Putting yongchak forward of beans! For ambience of home, Nagas revisit these shops in Mumbai

Aking Zimik in Khar Danda, Wung Naoshung and Yaomi Awungshi in Kalina

The emporium with no name on Kalina’s Masjid Lane smells faintly of seaweed, eucalyptus oil and aged women. It’s a extraordinary multiple of odours and it takes a discerning notation or dual to get acclimatised.

Leaderson Horam in Khar Danda run stores for a food needs of a migrant Naga community

The emporium with grey rolling shutters is as entire as they come. It has no well-developed storefront; a design of momos is intoxicated on a windowpane. But you’d be mistaken to give a owners promotion advice. His customers, who are slightest meddlesome in momos, know that if they are looking for sunflower seeds and smoked eel, they have come to a right place.

Yongpa is used both for a essence and medicinal properties

The emporium with no residence is where some of us in a city finish a day at, with report over a much-needed paan and recorded plums. For some, this is a sniff and ambience of home, 3,275 km divided from Mumbai, on a northeastern limit of a country.

Wung Naoshung, a 32-year aged MBA graduate, non-stop this grocery store 3 weeks ago. Twice a week, Ashung (as he is called) flies down uninformed and recorded furnish all a approach from his hometown in a Ukhrul district of Manipur to Mumbai. He belongs to a clan of Nagas, called a Tangkhul, who live along a Indo-Burmese border.

A salad break called sinchu

This is also a clan that inhabits vast tools of Khar Danda and Kalina, carrying staid here while catering to a beauty, oppulance and liberality industries.

Yongchak, as a bean class Parkia Speciosa is called by a Tangkhul

Ashung’s store is a many new yet not a initial in Kalina. There are 3 other specialty stores like his that follow in a same suggestion as a Mangalore stores in a city, sourcing and stocking home-grown furnish and mixture accessible in a internal land.

Nongmangkha flowers are done into a chutney

For authentic produce
“The Tangkhul is famous to be a village that loves to try new ventures, right from textiles to food,” says Ashung, seating us in a small curtained area during a behind of a store. “I started my emporium since a food equipment we devour are utterly opposite from those of mainland Indians and locals here. We get uninformed pig and duck in city markets, yet not a vegetables, recorded meats, or a condiments that a cuisine needs,” he says, in a voice so soothing and well-behaved that we have to gaunt in to hear him.

Smoked pork

As we converse, business flit in and out of a store. Peeking by a curtains, we see a Gujarati male (who we after learn is a comparison hairstylist during a heading salon) selling for cooking with his Naga girlfriend. A small later, a Swedish traveller is led into a store by her newly-acquired Naga friend, who introduces her to a delicacies of his Tangkhul cuisine.

Just down a line from Ashung’s, Yaomi Awungshi runs Thotrin General Store, substantially one of a many busy in Kalina. Like all a counterparts, Thotrin General Store stays open compartment as late as 11 pm.

King chilies

Awungshi, also a Naga Tangkhul, is a seasoned shopkeeper that a immature guns would adore to emulate. Every Wednesday morning, Awungshi collects a load of uninformed furnish from a circuitously airport. Before his benefaction occupation, he worked as a transport representative in Bengaluru. The adore of a woman, rather than business, brought him to Kalina – a preference that was well-met by a flourishing direct in his village for Manipuri and Naga produce.

At many of these shops, a prohibited favourite is yongchak, a stout bean by a Latin name of Parkia speciosa, that is consumed in a form of chutney. If a clan could salary fight over a commodity, it could be yongchak rather than H2O or oil. It is rumoured to be a source of present energy, and therefore dear by football players behind home. Eat yongchak, and, 42 hours later, we should have a strength of 10 tigers, we are told.

Aiyang thei, a brinjal variety

The direct for yongchak is so high in Kalina that another internal variety, called pathari, is sole by transport vendors as substitute. Naga migrants mostly buy pathari as a surrogate for yongchak. Other sprouting imports from their district embody sleet peas, passionflower leaves, mustard leaves and nongmangkha flowers.

Pickles and chutnies from Burma

More than only food
Over during Khar Danda, Aking Zimik’s store, called Perfect Marketing, comes alive in a evenings with Manipuri business dressed in Vero Moda boots and enviable coiffures.

Flying down furnish from Manipur twice a week (fewer times if a limit faces geopolitical tension), Zimik relishes bee larvae . Like all a rest of Tangkhul produce, it is seasonal, and, in Zimik’s case, a product that he loves to bite rather than sell. For Sashi, a 21-year-old technician during a Parel salon who shares a room with 3 others, this is emporium is her refuge. “My mom taught me how to prepare yet where is a time here? Yongchak reminds me of home,” she says.

Tender banana shoot

The cost that nostalgia quotes is a hole in your pocket, she agrees. Every small parcel of produce, be it sunflower seeds, ngayung (roots of a chameleon plant) or aiyang thei (a specific accumulation of brinjals) costs Rs 50. It’s distant some-more costly than potatoes, cauliflowers and beans, yet it’s a choice Sashi creates when she can means it.

It is yet apparent that a cost of a furnish is directly related to a airline load charges. The cost for drifting down any time, says Leaderson Horam is about Rs 24,000. Horam non-stop his store in Khar Danda about a month ago and is nonetheless to collect adult business. He used to work as a therapist in a posh Andheri sauna yet a rather exploitative attention done him rethink business options.

Ngayung roots

The 27-year-old says, “I suspicion it was high time we became my possess boss.” The Manipur finish of a business is rubbed by his family, who container a vegetables and condiments, many of them nearing in Manipur from beside Burma, and boat them to Mumbai. “The some-more weight we fly down, a obtuse we have to pay,” he says. He shows us immature shoots of banana, a furnish that is found locally too. “Oh, a banana shoots of Manipur are special,” he says. The same goes for paan leaves, he adds, quoting Rs 50 for a banana fire that is underneath a feet long.

The ecosystem of these stores is such that these are some-more than only centres for a discerning grocery fix. At Yaomi’s store, his past knowledge as a transport representative comes of use, when a patron asks him to book tickets to Manipur. “For many of us, travelling to Manipur is not easy. Even a singular outing will cost as most as Rs 15,000 one way. It’s critical afterwards that we get to eat a home-grown food in Mumbai,” says Ashung.

Ashung arrived in Mumbai a year ago seeking diagnosis for throat cancer during a Tata Memorial Hospital, where one-third of a patients are from a North East. Ashung hints, “Our food tends to be smoked, fermented and fried. Some have related these cooking techniques to carcinogenic properties.”

He explains that these days he is looking during healthy alternatives within a Tangkhul diet. He is immoderate green incorporate leaves, a whole garland of that are placed behind us, boiled with water. In fact, he elaborates, most of Tangkhul cuisine involves mixture famous to have medicinal properties. If there is a dream that Ashung cherishes, it is to go behind home to his plantation in Ukhrul and do his bit for a girl there. “The food is good here yet it can never review to that of my district. Think about idlis from Chennai and here. It’s not a same taste, right?” he smiles.

City sees seed sowing fest pop-up

On Feb 25, a Naga Tangkhul village in Mumbai distinguished a initial central village jubilee of Luira Phanit, their seed sowing festival. In an try to move a village closer, a Tangkhul Welfare Society of Mumbai organized a day-long jubilee with food, dance and games that approximated those from their district.

The festival is a vestige of ancient Naga culture, a use followed by a village yet many of them have converted to Christianity.

The festival saw a mega pig eating contest, headgears called pasi and a medium yet estimable dish of Tangkhul cuisine.

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