Goals: food

A wild desert melon of Rajasthan, dried and powdered as a souring agent.

The pod of the khejri — the vegetable that carries the Thar through summer.

A leafless thorny desert shrub with scarlet flowers and pickling berries.

Lasoda — sticky green fruit pickled across Rajasthan and Gujarat.

Singhara — a floating annual grown in ponds and tanks across the north and east.

Yongchak — long flat pods eaten across Manipur and Nagaland.

Bihar’s pond crop — prickly floating leaves and the popped seed of fasting food.

Sesame-like seeds used across the eastern Himalaya in chutney and oil.

A floating fern that fixes nitrogen — fertiliser and fodder that grows itself.

Timur — the numbing hill pepper of the eastern Himalaya, on a thorny shrub.