Our Rice Tastes of Spring

Anumeha Yadav’s Our Rice Tastes of Spring is an illustrated children’s book that travels to Jharkhand’s paddy fields to tell the story of heirloom rice and its varieties grown traditionally in the region. The book was published by Red Panda, an imprint of Westland Books in the year 2025.

The book tells the story of Jinid, a young boy who lives in Sohar, a village in Jharkhand’s Chotanagpur region. This region is home to many rice and grain varieties. Ranikajal, a popular variety of rice, is used to make arsaa, a sticky festive sweet, and hadiya, a fermented rice drink that cools the body after long days in the fields. "‘Our elders observed the plant’s flowering time, leaves, stem, the colour and shape of various rice grains. They experimented and found out which rice grows best in the doin and in the taand, explains Jinid's grandfather.

The book, through colourful illustrations and simple text, speaks of how different rice grains thrive differently in the doin and the taand — the two soils found in Sohar. The doin, a wetland where seeds are sown in water on low, muddy land, nourishes rice varieties like Jeeraphool, Kanakchampa, and Sonpiya. The taand, higher and drier, grows seeds adapted to survive scattered rainfall. Among these are Jabra and Lakshmi Dighal which elongate their stems to rise with floodwaters. Matla and Getu varieties endure salty soils and can even grow in cyclones.

Jinid’s grandmother says that the paddy seeds provide grains for humans and birds alike while their leaves and stalks feed animals. The roots of the plants nurture worms buried in the soil. As seasons shift, and monsoon waters bring fish and small crabs into the paddy wetlands, a welcome addition to local meals. Straw is harvested later to grow mushrooms — an endless tessellation of nature and nurture at play.

For Jinid’s family, rice is more than starch or calories; it is a source of life and a gift from the skies above.

But one morning, a man dressed to the nines addresses the village assembly. He offers packets of “Revolution Rice” along with a mysterious powdered petrol for plants (PPP) to be applied at the roots. The crowd begins to use the new uniform grains, abandoning their old, diverse seeds. At first, the white grains bring with them the promise of change for the better. But the Revolution Rice fails to fuel bodies and provide stamina for long days in the fields. The PPP collects in shallow waters and poisons fish and crabs. The unique tastes, aromas, and colours of local rice vanish. Even the hens and pigeons do not eat the new grains, and Jinid’s grandmother rightly asks, “How can we trust it, when birds don’t?”

The stranger returns with a new formula: a powder that produces the “whitest rice ever seen." This time, the villagers are wary. They recall the missing smell of spring in the air, the vanished crabs, the taste of Ranikajal arsaa. Jinid watches as the villagers turn their wariness into active defiance of speedy but detrimental measures.

In Our Rice Tastes of Spring, Jinid learns how livelihood is tied to ways of living and being, rooted in traditional knowledge systems and forms of subsistence. 

Focus by Sharati Roy.