Varu* or was it pronounced vado?
Each neighbourhood would have a family or group who are in charge of cleaning the streets and taking away the garbage from each home to the big municipal dumpster. They can also be contracted to clean the gutters or sewers and deal with blockages, dead animals, etc.
Each night they would go from house to house collecting the left overs; they time it so that its after when most people would have dinner. That way they get all the left overs. This is called varu. And when they get back home with all the food they have collected, the whole family gets together and feasts on this. Proably the best, and only, meal of the day.
In our home, typically anything more than a couple of days old, or that which no one is interested in eating, will go to them. We would of course not give them food that is left over in the plate.
The nicer stuff that we don’t intend to eat is usually taken away in the late afternoon or early evening by the domestic help. The stuff given during varu is what the domestic help didn’t want.
Plate scraps would go outside the house where stray dogs, cats and goats got get to them, mainly dogs. These dogs, though stray are pretty much domesticated. In return for the food, they would guard the neighbourhood, barking at strangers and chasing off other dogs and sick animals.
Bio-scraps, things like banana peels, corn husks, stems and other uneditable parts of vegtables would go into to a separate spot outside the home for cows. This might sometimes be mixed with water or other liquid waste like buttermilk, soups, etc.
So you see, almost no food is wasted. All edible food is appropriately shared out between man and beast.
Just like with the water post, I am sometimes struck with how much food we tend to waste living in the United States. Not only when we go out to eat, but in the home as well. Half eaten fruits or those that go bad just sitting there, packs of snacks, cooked food, doggie bags. In restaurants too, like in fast food places, where they simply throw away an order that was slightly messed up, or those fries that the patron thinks are not fresh enough.
Definations :
Varu : when poorer people who provide a service to a neighbourhood, go door to door at night collecting left-overs. I believe that the literal meaning is “turn” as in “its your turn to play”; meaning that its your (the household’s) turn to give away their leftovers.
