William Makepeace Thackeray, an English journalist and novelist born in Calcutta, achieved fame and fortune with his novel Vanity Fair, a story of the women in two middle-class London families doing what it takes to make it in materialistic London. Written before Vanity Fair, Thackeray’s “Poem to Curry” (see box) gives a hint of his passion for India, and especially for India’s curries. Based on his musings, here is my rendition of