Q. What lessons in cooking have you learnt from the streets?
A. I love Indian cuisine. What I’ve learnt is that there is no such thing as ‘Indian cuisine’ but many glorious regional cuisines, all wrapped up in this vast multi-dimensional continent. Simple dishes born out of necessity are often the best — idli, appam, curds; the clever use of spices, some so unusual, most of the world has never seen them. India’s culinary job is to take this to the world…we are waiting!

Gary Mehigan (left) tries on a pagdi in Jodhpur