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The legendary flavoured ground salt from India: Pisyu loon | Fork the System

On the plate in front of me, raw mango slices have been carefully arranged into the petals of a flower. My friend, Alka Dogra, urges me to eat them right away.

One bite, and immediately, my tastebuds are alight with hot, piquant salt that pairs beautifully with the sourness of the fruit.

“This has the hari mirch pisyun loon (green chilli salt) from Uttarakhand you so wanted to taste,” she shares.

But I hardly listen, already transported back in time. It’s lunchtime in sixth grade and we’re eating our way through our lunches. A girl named Mahima brings out a small packet and asks, teasingly: “Kis kis ko chahiye (How many of you want)?” We jump with delight: This is her mother’s irresistible signature spice mix.

We spread out guavas, apples and oranges. I sprinkle the coarse, deep green mixture on an orange slice and pop it in my mouth. The sharp salt and hot chilli mix with the sweet and sour orange juice in a fiery, tangy explosion of flavour.

We craved that legendary spice mix. And when Mahima left school the next year, we had to eat our fruit with plain salt, sulking.

I’d almost forgotten this memory, but 20 years later, I was reminded while enjoying some fruit with Alka in Delhi one sunny winter afternoon. She lamented: “Daadi ka pisyun loon hota to kya baat thi (If only my grandmother’s flavoured salts were here).”

Ingredients to make green chilli garlic pisyun loon [Courtesy of Rushina Ghildiyal]

“Pisyun what?” I asked, confused.

“It’s our special salt from Uttarakhand,” she responded and promised to share some pisyun loon with me the next time her mother sent some.

It was worth the wait. As I savour the salt-sprinkled mango slices Alka has laid out for me, I am delighted to now have a name for the spice mix I loved so much as a schoolgirl.

Pisyun loon [Courtesy of Rushina Ghildiyal]
Freshly-made green chilli garlic pisyun loon [Courtesy of Rushina Ghildiyal]

A cherished condiment

Pisyun loon (which translates to “coarse salt ground with spices”) is a cherished condiment in Uttarakhand. Deeply connected to the local culture, there are even songs written about it. “Hoon Pissyu lone” tells the story of a boy’s longing to return to his village for his mother’s salt. And “Hai Kakdi Zilema loon pisse sile ma“ is about a girl who sees ripe cucumbers and dreams of happily grinding salt for her fiance.

Culinary expert Rushina Munshaw Ghildiyal says she discovered that the salty condiment exists only in the kitchens of Uttarakhand. In her documentation of the area’s cuisine, which she has been compiling for 25 years in efforts to capture recipes – her husband is originally from the area –  she has recorded more than 17 types of flavoured salts, each with claims to “health and medicinal properties.”

“Every cook and home in this region has their own variations based on individual and family tastes,” she says, adding that she is looking to publish a cookbook next year.

Home chef Nitika Kuthiala, who is an expert in cuisine from Himachal, a neighbouring state, says: “It is like the Indian quintessential garam masala [everyday spice mixture] recipe every family has and is prepared with whatever is available.”

People who have grown up with the condiment often have fond memories from their childhood. Nandini Jayal Khanduri, who is a jewellery designer from the state capital Dehradun, remembers running home from school every day to watch her mother making khatai with neighbours while sitting in the winter sun.

The mixture, which is a regional favourite, is prepared with chakotra (grapefruit), malta (blood orange) and galgal (hill lemon). The fruit is peeled and pulped before mixing with the salt and spices. Sometimes roasted sesame powder is added to reduce sourness. It’s often enjoyed with parathas or flatbread. “My mouth waters even as I speak about the khatai,” Khanduri says, laughing.

Kavita Manralm spent her childhood in Ranikhet where her father, an army officer, was posted. She remembers enjoying lemons from the back yard with green chilli garlic pisyun loon – her favourite. As an adult, she makes this salt in her home in Ghaziabad.

Raw mango slices with green chili salt pisyun loon [Nupur Roopa/Al Jazeera]

Salty history

Because salt is an essential element for vital body function, and humans also tend to crave it, it’s historically been used as currency, but also heavily taxed and even at the centre of conflicts, such as the War of Ferrara (1482–1484) between Venice and Ferrara and the Salt War (1556–1557) between Naples and the Papal States. The famous Dandi March, also known as the Salt March, led by Mahatma Gandhi in 1930 was a vital event during India’s struggle for independence from British rule. It was a non-violent protest against the British-imposed salt tax, which gave the British government a monopoly on salt production and distribution, making it illegal for Indians to collect or sell salt.

Salt’s indispensability and cost made it precious, forcing people to find more of it — Ghildiyal cites a wild salty leaf used by the tribal communities of the Sahyadri region in western India and a saltbush used by the Aboriginal community in Australia – and use it sparingly.

Because of its potency, salt can be used in small amounts to make pickles, chutneys and loons (salts), allowing it “to be stretched”, Ghildiyal adds.

That’s why “this salt tradition developed in both Svaneti, Georgia, and Uttarakhand, India, two mountainous places where salt had to be carried over difficult terrain”, explains Naomi Duguid, a Canadian cookbook author who wrote The Joy of Salt. In Quebec, Canada, a salt mix called “herbes salees” is made with finely chopped fresh green herbs and chopped carrots, then stored in jars and used as a seasoning for a variety of dishes, Duguid explains.

The origins of pisyun loon remain somewhat of a mystery. However, Ghildiyal has a theory: The Bhutiya community, which spans the three Indian states bordering Tibet and Nepal (Sikkim, West Bengal and Uttarakhand) historically traded herbs and spices with each other. Because salt was sold in rocks or blocks, it needed to be ground with a silbatta (grinding stone) – spices also required grinding. Ghildiyal believes that this led to the accidental creation of flavoured salt. “Someone would have used the mortar and pestle that was used to grind something else previously to crush the salt and found the residual masala left on the stone augmented its flavour.”

A lack of fresh vegetables — especially in the hills — during the winter may have also been a factor, says Tanaya Joshi, a chef from Uttarakhand, prompting people to explore new ways of preparing meals.

Women holding packets of pisyun loon [Courtesy of Shashi Raturi/Namakwali]

Crafting flavoured salts

There is no documentation of recipes, variations or combinations of these salts, shares Ghildiyal. Family recipes, which are “mostly handed down by great grandmothers and grandmothers”, have been rooted in the availability of ingredients, personal preferences and “the home’s main cook’s philosophy” – even the medicinal properties of the ingredients. Thus, mixtures differ from home to home and from region to region.

This is also the case with svanuri marili or Svan salt, the flavoured salt of Svaneti, Duguid notes, which typically includes dill, fenugreek, marigold petals, coriander, caraway, dried red chiles and a lot of garlic. It can be used as a meat marinade or rub, seasoning during cooking or a condiment.

For pisyun loon, dried spices such as asafoetida (fennel), basil, carom (caraway), mint, coriander or green chillies are added to white, pink and sendha namak (rock salt), Kuthiala says. Fresh coriander, which is not always available in this region, is used when in season. “The main ingredient is salt, and you can add anything you prefer.”

In the Kumaon region, salts made from bhang (hemp seeds), jakhya (wild mustard) and bhang jeera are quite popular, Joshi says.

In Uttarakhand, green garlic salt is a winter speciality. Also during this season, iodine, pink and rock salts are blended with amchur (dry mango powder) and sprinkled on oranges, guava and papaya. In the summer, mint salt and chilli cumin salt are very popular, and various salts are added to dahi raita (yoghourt mixed with tomatoes, onion or cucumber) and mattha (tempered buttermilk).

During both seasons, the mixture is spread on paper and dried in the shade – never in the sun – to retain its flavour; however, it’s eaten fresh during the monsoons, Kuthiala explains. After it’s been dried, the mixture resembles salt granules. Households will often make seven or eight varieties; a batch has a shelf life of about two years.

When it comes to eating pisyun loon, options are plentiful. It can be sprinkled on fruits and vegetables, cooked into dishes, mixed with rice and ghee, and added to ramen or instant noodles.

Joshi recalls eating ragi (finger millet) roti smeared with ghee and pisyun loon. Spreading the flavoured salts on roti is a popular lunch option – it travels well and doesn’t require refrigeration.

Finger millet roti with white butter and garlic salt [Courtesy of Rushina Ghildiyal]

Green garlic salt and sugar are often served with jhangora (barnyard millet) that’s been cooked in buttermilk to create a porridge called paleu or chencha eaten for breakfast. The flavoured salt used with this porridge varies with the seasons: for example, hare lehsun ka namak (green garlic salt) in winter and jeere ka namak (cumin salt) in summer.

Finding international fans

Pisyun loon is now being sold via social media and online shopping platforms, thanks to its increasing popularity in other regions of India and abroad.

Shashi Raturi has been running an NGO (Mahila Nav Jagran Samiti) in Dehradun since 1982, helping women find employment. “We used to have lunch together and all these women bought their homemade salts,” she says. This gave her the idea of selling pisyun loon to generate income and employment.

Raturi started selling the flavoured salts in 2015 under the label Namakwali (“women with salt”) – they’re now available on Amazon. “We use garewal namak (rock salt) and not the commercial salt,” she says, and the mixtures are made by hand using a pestle and mortar. Preparing a batch of 10kg (22lbs) of flavoured salts takes about three to four days.

Women sample pisyun loon from Namakwali, which provides employment opportunities [Courtesy of Shashi Raturi/Namakwali]

Deepa Devi from the village Kakrighat, near Almora, has been selling flavoured salts since 2011. Starting on a small scale with a shop on the main road, she prepared a variety of mixtures with chillies and sold around 5,000 rupees ($60) worth of salt in the first two years.

Today, working with a team of nine women and taking orders via WhatsApp, she sells more than 20 varieties made from chilies, local spices and herbs like timur, ginger, green garlic, cumin, asafoetida, sesame seeds and more. She has also trained around 500 women and set them up in their own independent businesses.

Ghildiyal says she hasn’t found a tradition similar to flavoured salt-making anywhere else in India, and she wants to keep the practice alive. During culinary sojourns in Uttarakhand she’s been given jars of ghar ka namak (homemade salt) by homeowners, and she’s also been developing some of her own flavours, such as stinging nettle.

Our ancestors had figured out how to use salt judiciously to survive in famine, in difficult places and during seasons of scarcity, Dugaid says. “Salt needs to be respected and revered.”

Uttarakhand’s flavoured salts are more than mere condiments. They celebrate relationships, create memories, inspire stories and songs, and commemorate the beloved people who make them: grandmothers, mothers, sisters and wives.



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Maqali, a simple Syrian dish that saved a displaced family’s Ramadan iftar | Food

ِAl-Yaman Camp, Idlib, northwest Syria – Looking to make something tasty and thrifty, Bayan al-Jassem, 32, decided to reach for a staple of the Syrian kitchen, maqali (said with a glottal stop).

The decision was reached a few hours before sundown on the second day of Ramadan, the holy month of fasting for Muslims across the world, and a decision was needed so food could be readied for iftar, the sunset breaking of the fast. Because maqali is a simple dish, true to its name which means “fried things”, Bayan was not too worried about whipping it up in time.

“We all love fried vegetables,” Bayan said, referring to her husband and five children, adding that the vegetables in question that day would be zucchini, eggplant, cauliflower and potatoes, a classic combination.

Her husband, Khaled al-Reem, 45, was dispatched to the market to pick out the required ingredients and bring them home.

Then the couple started working together to prep, with Bayan heading out to the communal water tank to wash the vegetables and then sitting on the floor in the tent with Khaled to peel and chop the vegetables into the sizes they wanted for frying.

Maqali is a simple dish to prepare, as the recipe’s steps are limited to chopping or slicing the vegetables into the preferred size and then deep frying them to the preferred brown, so Bayan had little to worry about in that regard.

Khaled was dispatched quickly to the market to find the vegetables that would be needed for maqali [Ali Haj Suleiman/Al Jazeera]

She and Khaled had to make sure that they prepared more potatoes than the other vegetables though, as their eldest son, Hisham, is especially partial to fried potatoes.

What was going to pose a problem though was heating the oil in her battered, blackened cooking pot perched above a delicate fire stoked painstakingly with twigs as sunset approached.

But she managed, and set to frying, with Khaled standing by to help and to ferry plates of finished food back to the tent from the spot where they had set up their makeshift open cooking space.

A little spice, if you have it

Maqali are usually sprinkled with a mix of spices as they emerge hot from the frying oil, things like cumin and hot red pepper flakes may feature in that mix.

They are also served with a range of different sauces, depending on the family’s preference – some favour a tart, rich tahini sauce and others lean towards a pungent garlic sauce with lemon.

But Bayan and her family are so impoverished by the war and their displacement that they do not have the money for sauces – they, like thousands of other internally displaced people (IDPs), had come to the Yaman displacement camp five years ago when they had to flee their home in Khan Sheikhoun.

Bayan managed to get the fire going in their outdoor cooking space and set to frying vegetables in her battered, blackened pot [Ali Haj Suleiman/Al Jazeera]

So she chooses to sprinkle the vegetables with salt alone and serve them with a simple chopped salad.

By the end of the 13th year of war in Syria, the World Food Programme estimates that 12.9 million Syrians are suffering from food shortages – more than half of the estimated population of 23.4 million.

And with the continuous rise in food prices, which has more than doubled in the past year, families with the lowest incomes are only able to secure one-fifth of their needs.

To try to make ends meet and secure what they need, Bayan works with her husband and those of their children big enough to work – the eldest is 10 years old and the youngest two – collecting scrap and metal cans to sell.

Memories of Ramadans past

During Ramadan, practising Muslims do not eat, drink, smoke or have sexual relations from sunrise until sunset.

The sunset meal to break the fast takes on a festive air, with many people having gatherings with friends and families or community members, and for that, festive tables are prepared to break the fast.

Bayan remembers past Ramadans when the family table was laden with rich, complicated dishes. But they are happy to be together, sharing this simple meal of fried vegetables and salad [Ali Haj Suleiman/Al Jazeera]

“We used to cook kibbeh and mahshi,” Bayan said sadly, recalling the famous, meat-rich recipes (kibbeh is a combination of fatty spiced ground lamb and a casing made of bulghur and ground meat, while mahshi is stuffed vine leaves cooked over lamb ribs for a rich flavour) that used to adorn the family’s table before the war.

Today, even frying vegetables is a luxury for Syria’s poor families, now 90 percent of Syrians.

“If we can’t buy oil, we can’t fry,” Bayan said. “We’ll usually just eat boiled potatoes.”

It costs a minimum of 250 Turkish lire (about $8) to make maqali, Bayan estimates, while her family’s combined income is 60 to 70 lire ($1.87 to $2.18) a day, so they either have to go into debt to get enough food or adapt by enduring hunger and limiting themselves to one meal a day.

But during Ramadan, Bayan tries everything to give her children whatever special requests they have for the iftar.

“When they ask me for a specific dish, I do what I can to secure it by asking neighbours or others for help,” she said, adding that sometimes she manages it but at other times she has to try to distract them from their cravings instead.

Khaled, left, next to 10-year-old Hisham and eight-year-old Ahmed with six-year-old Zeinab and five-year-old Khitam in front and Bayan, second from right, holding two-year-old Mosab’s hand [Ali Haj Suleiman/Al Jazeera]

A year ago, the family was receiving about $50 a month in relief support, but the decline in humanitarian funding, which hit 37.8 percent of requirements for the 2023 Humanitarian Response Plan of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), meant even that small amount had to be stopped.

Regardless of the difficulties they face, along with 16.7 million other Syrians who need aid in 2024 according to UN estimates, they still try to find that special joy that Ramadan brings.

Bayan still remembers simpler times before the war during which her extended family gathered around a table filled with delicious food. “Family gatherings are the best thing about Ramadan,” she said.

Now, the family waits for the call to Maghrib prayers, which signal that they should break their fast.

Bayan, her husband and their children sit on the floor to eat their simple yet delicious meal together, passing around the plates of fried vegetables and salad, wrapping morsels up in the bread they were able to buy that day. It is not much, but at least they are together and they have food to eat, and that brings a smile to their faces.

The family sits down to share their simple iftar meal [Ali Haj Suleiman/Al Jazeera]

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The Sikh kitchen that feeds Manila’s moneylenders | Fork the System

Manila, Philippines – “Don’t treat this like a full dinner. Only take small portions,” a mother warns her son as he reaches for a second helping of zarda – saffron-hued, sweetened rice topped with heaps of raisins and cashews – on the crowded buffet-style table at the Khalsa Diwan Temple in Manila. “We must not waste anything.”

I overhear her while standing in line to sample the different varieties of barfi, a dense, milk-based fudge laden with sliced almonds – a popular sweet from the Indian subcontinent. The mother and son are among the 100-plus members of the Metro Manila Sikh community who have gathered here in late August to celebrate the Parkash Utsav of Guru Granth Sahib, a commemoration of the first opening ceremony of Sikhism’s central religious scripture.

It is a busy day for the community kitchen, the langar. Dozens of volunteers snake their way through the crowd to serve rotis, fresh off the tandoor. Sitting cross-legged in rows across the main hall of the gurdwara, or Sikh place of worship, attendees dip roti into shahi paneer, a creamy curry with pockets of hard cheese, or happily spoon up the gajar ka halwa, a fragrant carrot pudding, neatly portioned off inside large steel trays.

Surveying the room, I momentarily forget that I am in the Philippines.

People gather to eat at the main dining hall at the temple [Sonny Thakur/Al Jazeera]

The birth – and longevity – of moneylending in Manila

Founded in 1929 by a small group of Punjabi migrants, Khalsa Diwan Temple is Manila’s oldest gurdwara. It marked the beginning of a budding Sikh community in the Philippines.

Punjabi migrants, who form the bulk of the India diaspora population in the Philippines (nearly 82 percent), began to trickle into the country in the 1920s, explains Joefe Santarita, a professor at the Asian Center at the University of the Philippines Diliman. First, they tried their hand at farming, then moved to small-scale businesses.

“From that experience”, Santarita says, “they realised Filipino families needed money.” A shift towards moneylending likely happened during World War II when there was an urgent need for capital among micro-entrepreneurs in rural areas, he adds.

While financial inclusion in the Philippines has improved dramatically since then, 44 percent of Filipinos did not have access to a formal bank account as recently as 2021, according to the Philippine central bank, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

The Punjabi migrants tapped into a consistent demand from this unbanked community, offering loans for small-scale entrepreneurs or micro-enterprises – and not asking for documents or collateral. To compensate, loans are offered at a hefty 20 percent interest.

Today, the moneylending community is interwoven throughout the Philippines, even if it largely sits on the fringes of the law. Moneylenders are now an integral part of the country’s informal economy, zipping through neighbourhoods on their motorbikes to solicit new clients and service existing ones. They operate on an informal basis without any permits, often cultivating new clients by offering various goods, such as small electrical appliances, on instalments.

The returns are so lucrative, many Indian migrants, mostly from the state of Punjab, move to the Philippines to pursue moneylending.

However, no business happens at the gurdwara, which functions as an anchor of the Sikh community. Here, the moneylenders leave their work behind to perform sewa (“selfless service” in Punjabi). One way is to help keep the huge community kitchen running as a place where anyone, regardless of religious denomination, can get a free meal.

People enjoy food in the main dining hall at the gurdwara [Sonny Thakur/Al Jazeera]

When I visit the gurdwara again on a February afternoon, the langar is quiet. A small group of Indian medical students sits cross-legged, dipping thick whole wheat chapati into a mashed masoor dal. The dal is simple but flavourful, spiced with heaps of onion, garlic and red chilli powder. The food at the gurdwara is different from back home in their state of Andhra Pradesh on India’s southeastern coast, but they are enjoying it. The quality, they say, keeps them coming back.

“It’s also free,” Vikram Seetak, the temple’s head, reminds me when I tell him the students love his food. Seetak has been working in the gurdwara kitchen since 1999. Unlike the majority of his peers at the gurdwara, Seetak did not go into moneylending. After moving to Manila from a small town near Jalandhar in eastern Punjab, where he worked at his family’s mithai (sweets) shop, he took up a job at the nearby South Asian grocery store. After a few months, he became a full-time cook at Khalsa Diwan.

The fresh produce used for meals is donated by the community and cooked by volunteers [Sonny Thakur/Al Jazeera]

Seetak now heads a team of eight: a mix of Indian-origin and Filipino cooks, one of whom has worked with him for the past 20 years. He likes being in charge of the kitchen. “I have to do the mixing of the spices myself,” he tells me while straining a thick batter of gram flour and sugar syrup into a large deg, a thick aluminium pot.

He is making badana, more commonly known as boondi – bite-sized, sharply sweetened, fluorescent orange balls – in preparation for the weekend’s festivities. In addition to catering a wedding at the gurdwara, Seetak and his team are gearing up to celebrate the birth, in 1630, of the seventh Sikh guru, Guru Har Rai.

Vikram Seetak, who runs the kitchen at the temple, cooks the morning’s last batch of food [Sonny Thakur/Al Jazeera]

By late afternoon, the gurdwara is teeming with volunteers preparing food. They chop tomatoes and onions and sort heaps of spinach to prepare a gurdwara staple: palak pakoray (spinach pakora), which is spinach leaves dipped in a gram flour batter, spiced with roasted coriander seeds and red chilli powder and then fried. There will also be vegetarian “mutton”.

“It has to be a full vegetarian menu,” Seetak says in response to my quizzical look. “So we get a mutton substitute made of soybean.”

While Sikhism does not mandate vegetarianism, all gurdwaras serve only vegetarian cuisine to accommodate the dietary restrictions of people from different faiths as well as members of their own community. Even in Manila, some Sikhs choose to be vegetarian in their homes despite the predominantly omnivorous culture of the Philippines.

Food is served is large metal pails in the main dining hall [Sonny Thakur/Al Jazeera]

Inside the gurdwara office, community volunteer Jagjit Singh, a first-generation Indian Filipina, is standing with the secretary at a laptop reviewing the ingredients they need to buy to prepare pancit, Filipino-style noodles. “Sesame oil, cauliflower, carrots, calamansi, Baguio beans,” she narrates in fluent Tagalog. Because pancit is typically prepared with sliced meat or seafood, the meat substitute will be a vegetarian tapa (jerky), also made with soybeans.

A changing Indian food culture in the Philippines

Singh was born and raised in Manila and now lives with her husband, Shomkor, a Sikh moneylender, in Cavite, a nearby province to the south. Unlike many of her Sikh community members, Singh is a Philippine citizen and firmly identifies as an Indian Filipina. Her father moved to the Philippines from eastern Punjab at the age of five with his parents. Both Singh’s father and grandfather became moneylenders.

“I actually miss Filipino food when I go to India,” Singh tells me. “We like to have a mix of both at home.”

In the morning, she and Shomkor start with a Punjabi-style breakfast, such as aloo poori, a bright and spicy potato curry with puffy, deep-fried bread. For lunch, they switch to Filipino food: adobo, menudo or mechado – rich, Philippine-style stews prepared with meat. And in the evenings, it’s a toss-up.

Singh and her husband are omnivores. “Even though my husband took Amrit [an initiation ceremony that comprises one of Sikhism’s four religious rites], he likes to eat meat,” she says, adding that he “actually prepares Filipino dishes quite well”.

The practice of vegetarianism after taking Amrit varies. Some sects are vehemently against eating meat and eggs while others are not.

Manor Singh, another temple member and moneylender, and his wife are strict vegetarians. Originally from Jalandhar in eastern Punjab, Manor Singh followed his uncle in 1999 to Manila, where he got his start in moneylending. Despite having lived in the Philippines for more than 20 years, Manor and his wife eat vegetarian food. This can include everything from cauliflower and peas in a spiced tomato-onion base to kadhi chawal, lightly spiced gram flour fritters nestled in a turmeric-hued yoghurt curry.

A volunteer stirs a large pot of saag as it simmers on the stove [Sonny Thakur/Al Jazeera]

In what would be the winter in Punjab, the Singhs enjoy makki ki roti (stiff roti made with cornmeal) paired with sarson ka saag (slow-cooked mustard greens and spinach topped with sliced garlic tempered in ghee).

They are able to find all the necessary spices at a South Asian grocery, which has six locations across metro Manila. Before the chain opened, Manor Singh remembers the owner selling spices directly from his van outside the gurdwara. Over the years, many South Asian grocery stores have popped up in the neighbourhood.

“Oh, you get everything in the Philippines!” says Ritu Wasu, who runs the Indian restaurant Harishi with her husband and daughter. She sits in the gurdwara office with her friend who runs a small Indian catering business.

For the past five years, Harishi has been serving up a mix of North and South Indian cuisine to a clientele of Indians and Filipinos. “By the time we opened the restaurant, Filipinos were already familiar with Indian food. They especially ask for chicken biryani,” she tells me.

Some speculate that biryani’s popularity in the Philippines can be attributed to Filipinos’ exposure to Indian food while working in Gulf states. “They go to Saudi Arabia and get a taste of biryani and come looking for it back in the Philippines,” a community member explains.

Palak pakoray (spinach pakora) – spinach leaves dipped in gram flour batter, spiced with roasted coriander seeds and red chilli powder, and then fried – is a gurdwara staple [Sonny Thakur/Al Jazeera]

Chicken and rice are a popular pairing in the Philippines. What better introduction to South Asian food than richly spiced chicken layered into fluffy basmati rice?

“Filipinos have come to love Indian food,” Santarita says.

Acceptance and assimilation

Despite being a common fixture for almost a century, the Punjabi moneylending community is still viewed by some with a level of suspicion. Although the gurdwara community members identify themselves as “Bumbays” (derived from the city Mumbai) or “5-6” (“you take five, pay back six” with interest), both are considered largely derogatory terms in the rest of the Philippines.

In 2017, then-Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte called for the arrest of “Bumbay” moneylenders. Opinion pieces and editorials calling for an end to “Bumbay loan sharks” also began to appear in major newspapers around the same time.

Filipino children, meanwhile, have always grown up hearing “Behave, or I’ll call the 5-6!”

Jagjit Singh, who feels well-integrated into the Philippines, believes there has been a shift in attitude in recent years. “It’s not like that any more. Now children will instead tell parents they will send the Bumbays after them. … There is no longer that fear of us,” she says.

Some claim that Duterte’s campaign against the 5-6 was successful, in large part due to the launch of a competing lending scheme by the government’s Department of Trade and Industry and the Securities and Exchange Commission’s broader efforts to regulate lending activities rather than carry out wholesale arrests of small-scale moneylenders. Santarita believes Duterte’s orders for arresting “Bumbay loan sharks” was mostly rhetoric.

“It’s difficult to stop the moneylending and from Bumbays conducting business because there is a dire need of capital among customers who are considered unbanked,” Santarita says. In addition to a lack of access to formal bank accounts, borrowing from formal institutions is costly and cumbersome with high collateral and burdensome documentary requirements. The critical function of micro-financing partially helps explain why Indian and Indian-origin moneylenders continue to operate without permits.

Motorbikes parked outside the temple. The moneylenders use motorbikes to solicit new clients and service existing loans in the neighbourhood [Sonny Thakur/Al Jazeera]

Due to the high returns of informal moneylending, the scale of migration from Indian Punjab to the Philippines spiked at the turn of the 21st century. In response to many Indian migrants living undocumented in the Philippines from the 1940s to the 1960s, the Philippine government made a strong push to regulate their presence, forcing them to seek residence permits or face deportation.

To avoid being hassled, many Indian migrants, with help from the Indian embassy in Manila, became legal residents, but few have sought citizenship. Out of an estimated 120,000 to 130,000 residents of Indian origin in the Philippines only 5,000 have acquired citizenship.

Manor Singh thinks being a resident is just fine: “We have most of the rights of Filipino citizens. We just can’t vote.”

While the full assimilation of Punjabi immigrants into the Philippines may be slow, more subtle integration is happening, like in the grocery shops. “The arrival of speciality Indian grocery stores and restaurants stemmed out of the need of Indian migrants to be able to source ingredients for their food,” Santarita says.

A variety of spices in the temple pantry [Sonny Thakur/Al Jazeera]

This is also in part due to the larger makeup of the Indian and Indian-Filipino population, which includes wealthy (predominantly Hindu) businessmen from states such as Sindh (now part of Pakistan) who moved to the Philippines after the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947.

Now, you can find South Asian ingredients in mainstream grocery chains, and a growing number of Indian restaurants cater to Filipinos as well as Indian-origin patrons.

Filipino cuisine comes home

There are gradual changes taking place within Indian-origin kitchens as well. While Jagjit Singh wishes more people from her community would embrace Filipino food, Indian migrants have begun to slowly incorporate Filipino cuisine into their meals.

Was it Jagjit’s idea, I ask, to serve Filipino pancit at the langar?

“It was actually ‘the guys’,” she tells me, referring to the committee that manages the gurdwara. “I’m just helping.”

Even Wasu, who generally prefers Indian food, sometimes prepares Filipino dishes at home. “Sometimes I make chop suey or Filipino-style pasta or buko pandan [a popular Filipino dessert of coconut, pandan leaves and sago pearls],” she says. Her children especially enjoy Filipino food, she says, adding: “They are not fussy. They will eat whatever is served.”

Back in the gurdwara kitchen, where preparations for the weekend is in full swing, I ask Seetak what dishes he likes – Filipino or Indian? He shares Wasu’s children’s sentiment: “With food, … you don’t play favourites.”

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