Guardians of ‘green gold’ in Godavari Valley Premium

Discover the unique tradition of the Konda Reddi tribe in Andhra Pradesh, celebrating summer with bamboo shoots and fish.

It’s January 31, a Friday. As the clock struck eight, Kondla Sambhu Reddi, 62, puts on his off-white dhoti and a wrinkled white shirt to go to the weekly shandy. He steps out of his wooden hut and checks the dried bamboo shoots hanging on a string in the verandah.

The weakened current of the stream flowing close by his hut brings a smile on his face as he knows that it is an indicator of the onset of summer.

Sambhu brings home the best fish available at the shandy to cook and relish his tribe’s ancient delicacy. “We welcome summer with the delicacy made of the fish caught in our stream and the dry bamboo shoots. This is our unique tradition, a cherished memory of our Konda Reddi tribe that has been passed on for generations,” he says.

Nearly 50 Konda Reddi families live in Alluri Sitarama Raju district’s Aaku Maamidi Kota village, where the biggest weekly shandies on the tri-State border of Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Chhattisgarh are held

“Preparing dishes with bamboo shoots to welcome the summer is not a community affair. However, every family enjoys cooking and eating them as the catch of fish and prawn are abundant in our stream at the beginning of the summer,” says Sambhu’s son Nagi Reddi, 35.

“Our tribe collects and consumes the tender shoots of the Konda Veduru bamboo variety [Dendrocalamus strictus], which grows only on the hill plains,” he says.

After dropping out of college in his final year of B.Sc, he assists his father in commercial agriculture, primarily cultivating Annato, a seed used in lipstick production.