The flowering trees announce the change of season to me in Delhi.
The winter nip arrives with the perfume of Saptaparni wafting on the roads. The flowers themselves are green and invisible among the leaves – making their fragrance more magical because there is no visual clue to determine its source.
Summer is declared when the semal flowers bloom – the large, flaming-red flowers make it seem like the tree, bereft of leaves, is on fire. Once upon a time, that sight would convey that warm relief from the brutal winter was just around the corner. Now, it is a peek into the long hellfire of Delhi summer.
This year, Delhi is experiencing its warmest February in 124 years. Semal flowers in early bloom reminded me that I had virtually no time left to forage for the semal buds. Cooked with qeema, or mincemeat, and soya ka saag (dill leaves), semal buds are a special delicacy in my household.
I have lived all my life in Delhi and loved the flowering of the semal tree, but I learnt that the buds were eaten as a vegetable dish only in my in-laws’ home in Saharanpur. My first culinary encounter with sembal dodde – which is what the buds of Bombax ceiba, or silk cotton tree, are called in Khadi Boli spoken in Saharanpur – was one of wonder.
It is not so much the taste but the exotic texture that took me by surprise because it was so utterly unfamiliar. Why had I never known that the buds were cooked as vegetables even when the trees were so familiar to me?
Not found in the supermarket
As a middle-class supermarket shopper, I have bought “exotic” vegetables such as avocado, broccoli, yellow bell peppers and squash. But I have not seen the semal on restaurant menus or in lifestyle magazines. Among my acquaintances, it was only working-class and older migrants to the city who knew of the vegetable.
They were the ones to also show off their knowledge about the best time to pick up the buds and which corners of the city are easiest to reach for the best picks.
In Delhi, semal buds are food only for those who forage for it – because they know the value of the overlooked. As far as I can tell, the buds cannot be bought from a shop.
In parts of Uttar Pradesh, the buds are stir-fried with onions and mustard seeds, added to lentils for depth or slow-cooked into curries.
Older people recall its medicinal properties – especially for “secret” ailments like women’s gynaecological problems or infertility in men – in addition to its ability to cool the body in the unforgiving heat of summer.
Defying commercialisation
The seed pods of semal are filled with a fluffy, silk-cotton fibre, commercially known as Indian kapok. This silky floss is light and water-resistant and has been used to stuff quilts and pillows, and because it is moisture-resistant and vermin-proof, it was even used as padding in lifejackets and helmets. Semal wood was used in the matchstick industry and pulped for various products.
A translucent reddish gum is commercially harvested from the bark of the semal, but on a small scale, for use in pharmaceuticals and traditional foods. It is used as a natural soothing agent and tonic for gastric ailments in ayurveda, where it is called shalmali, and in the Unani medicinal system where it is called sumbul or sumbul-e-misri.
Semal products cannot be widely commercialised because of the harvest of parts like floss and gum are very labour intensive. But semal also defies plantation for timber because its large crown require trees to be widely spaced out. Besides, cheaper substitutes are available.
Colonial interest
The large-scale cultivation of semal has been limited, but not unheard of. British foresters and Indian forest departments once grew semal plantations to supply wood for the match industry and for plywood.
In the 1880s, the Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency noted that Bombax malabaricum trees in Gujarat were a source of revenue. Villagers collected the cotton for stuffing pillows and the gum for sale to indigenous medicine vendors. A 1916 issue of The Indian Forester questioned the sustainability of semal harvesting for floss, as forests in parts of United Provinces were being heavily lopped.
Archival documents show that semal was an object of study and economic interest throughout the colonial period. The economic plant surveys conducted by the British such as the Indian Forest Reports often included semal.
In the Bombay Forest Report of 1898, officials debated cultivating more semal to boost the supply of kapok for life-jackets for the Royal Navy – a plan ultimately dropped in favour of importing material from Java. The Colonial Exhibition of 1886 in London even displayed Indian “silk cotton” from the Bombay and Bengal provinces, demonstrating the empire’s interest in semal products.
Botanical drawings and herbarium specimens of Bombax ceiba were collected during the East India Company’s surveys. Notable botanists like William Roxburgh and Nathaniel Wallich included the semal in their catalogues.
In the journals of the Royal Asiatic Society, there are references to Bombax ceiba being planted along avenues in cantonments for its shade and beauty.
Why is there no market for sembal dodde?
The buds of the semal trees sprout, flower and mostly wither along big and small dusty roads, in old neighbourhoods, in the forgotten corners of Delhi’s Ridge and in institutional campuses.
Semal buds are not an agricultural commodity. They do not make it even to the organised chaos of Delhi’s sabzi mandis as a vegetable. Sembal dodde, or simlautay as they are also called, belong to the category of almost forgotten fruits and vegetables – like the goolar, badhal, jungle jalebis and khirni, that linger on in those nooks of residual memories with nostalgia for a time when you did not buy everything you ate.
Why do these buds, eaten by generations, remain untouched by the logic of market economics?
Why do some foods – beloved in some kitchens and to some palates – find no uptake in the mass market nor in niche elite markets? It is not because they lack nutrition or flavour or succulence.
When cooked perfectly, semal buds offer an exotic blend of delicate bitterness, velvety creaminess (like avocado) and stickiness (like okra or bhindi). It is the kind of taste that forces you to slow down, because you can meet it only if you cook thoughtfully and with care.
For me, getting to eat semal buds epitomises patience of a higher order. It exemplifies an understanding that the delicacy of the buds comes from its ephemerality originating in the rhythms of the land. I hope I am not exaggerating but sembal dodde are probably the last truly seasonal vegetable.
Semal buds do not fit the market logic of predictability and profit. Semal trees grow untamed, scattered across the urban landscape, impossible to cultivate at scale. In a market place of agricultural produce that prioritises yield, uniformity, scalability, efficiency and shelf-life, the season of semal buds is too short and their numbers too few to fit into profitable supply chains.
The knowledge of the semal buds survives in fragments, passed down to its very last keepers who refuse to forget. Migrants often hold on to the cultures they left behind, through food. It would be foolish of labourers to let go of knowledge regarding an affordable source of nutrition. They forage in the morning, before the city wakes up to its hunger for perfect shiny things on the market for sale.
The food economy in a metropolis, like its land economy, is about control. Everything that makes it to the store shelves must be accounted for, made legible to systems of sorting, standardisation, pricing and transportation. But there are foods that are procured and cooked quietly in homes where people eat foods that others forbid, discard, or simply ignore.
Ghazala Jamil is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University.
