India: Mother Earth’s Café Dares Climate Crises in India

Oct 29, 2019 | Manipadma Jena, Inter Press Service
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The sun has barely risen when Phlida Kharshala shakes her 8-year-old grandson awake. He hoists an empty cone-shaped bamboo basket on his back, sets the woven strap flat across his forehead and off they go into the wilderness.

By the time they reach the V-crossing at Mawpat Circle, mothers are walking children to school, while others are on their morning walk. They are all Kharshala’s prospective customers.  She quickly lays and smoothens a tattered sackcloth on the asphalt and out come mushrooms from the cone basket. Raw sienna, purple-grey, snow white, dried white, funnel shaped – jostling in tiny heaps.