Introduction

Starting from that time, food – good food – just appeared miraculously from somewhere at the back of our house in Delhi. It would be preceded by the most tantalising odours – steaming basmati rice, roasting cumin seeds, cinnamon sticks in hot oil – and the sounds of crockery and cutlery on the move. A bearer, turbaned, sashed and barefooted, would announce the meal and soon we would all be sitting around the dinner table, a family of six, engrossed in eating monsoon mushrooms cooked with coriander and turmeric, rahu fish that my brothers had just caught in the Jamuna River and cubes of lamb smothered in a yogurt sauce.