Khumbhi: Thar’s Rare Mushroom, Now Growing Scarce
It had rained and roared the previous night, so arrangements were made to collect khumbhi. Armaan, a journalist from Bikaner, made a bunch of calls to locals in Chandasar, a village in the district, to figure out when would be a good time to go looking at the dunes for this desert mushroom. He was told: around 5 a.m.
After travelling a couple of hours from the city to the village, by the time he arrived, it was a little too late. By 7 a.m., most of the khumbhi had already been collected and taken home to be washed, peeled, cooked, or ground.
He did, however, spot a couple of single mushrooms, since these mushrooms don’t grow in bunches but separately, sticking out like small anomalies in the sandy landscape of Marwar.
The Mehendi of Monsoon
“Around the world it is known that treasure is hidden in Rajasthan’s soil,” says Armaan. One such gem is khumbhi or thumbhi (Phellorinia herculeana), a desert mushroom found in the Marwar region of the state. It’s rare, hard to find, and even harder to cook and eat.
Found in the dhoras (sandy dunes), during the monsoon season, only after the clouds have thundered and poured down rain, khumbhi is a rare speciality that simply does not make an appearance unless the aforementioned conditions are met. It’s a mushroom that’s loved precisely because it is a rare wild that cannot be cultivated. Armaan even calls it a truly royal vegetable.
Majid Khan, an elder from Chandasar, shares what feels like a magical connection between a people and what feeds them, what they look forward to. “Khumbhi is not an ordinary thing. For us, it’s like a blessing from the sand. It appears after the first or second rain, when the sand becomes soft and holds some moisture. We also call it ‘Sawan ki Mehndi,’ the Mehndi of the monsoon,” he shares and adds, “Just like you can’t apply mehndi every day, you can’t eat khumbhi every day either.”
While the conditions of its appearance are strict, and once grown, getting it isn’t easy either. It may look as if someone has just taken a mushroom and randomly placed it in the sand, but one has to carefully dig it out. Time is of the essence here because it spoils quickly. This short window for collection is one of the reasons why khumbhi is so highly priced too.
“Khumbhi is very delicate. It breaks easily if handled roughly. We use our hands to slowly remove the sand from around the mushroom. The whole process is like waking up a sleeping baby without bothering him too much,” shares Khan.
Preparing Khumbhi
Geeta Devi, another resident, shares how khumbhi is treated in her home and kitchen. “Once it’s collected early in the morning, the foragers bring it back quickly, as it starts going bad just two or three days after the rain. After that, it turns black and can’t be cooked or eaten.”
The first step is washing it to remove the sand. Some elders try to wash it at least 8-10 times, till the water runs clear but many, in order to avoid wasting water, carefully peeled off the outer layer with any soil on it with a knife. Once washed, it’s dried in the shade. After that, it can be cooked into a sabzi. The recipes for which vary greatly.
In some households, where the diet consists of vegetarian food khumbhi is prepared like they would paneer or any special sabzi, which is why it is often referred to as the ‘Paneer of Thar.’ Other non-vegetarian households use the same masalas and cooking techniques that one would use to cook chicken or mutton, as the mushroom mimics the texture of a tender chicken.
Some even make flour from it to prepare puris. Geeta shares that there are varieties of khumbhi. It generally comes in two sizes, the smaller one can be directly cooked as a vegetable, and the bigger one, by carefully cutting it open and removing the pulp inside, can be used to make the puris. However, unlike wheat flour, khumbhi flour doesn’t need water to make dough. You can shape it into laddoos directly from the flour and still roll them into rotis. Some people are known to fondly eat the mushroom raw during fasting.
The price of khumbhi, if the foragers have collected enough to sell it too, is exactly denotative of the time and effort that goes into collecting these, plus the matter of natural supply. Since it is available only for such a short time, when it is sold in cities, its price can be around ₹1800 to ₹2000 per kilo, and if sold a bit in remote areas, then people may be ready to pay up to ₹1500 per kilo, however most prefer foraging for themselves.
A sign of the times
No one expects a thing of such beauty and importance to thrive or be safe in today’s climate, especially when it doesn’t generate obvious monetary “value.” Khumbhi it’s largely ignored by those who don’t live near the areas where it naturally grows. Either that or it’s not considered at all. There aren’t many economic interventions that can make it profitable, which means not many people outside of the ecosystem it grows in, are willing to give it their time or money. On top of that, the very conditions this mushroom needs to appear and greet the people of Marwar each year are the dunes and the rains, and neither is safe or reliable anymore.
Some villagers say that overgrazing and sand mining has led to khumbhi growing in fewer numbers and scattered much farther apart than before. A local youth shares, “Just a couple of years ago, we could get 5 to 10 kilos in one season, now even 2 kilos is rare. Sand mining is a big reason. They dig deep, which spoils the layers of moisture and soil. That’s why khumbhi doesn’t grow much now.”
One also didn’t have to walk far or look too hard to find their day’s fix of khumbhi. People would step out and on their way to some place, spot a few without even trying. But now, even when they set out with the intention to find it, it’s difficult and time-consuming.
When asked whether any entity, be it the government or any food/farming organisations have done anything to protect khumbhi or to act against the so-called “sand mafias,” the residents responded with a clear and unanimous no. Nothing has been done so far.
“We want the sand loot to stop. These traditions that are our own should continue and for that, khumbhi needs to survive too,” says Khan.
Then how does one preserve something like this? If khumbhi was easy to find 20 years ago and has already become sparse, what happens in another two decades? Can we save, preserve, or continue to use this ingredient so that Rajasthan continues to have a wild mushroom that grows in its own backyard?
To encourage foraging to continue, and to keep introducing more people to the mushroom, some basics need to be considered. There is a clear need to conserve the very habitat that makes its existence possible, that means not flattening dunes and making provisions to stop overgrazing, or any other activities in the name of development. Along with that, a system could be put in place where people can collect and sell khumbhi at a price that reflects the time, energy, and effort that goes into finding it.
The times are changing, and so is the list of native foods we have access to season after season. If we don’t stop and look, if we don’t make it our business, this too will be lost. And while a single mushroom that barely grows for a couple of weeks a year, might not be the end all be all of food security, its decline surely does reflect some shifted preferences and gradual loss of foods that people actually call their own.
This piece was originally contributed in Hindi by Armaan Nadeem, a budding journalist based in Bikaner, Rajasthan.
