Food fest empowers tribals, impresses Mumbaikars

People await their turn to sample the tribal cuisine prepared by tribal women from Aarey Colony. (Photo Asian Age)

food carnival of authentic tribal has become a means of empowerment for the tribal women of Aarey Colony. As people from across of the city are trooping in for the event to show their support for the cause of empowerment, WWH, the NGO helping the women with logistics and marketing, has listed the event in BookMyShow, an online ticketing website, in order to promote the event on a larger platform.

Sunday saw the fifth edition of the one-day ‘Tribal Sit Down Lunch Experience’ held at Aarey Colony. The festival gives an opportunity to three different groups of women from different localities of Aarey Colony to come together and seek employment opportunities. Cassandra Nazerath, who spearheads the project, said that the tribal women have developed a sense of empowerment due to the programme.

“The women, who otherwise have no means to go out and seek employment opportunities are happy that they are managing to earn their living through this event. As the support grows, we are planning to hold this carnival more often, probably make it twice a month so that the participating women will get a hang of it and get lucrative returns,” said Ms Nazerath.

The spread at the carnival includes both vegetarian and non-vegetarian tribal cuisines. Also, apart from the nine women involved in the cooking activity, different groups of women are also engaged in selling hand-made artefacts and running a small mehendi counter. Volunteers from the Save Aarey movement who are also a part of the activity help the visitors around and inform them about how the activity is important for the tribal women.

Ms Nazerath confirmed that the support of people is also gradually increasing as the listing has gone on BookMyShow. “The bookings are done in advance and on first-come-first-serve basis so that the food isn’t wasted and the women have an idea of the number of people that are going to turn up,” added Ms Nazerath.

Interestingly, unable to deal with the increasing number of people willing to try out the cuisine, WWH has to now actually refuse a large number of people who call in wanting to place an order for lunch.