Nourishing, everyday recipes of working-class migrants

Cooking can be a negotiation between customs from the village, the cost of ingredients, and the availability of familiar produce in Bengaluru’s migrant kitchens

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Caption: Manisha, from Rourkela, Odisha, pours a mixture of onions, garam masala, garlic, turmeric, chili powder, and coriander into her kadai. She slices tomatoes in the final step of her curry. Niyati Shah/The Migration Story

Bengaluru, Karnataka:  Crouched on a small wooden stool in red bangles and a purple nightgown, Manisha cuts through the spice of her chicken curry with the acid of roughly chopped tomatoes. Sunday nights are for fish or meat at the construction site in Bengaluru’s Doddakannelli and this evening, everyone’s making some combination of potato and chicken.

Manisha collects all the aromatics in a single dish - a potent paste of onion, turmeric, chicken masala, coriander, and cumin - before pouring it into the hot kadai. Since her husband is home to take care of their son, she leisurely observes dinner simmering on her chulha, fuelling it with discarded wood from the construction site.

Two alleys down, Sonali prepares her own potato and chicken curry on a gas cylinder. She begins with whole cumin and potatoes on high heat in a pool of mustard oil. Once lightly golden, she removes the potatoes and adds red onions, tomatoes, and green chilis to the kadai. Tempered alliums and aromatics burn eyes and tickle noses. “It’ll be tasty if you sneeze while cooking,” she says with a smile. 

Next door, a pair of young Bengali men prepare a variant of the same dish, having learnt how to cook while working at construction sites for the past few years. 

Potato and chicken curry recipe

Bengaluru’s working-class migrants - the factory workers manufacturing polythene covers or the construction workers building the city’s high rises - carry their culinary traditions to the city. On train rides traversing the Deccan plateau, they hold lentils, recipes, and memories. 

The origins of a bag of grain or a fistful of peanuts can illuminate how foodways stretch and transform upon arrival to the city. While seasonal migrants often return with provisions from home, permanent migrants frequent the same local markets for their fill. 

Cooking can be a negotiation between customs from the village, the cost of ingredients, and the availability of produce specific to the hometown, said many of the migrant workers interviewed for this article. In Doddakannelli’s migrant labour colony, solastalgia permeates culinary practices. Bengali, Assamese, and Odia families speak of not being able to cook like they used to back home, with a traditional spread of vegetable and meat dishes for at least two meals of the day. 

“We’ve come here to work. After working all day, how many items can we make? That’s why we make some rice and pair it with a tomato chutney sometimes,” said Manisha, who works as a helper at the construction site, sweeping and cleaning the area.

SOURCING KITCHEN STAPLES

Manisha’s kitchen, like that of most working-class migrants, is compact and utilitarian - tomatoes for the evening meal soak in a bowl of Bisleri water and red onions rest under a shelf carrying plastic containers of rice and soya chunks. Metal utensils and dishes dry upturned on a blue cloth spread across a wooden table and baby eggplants, long beans, and bitter gourd are collected in a basket for tomorrow’s sabzi. A pouch of turmeric, left corner snipped for easy tadkas, leans against a repurposed plastic bottle filled with Ruchi Gold palm oil.

Odia couple, Digaambar and Lata, lament the lack of a variety in the vegetables available at the nearby markets.“Here, you have to just stick with one type of vegetable - potato or cauliflower. Back in the village, you get different kinds of vegetables, like kunduru (scarlet gourd) and potol (pointed gourd),” said Digaambar, who works as a construction labourer.

“The chicken and mutton in my village taste good,” Manisha said, recalling the food of her hometown Rourkela in Odisha. “The flavor here is not ours; the flavors back home are better. Here, the rice is kaccha (raw). We boil the water there; here, we don’t boil the water. The water in pakka (parboiled) rice has a lot of vitamins. When we make khichdi (lentil and rice dish), we use this pakka rice.” 

During the week, she sticks with one-pot basics - long-grain rice and a pot of masoor daal or a vegetable curry. “We usually make masoor daal, because the rate is lower,” she told The Migration Story. Such calculations, including the rate of each ingredient at market or the availability of a cheaper alternative, determine the meals for the week. Across both communities, migrants report steeper prices for produce, meat, and pantry items in the city compared to the village. 

How ingredients are sourced uncovers the gaps in the patchwork of government schemes, including the One Nation One Ration Card program, directed towards migrants’ food and financial security. 

Working-class newcomers to the city often remain unaware of the possibility of rations and other resources. On the other hand, more established migrants have plugged into the public distribution system, relying on awareness offered by non-profits working in the space or by word of mouth from neighbours. 

The capital required to prepare these recipes is hinged upon the rates at the market and the state listed in the migrants’ ration cards. Conversations with migrants, researchers, and community organizers indicate that these recipes are not fixed abstractions; instead, they are political, social, economic, and cultural entanglements straddling rural heartlands and urban destinations.

For inter-state migrant workers, ration cards from other states aren’t accepted at the public distribution center. Every staple, including rice and daal, needs to be purchased at the market on Sarjapura Road. Families from North Karnataka, on the other hand, receive 10 kilograms of sona masoori rice at the local public distribution center through the One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC) scheme. 

Disparities in the portability and enforcement of the scheme, which promises continuity of rations across state borders, determine the degree of food insecurity experienced by different pockets of migrant communities.

“Rice, lentils, oil - everything from the outside store is expensive. For people receiving rations, they don’t have to pay a single rupee for rice. It’s free,” said Mangala Sudha, a community organizer at non-profit Sampark that connects Bengaluru’s construction workers to essential government schemes. “For one person, they give 10 kilos of rice. For five people, it is 50 kilos of rice for one month. That’s a lot for one month - they can eat that much for two months. 50 kilos, from the outside store, is 3,000 [rupees].” 

Rations serve as safety nets in the face of income insecurity, climate change, and debt, campaigners working on migrant worker rights say. 

“Items have become expensive now. According to that calculation, payments [to workers] should increase,” Mangala said. “They should be able to receive rations without any difficulty - the way they receive rations back home. They should be able to receive them easily. They shouldn’t feel tension to get this or that.”

MEALS FOR SUSTENANCE

Around 5 or 6 am, the women in Doddakannelli rise to prepare breakfast and lunch. Husbands sometimes pitch in. “If he wakes up early, he will make all the food. He makes daal, aloo gobi, eggplant. He has known how to make food from the beginning,” said Manisha. 

Murmuri (puffed rice) and red tea, sans milk, comprise the go-to breakfast in the Odia and Bengali families at the construction site. The recipe is classic and familiar: tea leaves steeped with ginger, tulsi, water, and sugar.  Lunch is tucked into a small tiffin while tea is strained into cups before the morning shift.

When asked about how they learned to cook, women recall their mothers teaching them to prepare roti first, followed by rice, and then lentils. Successive generations carry gendered divisions of labor along with family recipes, assuming new forms, methods, and roles according to shifting environs.

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Caption: Mandakini’s pantry has badi from her hometown in Odisha. Lunch is potato, eggplant, broadbean, and black chickpea curry. Niyati Shah/The Migration Story

Mandakini holds a plastic container of badi, an Odia snack made of sun-dried black gram daal, that she brought from her village. It’s a chip, popular with children and adults alike. 

“I have two kinds of badi - one bought from the market and the other from my own home, which we made with our own hands,” she said. She helps maintain one of Sampark’s Childhood Care and Development Centers, which offer nurturing learning spaces and midday meals to the children of construction workers. On the weekdays, she sometimes prepares a raagi-based elixir called madiya pej, a refreshing drink for the students in the labor colony who attend class in the dog days of summer.

For lunch, Mandakini has cooked a mixed vegetable dish with potato, black chickpeas, eggplants, and broad beans. Her husband will take leftovers to the construction site tomorrow morning.

Recipe: Potato, eggplant, broadbeans, and black chickpeas curry

In Peenya, the industrial Northwestern part of Bengaluru, Mallikamma prepares jolada (sorghum) roti on her chulha for breakfast. Her kitchen feeds six people on most days and seven on some. Originally from Yaadgiri in North Karnataka, her family has spent more than 10 years in Bengaluru primarily working in construction. Unfazed by the smoke billowing from the wet wood, she dexterously flattens dough with her left hand and flips roti with her right. 

Jolada roti keeps well for several days, serving as a time-efficient and nutrient-dense carbohydrate to feed extended families living under a single roof. 

“They make around 50-60 rotis at once. They then dry them in the sun to ensure that when stored, they don’t smell stale or get mouldy,” explained Gayathri Gayu, a field officer at non-profit Migrant Resilience Collaborative. “When sun-dried in this manner, they can be stored for up to a week. Even when they have to visit their hometown, they will take it with them and eat it with curd or shenga (peanut) powder. They will have this even when they have nothing else to eat.”

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Mallikamma makes jolada roti in her chulha at 7 am, while her neighbor stores her roti on the tin roof of her home. Workers will fold palya into their roti for lunch at the construction site. Niyati Shah/The Migration Story

Common agricultural exports from North Karnataka, such as pulses and flours, are brought to the city from the village once a month. 

Manisha’s son brings her jolada flour once a month from their village in Yaadgiri for 80 rupees per kilogram. Renamma’s family brings togri bele (pigeon pea legumes) from their villages, preferring harvests from their hometown’s black soil over the slim pickings in the market at 2nd stage, one of Peenya’s industrial localities.

Jolada roti recipe

“We would have watched [pulses] grow in front of us, right? So, we can make out the quality just by seeing. Here, we can’t tell where the pulses are coming from. At least over there, our farmers would have grown them. We pick and bring them,” says Renamma.

Women here cook a wide range of palyas, a catchall term for simple sauteed vegetable dishes devoid of spices like asafoetida and coriander. The vegetable, not the masala, is the protagonist. Women use a variety of greens like pundi palya soppu (roselle leaves), menthya soppu (fenugreek), kiraksali palya soppu (amaranth leaves), black-eyed cowpeas, and chowlakaya (cluster beans), among many others. They prepare sajje roti (bajra/pearl millet) during the monsoons and chapati (wheat) on a whim. Sundays and Wednesdays are reserved for meat, and mutton is preferred over chicken.

Flitting from the outdoor chulha to her room as she combs her hair, Mariyamma describes the sambar she’ll take for work at the factory.

One Wednesday in May, Shanthamma - Malikamma’s relative - is making heerekayi (ridge gourd) palya. Before starting, she roasts peanuts on her chulha and sets them aside. 

The roasted peanuts are crushed into a powder with a mortar and pestle and dusted on the final dish, serving as a thickening agent and nutty garnish.

PIx: 6608-2, 6649, Mallikamma’s family member makes ridge gourd palya in her chulha. Food is typically stored in stainless steel vessels perched on shelves. Niyati Shah/The Migration Story

Heerekayi palya recipe

In Peenya and Doddakanelli, store-bought meat masalas are used in place of a stone spice grinder. Back home, whole spices are ground against a stone, but in Manisha’s kitchen it sits tucked away in the corner, having been replaced by packets of powdered cumin, chilli, and coriander. The stone emerges from hiding when Manisha has the time - her luxury - to collect, roll, and smooth into a rich paste.

Both communities shop at the local market on Sundays and about 1500-2000 rupees are spent in a given week. Affordable essentials grace the cutting boards in both communities: eggplant, onion, tomato, potato. Tomatoes are the common denominator for both communities, often the main ingredient in a quick meal to pair with rice. 

An Indian kitchen’s basics - rice and sabzi, roti and palya - are sustenance. Satisfaction begets simplicity. “It is fine even if the same food is made and consumed all three times a day,” said Shantamma. 

Dinner in Peenya is sometimes motte (egg), rice, and tomato sambar. Shanthamma’s sambar masala comprises of Yaadgiri’s fragrant red chilies - dried until crimson and pounded until fine.

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Migrant women from North Karnataka boil sweetened, milky chai for breakfast and rice for lunch. Niyati Shah/The Migration Story

FLAVOURS FROM BACK HOME

Migrant construction workers from eastern and northern states practice their culinary heritage in fragments, partly due to the constraints of their built environment, transitory nature of their work, and limited ration availability.

Fish and meat dishes, which are mainstays back home, are swapped for more affordable protein sources like lentils and soya chunks. Having established stronger networks in Bengaluru over a decade ago, migrants from North Karnataka bring relatively more of their traditional culinary practices to the weekly menu. 

The one-pot method seen at the construction site applies here as well, but in this kitchen, it’s for chitranna (mixed rice). With her daughter balanced on a hip, Mariyamma explains that she’s making this dish since she’s out of vegetables for the week.

Chitranna recipe

PIX: Jayamma and her daughter prepare hasimenasinkayi thokku, while Mariyamma (right) simmers rice and tomato for breakfast. Niyati Shah/The Migration Story

A few days prior, Jayamma prepared hasimenasinkayi kara/thokku, a green chili based condiment that is often paired with jolada roti or rice.

Hasimenasinkayi kara/ thokku recipe

Migrant families from the north and eastern parts of the country may visit home once a year for festivals and weddings, while families from North Karnataka visit home 4-5 times a year. Sesame seeds, jaggery, peanuts, and coconut are passed between palms and rolled into delicacies during celebrations in both communities. 

For Digaambar and Lata, the harvest festival in Odisha, Nua Khai, is honored with a chuda (flattened rice), coconut, and jaggery. For Jayamma, the harvest festival of Sankranti, as well as the full or new moon, are honored with obbattu, a jaggery-based sweet stuffed flatbread. Peanuts, sesame seeds, or bele (lentils) are typical fillings.

Obbattu recipe

Pix: Mandakini’s husband has sliced onions in preparation for dinner. Tomato and chillies stew for tomato saaru in an outdoor chulha. Niyati Shah/The Migration Story

For these communities, cauliflower and eggplant picked from the family farm always made it to the chulha. In the bustling labour nakkas of the city, memories of harvests and recipes, sometimes both, are firmly embedded in the bleary-eyed mornings where fires flicker under chulhas and children reach for mothers and biscuits. The resulting dish - typically a foolproof riff on a classic Indian meal - stays warm in metal tiffins slung over shoulders making their way for work in the big city.

“Even though we moved to work hard, we don’t compromise on food. We prepare and eat whatever we want,” said Basamma, nodding at the stack of jolada roti while pleating her sari.

The recipes reflect real-time narrations; we’ve translated an approximation of what we heard, saw, smelled, and tasted. As a result, some measurements and details may be omitted, implying an opportunity for the reader to improvise with intuition.

Niyati Shah is a public health researcher based in Bengaluru and Washington, DC. She studies environmental health in migrant communities and documents portals on her quiet photography page - https://www.instagram.com/fragment.assemblage/.

Anoushka Srinivas collects stories on individuals and societies while re-exploring her hometown Bengaluru. Her background is in International Studies with a focus on Ethnicity, Identity, and Migration.

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