GO DESI just launched a yummy healthy snack called Sukkeli, which is really tiny gummy bits of naturally dried Elaichi banana or “kari bale”, how we like to call them down south.

You might wonder what’s the relation between the Sukkeli banana bites & independence and we might have never found out the story either hadn’t we travelled to Ashok’s small banana farm in Gollikai village.

There’s always an interesting story behind every food or every dish in the world and, unsurprisingly, the Sukkeli banana bites are full of history. Before the banana bites reached your local store, the recipe for this apparently simple snack has travelled all the way from Maharashtra to an idyllic village in the Malnad region of Karnataka. During the Quit India movement, Ashok’s grandfather, Shri Ganapathy M. Hegde, a freedom fighter, was imprisoned in the Visapur jail together with a Maharashtrian who introduced him to sukkeli.

Once he returned home he decided to produce the banana bites himself, but the rainy weather in his village made his work difficult. So, Ashok’s grandfather had to find new ways to adapt the drying in the sun method to the weather in his village, and in 1944 he came up with the idea of a firewood home-made drier which eventually gave the banana bites their smoky flavour.

Who would have guessed a connection between bananas and Independence?

Want to own a piece of history or get in on a slice of the history pie, pick up the Sukkeli, order here.