What did India’s darkest day look like this year? Tisha B’Av marks the completion of three weeks of abstaining from meat, music, and dancing for the Bene Israel community, as well as for Jews all around the world. But, to commemorate the manna-like presentation of Val to shipwreck survivors — ancestors — in the second century BCE, this group of Indian Jews broke the twenty-four-hour fast with a memorial dish of sprouting beans, or Val.
This basic reminder of survival was so essential to the Bene Israel that the holiday was called after it in Marathi and Urdu: Birda Cha Roza or Sprouted Beans of the Fast. (Because the Bene Israel did not identify with the rest of world Jewry until British colonist John Wilson met them, their name for the saddest day of the Jewish year ring with the languages of their Muslim and Hindu neighbors.)
Source: https://www.jta.org/jewniverse/2015/the-surprisingly-edible-way-indias-jews-mark-tisha-bav
