When a plate of food binds a community

What is the fundamental cause of the not so good things that are happening in our world like plastic in the oceans, chemical-filled products, and forest cover being taken down for our needs and so on? Either nature wants us to go extinct and/or our species decided to stop sharing food some 12,000 years ago when they started agriculture and built the patriarchal structure. Well, this basic idea led Shivakumar Bharathi to organise a day-long event on setting a social kitchen where people could carry ingredients and prepare food. “The main idea is to enable people to build healthy eating habits through fasting, and introduce them to plant and millet-based diet. We also get people to develop their work out and meditation habits,” he says.

Shivakumar along with a couple of like-minded youngsters formed a group called My Learning Game to propagate the concept of social kitchen or kootanchoru. Kootanchoru means cooking meals together with native groceries (local, seasonal and native grains, pulses, veggies and spices) and utensils brought by a group of people, cooked at a place, and shared among them. “It’s a traditional practice followed in many villages in the state. At these community kitchens people discuss how to secure safe and healthy food or take the next step in growing them and the need for foraging foods. They also talk about the benefits of cooking with local ingredients. I wanted to bring back this concept and that’s why I am holding a one-day event on May 4 at Amm Farmhouse, 8 km from Tambaram. It’ll be an interactive gathering where we explore through conversations the three layers on our body — food, clothing and shelter,” says Shivakumar.

Apart from setting up a social kitchen, Shivakumar and his team will also be teaching the participants the art of spinning native cotton by hand and palm craft weaving.

“The biggest organ in the body — the skin — is being suffocated by the exposure to synthetic fibres by wearing them every day. We need to start using fabrics made of natural dyes. At the upcoming session, I’ll be teaching about native cotton spinning, the process of hand ginning and the importance of using handwoven fabrics. Another session will be about palm craft — why to grow palm trees in our neighbourhood and the need to replace plastic products with palm leaf products,” shares Shivakumar.

To learn more or register, send a whatsapp message with the code 'Chennai - Social Kitchen' to 8884591643