Teams are formed, and preparations start at least a week before the festival. Around 50–60 stalls are set up at the Versova Koli Seafood Festival. To run their stall, each woman in the group chips in with individual contributions. They use this combined fund to buy fish stock and cooking ingredients and pay the organizing committee for décor, rent, and electricity.
The festival is an opportunity for Koli women to explore entrepreneurship opportunities in the culinary arts by starting small-scale food businesses, catering services, or home-based commercial kitchens. Empowered Koli women play a vital role in shaping the future of their families, communities, and society at large.
Pictured here is a Koli woman preparing a dish known as a sweet banana. Making this involves peeling a ripe banana, delicately slicing it to stuff with coconut filling and then gently roasting it in butter.
The catch arrives in the morning and is immediately preserved in ice boxes to maintain flavour and freshness. This fish includes Koli specialties like Bombay duck (bombil), pomfret (paplet), mackerel (bangda), sardines (tarli, pedvey), king fish (surmai), golden anchovy (mandeli), prawns (kolambi), and shrimp (jhinga).
In the morning, preparations are made for lunch. Post-lunch, after a short break, preparation for dinner starts at 3 pm. Throughout the day, women run their stalls by operating in shifts.
The Versova Koli Seafood Festival is an opportunity to connect with members of the Koli community, including fishermen, fisherwomen, artisans, and cultural performers, to learn about their way of life, occupations, and cultural practices.
The flattened dough is then cooked on a tava heated from underneath. Koli women typically use a cast-iron tava for this purpose. The bhakri is cooked on both sides until it is golden brown, being flipped multiple times during this process to ensure that it is cooked evenly.
Kolambi (spicy fried prawn) is another popular Koli dish. The prawns are prepared with spices like turmeric, red chilli powder, garam masala and red fried to give them a red color.
Goddess Lakshmi in her form as Gajalakshmi (Lakshmi garlanded by a pair of elephants) hangs on the wall of the stall. Lakshmi is the Hindu goddess of wealth and prosperity. The Koli women offer incense to Lakshmi in the morning, before business commences, and after sunset, the same way they do at their homes.