The Indian rice phobe

I wrote this book because I felt rice needed to be celebrated. I think this is borne from my guilt. Guilt because, for years, I overlooked rice as an anodyne, pasty-faced accompaniment: always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Why in the West do we treat this grain of grains like a second-class citizen? Why is it relegated to the realms of lacklustre side orders? Why must we dress it in garish, clownish hues to justify its presence at the Indian feast? Why does its cooking technique continue to confound adults in the West when children in the East can cook it before they can pronounce it?