Jain Bhojanalayas and Paryushan Fasting Food

For eight days late in the monsoon, the Jain quarters of Mumbai quietly change what they eat and when. Paryushan Parva is the most important observance of the Jain year — eight days in the Shvetambara tradition, closing with Samvatsari, and ten in the Digambara tradition, kept as Das Lakshan Parva and closing with Kshamavani — and it falls in the lunar month of Bhadrapada, usually somewhere between late August and mid-September, so the dates shift each year.

• Greater Mumbai holds one of the largest urban Jain populations in the country, concentrated in the old commercial lanes of Bhuleshwar, Kalbadevi and Chira Bazaar, on Walkeshwar and Malabar Hill, and in suburbs such as Ghatkopar, Mulund, Vile Parle and Borivali.
• In each of them the bhojanalaya — the community dining hall attached to a temple, an upashray or a charitable trust — becomes the centre of the day.
• Food discipline is at its strictest now.
• Root vegetables — potato, onion, garlic, carrot, radish, beetroot, ginger, yam — are set aside entirely, on the reasoning that uprooting a plant destroys the whole organism and, in Jain accounting, countless lives with it; many households drop green vegetables as well for the duration.
• Drinking water is boiled, cooled and finished the same day.
• Nothing is eaten or drunk after sundown, a practice called chauvihar, so kitchens cook early and the last sitting is cleared while there is still light.
• Observance varies with the vow taken: upvas is a complete fast on boiled water alone, ekasana allows one seated meal a day and biyasana two, while ayambil is a single bland meal of boiled grain taken without oil, ghee, milk, curd, sugar or green vegetables, served in dedicated halls known as ayambil shalas.
• What reaches an ordinary festival thali is correspondingly plain and rather lovely: moong and other dals, jowar or bajra rotla, khichdi, plain rice, a light kadhi, and sweets built from ghee, gram flour and dry fruit rather than anything that grew underground.
• For a traveller, the pleasure is in the street rather than any single doorway.
• Farsan counters and sweet shops across these lanes switch batches and put up boards announcing what has been made without root vegetables; upashrays fill with pravachan, and the eighth day brings Samvatsari Pratikraman and the greeting Micchhami Dukkadam, a request for forgiveness for any harm caused knowingly or unknowingly.
• Approach the bhojanalayas as community kitchens rather than restaurants.
• Some serve any visitor on a nominal coupon bought at the counter; others are meant for members, pilgrims or fasting devotees only, so ask at the trust office before joining a sitting.
• Leave leather outside, dress modestly, take only what you will finish — wasting food is taken seriously here — and do not photograph people praying or eating without asking first.
• Mumbai at large is a seafood-and-meat city, so around the Jain quarter, as anywhere else, look for a board reading pure vegetarian or shuddh shakahari and confirm at the counter before you order rather than assuming a lane is meat-free.
• The Bhuleshwar–Kalbadevi grid is the easiest ground for it: Gujarati and Marwari thali halls where a Jain thali without onion, garlic or root vegetables is usually available on request, farsan shops stacked with khakhra, dhokla, fafda and patra, and mithai counters turning out mohanthal, sukhdi, magaj and penda.
• Charni Road and Marine Lines add the Udupi-style idli-dosa cafes that South Mumbai runs on.
• During Paryushan many kitchens will cook a stricter version on request — ask plainly whether root vegetables were used and whether the batch was made before sunset, and you will get a straight answer.