It is the month of Aashadi (or Aadi). Every year, from mid July to mid August, a regiment of eager shoppers take to the streets of Bengaluru’s familiar old neighbourhoods (think Basavanagudi, Malleshwaram, Seshadri Puram, and more) to buy sarees for the litany of festivals that this special month offers. In my Tamilian neighbourhood of Ulsoor, we enjoy Ooru Habbas (community festivals) that begin in April and continue throughout Aashadi.
Event Context
Floating out of the Mariamman temples nearby, we smell the delectable scent of pulao cooked in mammoth vats and sweets of all kinds—holige, karjikai, kajjaya, godhi huggi— made out of mineral-rich jaggery of a deep amber colour. Like the golden breath of the saccharine god— Sugarcane (or kabbu in Kannada).
Kabbu is woven into Kannada culture’s fabric, folklore, and music for centuries. Before it became a high-stakes political machine in Mandya, sugarcane symbolised prosperity, romance, and sweetness across Karnataka, and sweetened popular folk songs including lullabies, morning melodies, festival music, devotional songs, and udupu patagalu (songs of the harvest).
This sweet-and-spice dance reaches its zenith in Bisi Bele Bhaath, the undisputed and absolute monarch of local comfort foods. Translated literally as “hot lentil-rice,” the dish is a marvel of spice layering. It demands a highly specialised, aromatic spice powder with the warmth of cinnamon and cloves, with a rich base of coriander seeds, lentils, and vibrant Byadagi chilies. To this we add the bele or lentils, rice, vegetables, ghee, spice mix and finally jaggery. Whether the jaggery stabilises the variety of flavours or enhances them is up to each person’s palate.
(Shoba Narayan is a Bengaluru-based award-winning author. She is also a freelance contributor who writes about art, food, fashion and travel for a number of publications)
Team Analysis
If harvest songs can be considered a musical canon, gaanada patagalu can be regarded as a genre within that canon. Here one finds references specifically to oil and sugarcane presses. Pioneering folklorists like HL Nagegowda spent a lifetime archiving these and more such oral traditions (housed today under the aegis of Karnataka Janapada Parishat) and it is their meticulous attention to detail that has sustained in our minds that distinct rhythm that accompanies janapada or shrama geetegalu (labour songs).
Back when mechanical sugarcane presses were yet to reach Karnataka, farmers used a massive stone or wooden mortar to extract sugarcane juice. A pair of bullocks walking in endless circles with binders did most of the hard work, so farmers would sing folk tunes to beat the boredom. The hypnotic, rhythmic cadence of the music would match the bullocks slow, plodding footsteps. The songs themselves were punctuated with affectionate nicknames for the animals.
“Kabbina gaana balladhu haala saviya,” wrote the great poet- philosopher Basavanna. The translation: “The sugarcane press knows only how to squeeze out sweet milk.” In the Lingayat tradition, this exemplified a core tenent that a truly virtuous person will only exude goodness and grace even when crushed by life’s trials. A famous Kannada proverb offers a similar idea: “Kabbu donkaadare savi donke?” (If the sugarcane is bent, is its sweetness bent?)
In the tripadi (three line) verse form similar to Japanese haiku, sugarcane is deployed as an apt linguistic shorthand to convey raw, unrefined beauty and the sweetness of youth.
Festivals like Makara Sankranti are, of course, unimaginable without the stuff. Tall stalks of sugarcane with their leafy green tops intact are tied to the pillars of doorways, acting as auspicious gatekeepers to welcome the sun’s northern journey. Neighbours exchange ellu-bella (a precise mix of white sesame seeds, fried gram, dry coconut, and blocks of jaggery) alongside a solid chunk of raw sugarcane. The underlying Kannada cultural mandate behind this exchange is the famous proverb: “Ellu bella thindu olle maathadi” (Eat sesame and jaggery, and speak only sweet words.)
Match Outlook
In north and central Karnataka’s folklore, sugarcane assumes a mythological role in the legend surrounding Kamana Habba (the regional avatar of Holi marks the incineration of Kamadeva, the god of desire). Local lore places sugarcane in the very palm of the god’s hand— his weapon of choice, the bow, is a Kabbiṇa Villu (fashioned out of a sugarcane stalk strung with a thread of humming honeybees, and his quiver is full of arrows tipped with fragrant flowers. When folk troupes perform the Kama Dahana theater, sugarcane stalks are brandished as symbols of life, desire, and regeneration triumphing over winter’s dead cold.
Even if you step out of classical folklore and look at cinema, sugarcane remains culturally iconic. For decades, the kabbina thota (sugarcane field) has been the quintessential backdrop for cinematic romance. From the grescale era of Dr. Rajkumar to modern romantic tracks, a dance through towering, emerald-green sugarcane stalks is a visual cue that every Kannadiga instantly recognises as a symbol of rural courtship.
Recently at Vasavi condiments store in Basavanagudi, the shopkeeper explained to me why Kannadigas put jaggery in their sambar. “It is the same reason why we add sugar to our Congress peanuts,” he said. “Because the sugar enhances the flavour of the hing.” To a purist visiting from Chennai, the inclusion of sweetness in a lunch lentil is nothing short of culinary heresy. But to a true Bengalurean, that small pinch of jaggery tossed into the boiling pot is entirely non-negotiable. It is not there to make the dish taste like a sweet; it is to balance the flavours.
