The first cookbook that I owned1 wasn’t really a cookbook at all. It was an instruction manual that came with the Sumeet mixer-grinder years before I was born. I have, for the first time in my life, irresponsibly misplaced it, and I’m unable to recall most of its contents, except for two recipes: vadai and coconut chutney, and mutton kebabs. It was such a revelation for me, at age 11, to find out that instruction manuals came with recipes.