Eating Against the Tide

Eating Against the Tide: Stories, Recipes, and Research from Mumbai’s Coastline is a new book from The Locavore that explores Mumbai’s relationship with the sea through the lives, knowledge, and food traditions of its Koli fishing communities. It is a culmination of 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 Koli community is at the frontline of the food systems in Mumbai. The original Indigenous fisherfolk of this coastline, they face numerous challenges posed by rapid urbanisation and the ongoing climate crisis, often resulting in not only their displacement, but also a loss of livelihood and heritage. Despite these pressures, the Kolis have managed to stay afloat. This book is an attempt to shed light on how the community resists and persists, and what the journey tastes like.

Building on the questions raised in the documentary film Against the Tide (2023) directed by Sarvnik Kaur, this book carries 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? This is an invitation to Mumbaikars to eat seasonally, sustainably, and locally, and to recognise the human stories behind the catch. 

Part cookbook, part visual archive, and part record of a coastline in transition, Eating Against the Tide by The Locavore is an invitation to look more closely at the fish on our plates, and at the people and places behind them. Across its pages are photo essays and interviews from Mumbai’s Koliwadas, profiles of 15 locally significant seafood species, 20 home-tested recipes, a practical guide to buying seafood, maps, photographs, and research on the city’s changing coastline.