In North Karnataka, Locals Follow These Special Rules While Plucking Mushrooms

Mushrooms are considered to be one of the most nutritious foods. Add it to your noodles, rice, gravy, sandwiches, salads or sabzis, and you will be loaded with protein. Generally, people avoid eating mushrooms in the monsoon season; but to pick mushrooms, especially wild ones, one has to go to the forest, almost like a hunter, without making any noise. The expensive and wild mushrooms grow on the edge of the forests. Now, it is being cultivated at home by many people. There are a wide variety of mushrooms in the forest. When it comes to picking them, many customs are to date practised in Uttara Kannada. Reportedly, when going out on a hunt to pluck wild mushrooms from the forest, a person cannot directly pluck it. They must also not make a mess of the spot where the mushroom grows. Also, hunters are not allowed to sit cross-legged, while picking mushrooms. Along with this, they cannot make a single noise while picking the mushroom. Only if a person agrees to all these rules and customs are they allowed to go mushroom hunting.

It is also believed that while picking a mushroom, one must only bend down at the spot where it grows and should use a sharp stick or rod to pluck it from the ground. While plucking, one is not allowed to speak, at all. Mushroom hunters believe that one must leave the place quietly without littering. Once the mushroom is plucked, it is fine to speak. All these are folk beliefs.

Mushrooms grow in scarcity and are available for just six days after growing. The hunters believe that if all the above customs are not practised, then the mushrooms will not grow in the spot the next year.

Apart from this, the folk beliefs also include picking mushrooms early in the morning or at dusk. The locals opine that plucking them during this time will result in a good harvest. This is how the mushroom hunting practice takes place in the forest. Banappa Lamani, who has been collecting mushrooms since his childhood in the forests of Hubli, said that he earned up to Rs 2,000 a day. During the other times, he works as an agricultural labourer.