Goals: food

Grown for the seed that swells in falooda and summer sherbets.

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.

A few canes in a corner give juice, gur and a green screen by October.

A creeping tidal palm of eastern deltas, roofing houses and sweetening sap.