It’s not easy being green

27 August 2015 – Lucky Peach

If you go to Versova Beach in Mumbai at around 8:30 in the morning, you won’t find people sunbathing or surfing or swimming as you might on other urban beaches around the world.

At the shore, you’ll see residents of the hundred-odd huts thrown up along the high-tide line taking their morning constitutionals. Behind you, between the huts and the trees separating the filthy gray-brown Arabian Sea from the swish suburb of Versova, you’ll see bare-chested men and women in damp saris pulling rapidly at a carpet of chia-pet green growing in patches from the sand.

This Lilliputian crop is choti methi, or baby fenugreek.