To write a biographical account of food in a country as diverse and vast as India is daunting, admits Shylashri Shankar, a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. And yet, Shankar has spent the last three years exploring India's relationship with food, and how it has shaped the Indian identity. "India is a multitude of little things, and a lot of different groups. No two groups are similar. That was very important for me [when researching]. One had to look at India as a hybrid, rather than an entity," she says.

Her new book, Turmeric Nation: A Passage Through India's Tastes (Speaking Tiger), attempts to explore the pluralism of our foods, and how our geography, Gods, and even our attitudes influence what we consume. Turmeric, she shares, is symbolic of the commonality within this mosaic of a culture. "It has an ancient lineage; it was found in the cooking pots of the Harappans, who lived in North India in 2600 BCE. Turmeric is also ubiquitous in India; it is found [or aspired to, in the case of very poor Dalits] in the dal and sabzi prepared even for a simple meal. While its use is not universal, the craving for turmeric is pan-Indian," she writes in the book.