The gular fruit does not exist. Or at least, that’s what the stories say. Historian Priti Saxena, a brief resident of Bihar, discovered gular close to her home in Patna. Intrigued by the mythical narratives around this food, she began tracing its social life over time.
From the rooftop of my eight-storeyed apartment in Patna, the dome of the iconic Gol Ghar, a colonial remnant, is visible. Though architecturally unique, this two-century-old, pagoda-style tourist spot never fulfilled its purpose—that of storing grains for uncertain times. While serving as a landmark, it remains a testament to the colonial inadequacy in fighting hunger.
In the local market, a few hundred metres from Gol Ghar, one can still find affordable seasonal food in abundance. Among a series of ghats or landing points, Anta Ghat is famous as a wholesale vegetable market. Its proximity to the now-razed buildings of the Dutch collectorate—used as warehouses for storing opium from the 17th to 19th centuries adds to its historic relevance.
People continue to frequent this market for local produce, sold alongside lesser-known and not-so-frequently purchased foods such as karmi ka saag (water spinach), khesari (green pea), chana saag (chickpea shoots), and suthani (lesser yam). Most of the seasonal and regional produce has been known to provide medicinal benefits and even satiate hunger as it is packed with nutrients.
As a history postgraduate, I am inclined to understand the hidden narratives of a place. Frequent transfers within India over the years have allowed me to become intimate with many cities, including Patna. Each city quietly and casually eats so many foods that evade the perception of ‘Indian foods’. On the bus, in markets, in homes, and through conversations with my neighbours, I learn what the people of a place eat.
When I visit someone’s home for a meal, I tell them not to prepare lavish and labour-intensive dishes—the ones typically reserved for guests. I’m more interested in discovering what they eat when no one is watching. I want to know what their go-to comfort food is, and what they only share with those closest to them. Fortunately, this approach has worked everywhere, in Patna too, where many new recipes and foods were shared with me. Among these was gular, a type of fig.
Gular was first embedded in my memory not as a food but as a tease. Whenever I asked for something nice to eat, my father would ask, “Lapoosen khaoge kya?” (“Want to eat lapoosen?”) in his gentle, mocking way. To my young mind, lapoosen was a mythical and elusive delight.
When I visited my ancestral village of Sirauli in Uttar Pradesh as a 13-year-old, some children repeated the query: “Lapoosen khaoge kya?” I thought they were teasing me, but when they eventually showed me the fruit, I had to acknowledge the existence of lapoosen, the local name for the gular fruit in this area. In other regional languages, gular is known by various names—sadaphala, umber, jagnadumar, and athi.
Gular was first embedded in my memory not as a food but as a tease.
The small, green, round fruits were neither impressive to look at nor did they smell sweet. Besides, they were known to house insects, and the thought of biting into a live creature made me quickly dismiss the fruit.
Until I first saw gular, the only fig I was familiar with was the popular anjeer, which is mildly sweet and grainy in texture and often sold and eaten as dried disks. Gular bore little resemblance to the familiar pear-shaped anjeer. In India, while anjeer (Ficus carica) is grown commercially, gular (Ficus racemosa) is its cousin that grows wild in tropical and subtropical conditions, especially near river beds at altitudes of up to 1,200 metres.
In early February of last year, gular resurfaced in a conversation between my mother and Shanti aunty, our elderly house help in Patna who spoke of a gular tree near her locality. Both of them praised gular curry, claiming that it tasted like mutton. My father, a vegetarian, supported this claim based on the verdict from his hairdresser in Delhi.
When cooked, the dense, meaty texture of gular retains a bite, similar to cooked mutton. Akin to meat, gular offers nutritional benefits and hence should be preserved as a part of regular meals. However, while many mutton dishes feature prominently on dining tables in Bihar, the same cannot be said for dishes with gular.
When cooked, the dense, meaty texture of gular retains a bite, similar to cooked mutton.
The myth of gular
My father once pointed out that according to popular wisdom, only a fortunate person gets to see the gular flower, and no one he knows has ever seen one. In the rural areas of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, if someone disappeared for an extended period of time, they would say, “Phaalanwa to gular ke phool hoi gawa,” likening the person’s elusiveness to the gular flower.
Intrigued, I began researching and discovered that both gular (Ficus racemosa) and anjeer (Ficus carica) belong to the plant family Moraceae, which also includes the majestic banyan tree, along with over 800 other species. When talking about the gular fruit, one is referring to the fleshy, round, green bulbs that grow in bunches directly on the trunk of the Ficus racemosa tree. Although commonly known as a fruit, it is cooked and eaten in savoury dishes.
There’s material grounding for the myth of gular—what appears as the fruit is, in fact, the plant’s flowers, inverted and unbloomed. This is true for both fig varieties, gular and anjeer—with their introverted poses, they host tiny flowers in gatherings, scientifically known as inflorescences, that eventually become a fleshy unit that we casually call a ‘fruit’, but the accurate term is syconium. So, the true gular fruit, in the biological definition of a fruit, does not exist; what exists, instead, are the flowers of the plant, which come together to appear like a fruit. So, it makes sense that many believe the gular to be a myth.
However, what equally contributes to the mythical nature of gular is its disappearance from our diets and plates. Unlike its cousin, which is commonly eaten as a dried fruit, the gular seems to exist only in stories from the past. Undocumented but undoubtedly part of the regional cuisine, the gular fruit is suspected to have been a staple for locals in Bihar even before the introduction of potatoes and tomatoes by the Europeans.
The advent of these newcomers boasting higher starch content and tangy flavours, along with their growing popularity in the market, means that indigenous foods like gular are overshadowed. This shift is concerning as people are increasingly missing out on affordable and nutritious foods, contributing to a subsequent rise in hunger.
Scarcity and dearth in Bihar
Viewed from above, Patna reveals a flat, featureless expanse—a vast floodplain nourished by the broad, sluggish Ganga river together with its tributaries Son, Punpun, and Gandak. Along the banks of the Ganga, in Patna, lies the fertile Diara region, yielding a bounty of vegetables. The innately rich, loamy soil with plentiful water made it ideal for the abundance of gular trees.
The hinterlands around Patna were renowned for their rice, legumes, and other essential crops. The gular tree—dependent on moist, well-drained soil and ample sunlight—flourished along the river bank and gardens across the state.
Despite the region’s rich, fertile land, Bihar has witnessed years of food and agricultural insecurity. During the ravaging famine of 1767-68 in the state, the subsistence crisis became a recurring feature. While peasant folklore filled with popular wisdom had warning signals to read the weather conditions and practices to fight natural catastrophes, the rapacious new revenue policy of the East India Company, which only focussed on a continuous flow of proceeds into its coffers, disregarded both.
In their response to increased famines and dearth, one observes the British colonial officials’ similar disregard for many native foods and cultural practices in India. To them, the poor peasant knew little and could barely survive while the cultivator was well versed with the nutrient and medicinal value of the native flora. Instead, these officials felt it was a moral obligation to share fruits of the European agricultural revolution by propagating newer plants in the Indian soil.
Therefore, plants and trees that were part of the native safety kit were perhaps lost in this disdain towards local foraging practices. While the colonists introduced many new foods, several native foods succumbed to ecological degradation.
The easy availability of vegetables such as peas, potatoes, and brinjal has pushed out gular—known as umre in the region—from people’s kitchens and memories.
In present-day Bihar, concerns around scarcity and dearth appear different. While there exists a plethora of local, seasonal produce (for instance, suthani is primarily grown and used during the Chhath festival in Patna), it continues to be given a cold shoulder in regular diets. Does the British negligence of nutritious foods that were widely available still persist?
In 2008, the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation categorised Bihar as a state with “high” food insecurity. Moreover, the National Family Health Survey in 2019-20 revealed that nearly 43 percent of children under five years in the state have stunted growth, and nearly 23 percent are wasted. Much of the food and nutritional insecurity in the state can be attributed to low agricultural productivity and a lack of diversity in the food produced and consumed. Wild vegetables can then aid in nutritional security.
A similar story is perhaps unfolding in Maharashtra and Himachal Pradesh too. Shailesh Awate, founder of OOO Farms, has observed a stigma attached to eating some wild foods, including gular, even among tribal communities. Tribal communities in Maharashtra are experiencing higher levels of malnutrition due to a loss of food diversity and an overdependence on foods like rice, wheat, tomatoes, and potatoes.
Meanwhile, in Himachal Pradesh, the easy availability of vegetables such as peas, potatoes, and brinjal has pushed out gular—known as umre in the region—from people’s kitchens and memories. Dr Tara Devi Sen, Assistant Professor of Botany at SVPC University in Mandi, mentioned that although umre pickles and powder are sold locally by women self-help groups, there is little demand for them since most people are unaware of the value of the fruit.
Ways to cook gular
Until the late 1980s, foods such as karonda (Carissa carandas), ambda (Spondias pinnata), and hathichak (a kind of yam), were prominent in my household. However, in the last three decades or so, they seem to have disappeared from our plates. As Awate told me, urban dwellers have become more sanitised; they do not want to eat ripe umber fruit which might host tiny insects inside it. So, my children have never been able to taste these foods. The loss feels both cultural and nutritional.
My children have never been able to taste these foods. The loss feels both cultural and nutritional.
As we reckon with the vanishing of gular, I am intentionally returning to ways of cooking and eating it. As I looked for different ways to cook gular, I realised that it continues to be eaten in non-urban India in dishes like gular chokha, gular ke kebab, and various curries using the fruit. One of these recipes matched the gular sabzi my mother had eaten in Uttar Pradesh.
Another less labour-intensive but tasty and popular vegetable preparation in Bihar is called chokha. Here, food is steamed and mashed, to which one adds finely chopped onion and garlic with a generous pouring of raw mustard oil that lends a sharp, deliciously pungent flavour. Like potato or brinjal chokha, gular is steamed and mashed, and chopped garlic and green chillies are added. The chokha tastes best when the smaller gular fruit is used, before it hardens.
In Tamil Nadu, aththikayi poriyal is popular; the dish comprises medium-sized gular, and the fruit’s centres are discarded. In West Bengal, where gular is known as dumur, it is savoured as a bhaja, or fritter, simmered in a traditional gravy made with ginger, cumin-coriander paste, and char mogoj (melon seeds) paste. In Lucknow, the Nawabi cuisine transforms the humble gular into an elaborate dish, pairing it with mutton and chana dal to create gular ke kebab.
Listening to stories narrated by my parents and Shanti aunty, I felt a fresh inspiration to try cooking with gular, especially since it earned its reputation as a substitute for meat in a curry, setting a high bar for my expectations. Shanti aunty then plucked a small cluster of gular from a generous tree close to my home in Patna. The curry turned out well, the gular revealing its slightly acidic and astringent flavours. It was a new set of tastes and textures for me, but I suspect the gular is likely to become a regular at my table.
Priti Saxena pursued an MPhil in History from Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her curiosity about food history stems from the time she started cooking for her family. Her interest has since grown to include studying historical contexts, societal shifts, and cultural nuances of diverse cuisines. Her exploration has taught her that every meal has a story to tell, and that we need to keep them alive. Find Priti’s recipe for gular ki sabzi, as shared with her by her mother, here.
