We’ve all made the mistake of letting in that one stingy person into our group. This chindi friend can be identified by the fact that he seems eager to spend everyone else’s money except his own and has zero self-respect: the elaichi to your biryani, the bone in your bombil.

Indian children are taught many cardinal lessons, like touching our grandparents’ feet and returning dabbas to mom in pristine condition. The prime one is that girls and boys can never be friends. As a girl with seven close male friends, I’m often the centre of curiosity and judgment.

When I turned 22, I believed that I would live away from home, revel in my financial independence, and travel across the world, no questions asked. However reality involves my grandparents implying I settle down while they are alive and my mother demanding to know the minutiae of my spendings.

Nobody told me that moving out of the house would mean enduring a long-distance relationship with my extremely inquisitive parents. Mom calls me every day at 7.30 am to gossip about the neighbours. Dad, in a pretence at being fake-casual cool, pings to find out what am I up to after work.

Despite being from a cosmopolitan family, I realised that every day, I was unwittingly consuming our caste on my plate. In the game of kitchen politics, caste is a far more deeply riven divide, than the differences between North and South Indian food.