“No, you don’t get pure, authentic Koli seafood anywhere, not in the restaurants or the five-star hotels,” says Ravindra Kharde. “That’s why we wanted to have this festival.” Kharde had just led me through the bylanes of Vesava Gaon, past squat bungalows that were either dilapidated or newly painted in colours like fuchsia and neon green. We were in his family’s cottage, which we entered after stepping around a knot of women sitting at the doorstep gossiping, and cleaning and sorting tubs of shrimp and clams. Or as they called them, kupa and tisrya.
The air was thick with the odour (or if you like, aroma) of fish. It took about ten minutes to get used to it and then I couldn’t smell it anymore. Kharde showed me a lobster. “In a hotel, you would get this for Rs3,500,” he says. “At our festival, you will get the equivalent in about five-to-six pieces, from Rs350 to Rs400.” The festival he’s been telling me about is the annual Versova Koli Seafood Festival, the eighth edition of which starts this Friday, January 18.
Kharde was the founding chairman of the first edition of the festival in 2006. “There were many utsavs that took place around here then, for example the Malvani Jatrautsav (a Malvani performing arts festival),” says Kharde. “But since there was no proper Koli trust, we had no utsav of our own. This festival has brought the five Koli organisations (in the village) together.” In 2006 there were only about 30 stalls at the festival, this year over 50 of them will offer over 300 dishes, and over 25 others will offer drinks, snacks and desserts like sol kadhi, popcorn and falooda. Some stalls will be selling alcohol, and talks were on with a wine company on the day I visited Kharde.
In between all the feasting, visitors can watch cooking demos, and song and dance performances. Kharde said we can expect large crowds to join in when they perform “Mi Hai Koli” (“I Am A Koli”) and “Ya Koliwaryachi Shaan” (“The Pride of Kolis”). There’s also a competition where the young women of the community dress up in traditional barawari (12-yard) sarees and jewellery. The top three get featured on the cover of the marketing brochure for next year’s festival. Musician Remo Fernandes comes every year, and this time, actor and dancer Prabhudeva is likely to visit too, to promote his movie ABCD. According to Kharde, celebrity sightings are common. “Even Katrina Kaif had come last year, but she was wearing a burka,” he says. “But those who knew, recognised her.”
For all its other activities, the focus at the fest however is firmly on the food. Kharde and the women (“my sisters, they all are,” he said) rattled off 20 varieties of seafood within half a minute. Apart from the usual pomfret, surmai, rawas and prawns, there will be tisrya (clams), kalwa (mussels), shark, and kapa (small tuna) on offer. Among the special Koli preparations are “bamboka bombil” (bombil that has only been halfway dried), ghol fish salan, shark kheema, bombil vade, rawa-fried mandeli and the instant sellout, Koli fish soup made with bombil, prawns, and eggplant among other ingredients.
In the first few years the stalls featured only the most popular Koli dishes, but now, according to the ladies, the growing crowds have encouraged them to take local fish and make preparations like “Chinese-style prawns, Continental, and seafood sizzlers”. Even then, they add, “every dish contains our Koli masala”. While Kharde explained the damage high diesel prices and corporate purse-net boats do to the fishing communities and local seafood species (“they decimate them”), we ate a Koli bombil curry made in a kokam gravy. If that simple home meal was anything to go by, I’m saving my appetite until Friday evening comes around.
Roshni Bajaj Sanghvi is a Mumbai-based food journalist, a contributing editor at Vogue magazine, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York City, and the restaurant reviewer for the Hindustan Times newspaper in Mumbai.