poochhte bhi nahi hai desi bhutte ke liye. (No customer today asks for the local varieties of corn.)”
This entire experience made me wonder what made this market dynamic play out. Desi corn, as one learns to recognise, is an heirloom produce in India — crops that weren’t native to our land, but brought from outside and adopted into our agricultural cycle. Today, this once-imported variety became adapted to the very fabric of our society and culture — only to then be replaced by a new variety flown in from the West. As author Sangeeta Khanna mentioned in an Instagram post, “The context of desi corn here is heirloom for sure, because corn is not an Indian-origin grain.”
Why, then, do we not get India’s ‘original’ corn variety readily enough? Today, Delhi’s mammoth Azadpur and Ghazipur mandis are flooded with American corn, sold at wholesale rates. I wondered about the small-scale indigenous farmers who grow the desi variety in their farms — do they still grow this crop, or have they moved on too, to growing the more-commercially-viable vegetables? That demands a separate debate altogether, one that would test many claims of ‘organic’ produce in urban markets.
Speaking with market stakeholders, it seems that the farmers have indeed been affected by the ‘Americanisation’ of crops. Not only have their staple seeds been replaced by different ones, the lack of indigenous produce also creates a jarring gap for decades in access to affordable, nutrient-rich food for the economically weaker strata. Since they no longer find value in growing it, the small-scale, independent farmer cannot afford to do so just for themselves.
In urban circles, the difference that this has made is in tastes and food preferences. Shibani Bawa, an acclaimed Delhi-based travel writer, says, “I miss the bhutta we grew up eating. I don’t mind the sweet corn once in a while, but I do feel cheated when you don’t find the desi bhutta.” Fellow Delhi resident and secondary school teacher, Radha Agarwal, states, “It is so rare to find desi makki nowadays. I used to love making bhutte ki kees and tikki with it. The American sweet corn doesn’t have the best texture for these dishes.”
Both Bawa and Agarwal highlight how an entire society can be affected by changes to crop habits and trends, based on corporate and governance decisions. The culinary experiences that the desi corn produced are now rare, and thus, savoured to new heights. For instance, last year, Gurugram-based home-chef Surabhi Bhandari presented ‘bhutte ki subzi’ — a signature Jodhpuri Marwadi dish where desi corn is cooked in a gravy of onion and yoghurt.
Bhandari’s dish was similar to Maharashtra’s ‘kansacha rassa’ — a similar dish, with an addition of grated coconut in the gravy. I first learnt it from Mumbai-based author, Smita Deo. Perhaps the most famous of this lot is Punjab’s ‘makki di roti’—delicacies that are just not the same with the imported crop.
Vernika Awal
is a food writer who is known for her research-based articles through her blog ‘Delectable Reveries’