We seem to have become intolerant to the very foods that used to be household staples – butter, cheese, milk, and rotis! Has something truly changed, or as my mom would say, are we just trying new ways to push up our cool quotient?

What’s a “female beer”, you ask? Well, if a Gurgaon pub is to be believed, it’s some sort of sweet cocktail mixture that promises to awaken your inner tigress with just a few sips. Now all we need is those “lady-friendly” Doritos for chakna.

The mythology of food in India is storied and the best fables revolve around pregnancy. Twins, some believe, are the result of eating twin bananas – fruit that has the power to impregnate a man.

Last month, when Alps, a four-decade-old beer bar at Colaba, shut down unannounced, no one seemed to instantly notice. It didn’t warrant blockbuster social media obituaries like Cafe Zoe did. That’s the thing about Alps, it never hankered for attention or loyalty. It just waited until it earned it.

Some Blue Cheese Tzatziki to drive away Arnab's unemployment blues.

My mother has published a cookbook; my aunt has made meticulous recipe cards with the fond intention of passing them down to the next generation. And yet, an appeal to either one for how to make a favourite dish turns into an hour spent deciphering how much “about a handful” is, or when a dish “smells of dum”.

“Idli are the most boring things in the world,” tweeted Edward Anderson, a UK professor of history and expert in India-Britain studies. All hell broke loose. Anderson was schooled by angry Indians on Twitter over his blasphemous opinion – even Shashi Tharoor got involved.

Settle down in front of your TV with these piping hot dal baras as, you watch the battle for Chhattisgarh unfold. #ChhattisgarhElections2018

Indian restaurants and pubs have their own caste system. Firangs are the Brahmins of the restaurant world, and next in line are Silver Spoons – celebrities from the film industry. All the hospitality is reserved for them. At the bottom of the rung are single, young men, aka the Sad Stag Group.

Life is not a Quora thread and hence not all teetotallers have grand backstories that involve prisons, arrests, and a dozen deaths. Sometimes our reasons are as simple as we don’t friggin’ like alcohol. So stop urging us to “loosen up and embrace the times”.

Even in the coldest of Finnish winters the comfort of ghar ka khana can warm your heart enough to brave the sharp chill in the air and the stinging ice in your face. And nobody understood that better than my maa.

The humble varan bhaat toop is as versatile and ubiquitous as Radhika Apte’s appearances on Netflix. Sometimes it is plain simple comfort food, at other times it’s part of an elaborate offering to Bappa. A love for varan bhaat toop is the epitome of Maharashtrian-ness.

Ladoo, modak, and lots of goodies. It's the day to welcome the original foodie.

Don’t be a douchebag to your hungry homies fasting during Ramzan and pester them with stupid queries such as “Do you feel weak?”, or “Isn’t fasting old-fashioned?” or “Don’t you cheat-eat?”

On Durga Pujo, the lives of the big-eyed, gentle-faced, and maach-guzzling Bengalis are marred by a potent shadow of the world’s most deadly dose of ABC – ambol (acidity), bodhojom (indigestion), and constipation.

Maharashtrian cuisine is endlessly diverse. Puneri cuisine is very different from food from Konkan, Vidarbha, or Kolhapur. Within these cuisines, lie the differences of caste and class. But the problem with Sachin Kundalkar’s Gulabjaam is that it doesn’t acknowledge any of this.

Gujaratis inherit a penchant for "food terrorism". There were Gujarati kids at school who wouldn’t drink “jhoota” water in case it had been touched by a meat eater. And there was my grandmother who’d remind me that I was Jain every time I’d go for an evening snack.

Every Sunday, at the stroke of noon, a group of Indians gathers to validate its privilege through Instagram filters of eggs Benedict and mimosa. This breed of people can be classified as snobby Sunday brunch-goers.

The prize for fasting is the feast. Now there are feasts, and there is iftar, a meal so elaborate that it gives other religions #feastinggoals.

Travel and food are not as intricately related as we like to think. As a vegetarian, you can see the world if you don’t make a giant fuss about food.

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.

Gatari, the last day before the holy month of Shravan begins, is a day of indulgence. Eat meat and drink until you pass out in the gutter. That’s the mantra in Mumbai’s Maharashtrian pockets.

All those artisanal beer-drinkers, who pretend to be lederhosen-wearing Germans: Most of you wouldn’t know a Berliner Weisse from an Eisebock if it came and kicked you in the ass.

Men have the same attitudes to the whole cooking shtick as they have to cars and careers. Which means that they bring to it a sense of adventure.