‘The Kolis Have Understood the Sea as a Shifting Community of Beings’: Mukta Patil on the Launch of Eating Against the Tide at Godrej Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest

Mumbai’s relationship with the sea is deeply intertwined with the lives of its Koli fishing communities, whose livelihoods, food traditions and cultural identities are increasingly under pressure from rapid urbanisation, ecological changes and the climate crisis. Eating Against the Tide: Stories, Recipes, and Research from Mumbai's Coastline, a book by The Locavore, documents this changing relationship through interviews, photo essays, research and recipes rooted in the region’s coastal food traditions. 

Ahead of the launch of the book at  Godrej Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest on October 25, Writer and editor Mukta Patil discusses the making of the book, the challenges facing Mumbai’s Koli community and why preserving food traditions must go hand in hand with protecting the livelihoods that sustain them.

1. Eating Against the Tide brings together stories, recipes, photographs and research to document Mumbai’s Koli fishing communities. What was the central idea behind the book, and what did you hope to capture about their relationship with the sea?

The central idea for the book emerged from the Mumbai Koli Project, a six-month long storytelling and public engagement project that spotlights Mumbai’s Kolis and their evolving relationship with the sea. The project aimed to bridge the growing distance between those who eat seafood, and the communities that harvest the sea for a living. Both the project, and the book build on the questions raised in the documentary film Against the Tide (2023) directed by Sarvnik Kaur, and carry the film’s concerns into the everyday reality of the city: What does it mean to live with the ocean today? Who harvests our seafood? And what knowledge, resilience, and uncertainty lie behind the fish we eat?

Led by a team of volunteers based in Mumbai, several who are part of the Koli community themselves, we wanted to facilitate the telling of community stories through their own voices, highlight the interconnected issues of fishing, climate change, and livelihoods, shift consumption patterns of urban dwellers, nudging them towards more seasonal and sustainable seafood choices, and build a city-wide conversation on where our seafood comes from and who sustains it, by changing perceptions around local markets and fishing communities.

2. The book explores how urbanisation, ecological changes and economic pressures are affecting traditional fishing livelihoods. Through your interactions with the community, what changes stood out to you, and how are they reshaping the lives of Mumbai’s Kolis?

While the climate crisis does have a significant impact on availability of catch, and worsens the precarity around fishing, what we understood as we moved through the project and put together the book, was that urban pressures—rapid industrialisation, coastal construction, and the foreclosing of the city around the shore were more palpable threats to Koli livelihoods. I want to caution here that no community is a monolith, and I don't wish to speak for the Koli community—there are many voices within the community articulating their needs and fighting for their rights. However, the fact that community voices have not had adequate representation around decision-making—whether around rezoning, coastal projects, commons, or fishing rights—are some themes that constantly came up during our conversations. Large infrastructure projects—including not only bridges, but also those that harden or reclaim the coast—transform shorelines in ways that are slow but irreversible. 

Fisherfolk require space to land boats, store equipment, process catch, dry fish, access markets, and sustain their livelihoods. When these spaces shrink, fishing becomes increasingly difficult, no matter what remains in the water. Sharvin Jangle, who was a volunteer for the project, and an architect who hails from the Koli community from Versova, says that Kolis disavow an extractive idea of land—where spaces only have value if they can be filled, fixed, or built upon—but laments that the present coastline is increasingly difficult to read in older ways, where spaces were approached as commons by the community. 

In terms of ecological changes, Shaunak Modi, marine ecologist and director of the Coastal Conservation Foundation, points to untreated sewage, industrial effluents, household oils, agricultural chemicals, habitat loss, rising fuel costs, and coastal construction as compounding pressures on local fishing communities. He estimates that approximately 3 billion litres of mostly untreated sewage enters Mumbai’s coastal waters daily, especially affecting fishing zones within five kilometres of the shore, where many traditional fishers operate.

3. Food is often a way of preserving cultural memory and identity. What can Koli food traditions, seasonal seafood and the knowledge surrounding them tell us about the community’s relationship with the sea?

Koli foodways have been shaped over time from valuing certain species because they were seasonal and abundant, and in that sense, cooking, recipes, and food remains one of the most beautiful and visible markers of Koli identity. For example, Bhavesh Koli, founder of Mi Hi Koli (a Mumbai-based restaurant dedicated to authentic Koli cuisine), recalls in the book how he waited each year for nevti (mudskipper) found in the creeks nearby, which were traditionally offered to the deity Gauri during the annual Ganpati festivities. Entrepreneur, fish seller, and home cook, Prachita Koli (who goes by the name Kolinbai on Instagram), similarly remembers Tisrya (clams) transformed into a slow Sunday meal, eaten together with family. For generations, the Kolis have understood the sea not as a monolithic resource, but as a shifting community of beings, each arriving with the tides. This is reflected in their cooking, in the way a recipe changes depending on whether the day’s landing brings mackerel or tiny jawala, oysters or shingala. This diversity is a means of survival, knowledge, and identity.

It is also important to note that Koli food traditions are inseparable from Koli women: women who spend their lives negotiating prices, running businesses, managing households, and caring for families while men are away at sea. For them, markets are not simply places of trade; they are places where women learn to negotiate, lead, and adapt.

4. The book documents 15 locally significant seafood species and includes a practical guide to buying seafood. How can consumers make more informed, seasonal and sustainable seafood choices, and what role can these choices play in supporting fishing communities?

Most Indian cookbooks treat “fish” as a single ingredient, as though all seafood behaves the same way, tastes the same, or cooks the same. At best, there might be a mention of seer fish, pomfret, or prawns. But the Indian coastline holds such a wealth of fish species diversity: each with its own flavour, texture, and season.

When we began creating this book for the Mumbai Koli Project, we knew we wanted to do something different. We wanted to honour the depth and breadth of India’s seafood not by means of generic categories, but by naming, celebrating, and cooking lesser-known species central to Koli cooking—ribbonfish, nevti, bombil, and mud crabs, among others—but often absent from mainstream food dialogue. The more consumers learn to recognise and appreciate individual species of fish,  the more fully they can taste the ocean. This philosophy sits at the heart of the Koli worldview.

If each of us can start with curiosity, be willing to converse with and explore our local markets, and engage more meaningfully with what's landing on our dinner plates, these small shifts across neighbourhoods can bring about change. Resources like seafood calendars created by InSeason Fish or Know Your Fish, or exploring the Fish Spotlight sections in this book, which show when a species breeds, what size to consume it at, and what kind of fishing practices are most sustainable are a great starting point to change our buying and eating habits.

5. The book features not just fishers but also women involved in shellfish harvesting, fish drying and running kitchens. How important was it to document these often overlooked aspects of the Koli food system, and what do they reveal about the community’s contribution to Mumbai?

I think, for The Locavore as an organisation, storytelling sits at the intersection of livelihoods, gender, labour relations, caste and class, and environment. For us, food is an accessible lens to enter into conversation with larger structural issues, and it was the same with this project and book. It is often things that tend to get overlooked that build the towns and cities we live in, no matter where you are. Not all these stories are about the Koli community, it also includes labourers who have migrated to Mumbai in search of work, but who now form the backbone of some of the seafood we experience in the city.

From fishers who set sail before dawn and vendors who trade in catch daily, from labourers who move catch from shore to market and workers who keep the coastal infrastructure clean and running, from those who dry fish to those that cook it, these are the people who feed us, and, in turn, shape our diverse experiences of seafood. Through the short format visual essays in the book, our aim is to capture lesser known faces whose labour often goes unnoticed, but is integral to how we engage with food.

Here we followed five workers—Sagar Hamav, Leela Solanki, Kalpana Padmakar, and Ratna and Alka—across Versova, Khar Danda, and Chimbai to understand how each of them is anchored to a different kind of work, yet collectively reveal how people navigate declining fish stocks, infrastructural shifts, and the precariousness of coastal livelihoods. While Sagar hauls ice at Versova’s Ice Factory, Leela dries several varieties of fish that she later sells at Marol Bazaar. In Khar Danda, Kalpana owns and operates Koli Katta, an eatery that serves 50-60 people daily. Further south, in the intertidal zone off Chimbai, cousins Ratna and Alka harvest clams and oysters as sole earners of their families. Together, these stories illuminate a coastal city constantly in transition, and the everyday labour of those who continue to work closely with the sea. 

6. The book builds on questions raised by the documentary Against the Tide (2023). What did the Mumbai Koli Project allow you to explore beyond the film, particularly in terms of the everyday realities of living and working along Mumbai’s changing coastline?

Led in close collaboration with the film’s impact team, including Against the Tide director Sarvnik Kaur, impact producer Sonia Parekh, and community leaders like Ganesh Nakhawa, the Mumbai Koli Project didn't just amplify a film—it carried its story forward. The campaign reflected the joys and turmoil of fishing and food, and the community’s affinity for music and dance, while highlighting traditional as well as modern practices of fishing in the shallow and deep seas. The project included nine editorial features and photo essays spotlighting individual Koli community members and the pressures facing their livelihoods. While we did not shy away from the real pressures facing the Koli community, we were equally intentional about bringing in joy, pride, and celebration of Koli food, craft, and resilience. It allowed us a chance to test and publish twenty recipes spotlighting lesser-known seafood varieties from across India’s coasts, offering delicious ways to cook with species beyond the usual favourites while supporting more seasonal seafood choices. In order to cater to wide audiences, we also deliberately designed a spread of event formats, ranging from heritage walks through Koliwadas (traditional Koli fishing settlements within Mumbai), pub quizzes, screenings, and panel discussions, culminating in Where the City Meets the Sea, an exhibition which brought together photographs, stories, recipes, and fragments of lived experience gathered throughout the project. Experimenting with various formats allowed us to engage with a broader audience, in the hope that there could be several ways that people could enter this conversation and leave with several ways they could make an impact, big or small. 

 7. As fishing becomes increasingly difficult, the Koli community’s identity is often discussed in terms of culture and heritage rather than occupation and livelihood. What will it take to ensure that preserving Koli heritage also means protecting the community’s ability to continue fishing and sustain its traditional food practices?

I would not like to be the voice of the community, but I think an excerpt from one of the essays we published, which draws on interviews with several members of the Koli community can begin to answer this question:

"The future of Koli identity is not being negotiated in a single place. It is being negotiated at harbours and fish markets. In architecture studios and community meetings. Through Instagram posts and biodiversity surveys. Through policy advocacy, scientific research, cooperative movements, and everyday acts of cooking and selling fish. What emerges is not the story of a community abandoning or being made to release its relationship with the sea, but an ever-expanding web of ways in which that relationship can be expressed. Fishing may no longer be the only way to belong to the coast, but the coast continues to shape the people who call it home. To honour Koli identity is not to frame it as heritage alone. It is to protect the conditions that allow it to remain lived: clean water, functional harbours, secure land, local markets, seasonal eating, cooperative strength, and fisher voices within decisions. When those conditions are restored, the shore can become textured again." 

Published on: Thursday, October 22, 2026, 09:55 PM IST