Craving Comfort

A Michellin-star chef celebrates the everyday dishes of India.

- SUVIR SARAN

Fashion is only fashionable when it transcends the trend, and becomes a celebration of something that can stand the test of time. It is this quality of a garment or costume, an accessory or style that makes it thrilling and perennial at once, and deems it fashionable beyond the fleeting sheen of momentary gimmicks that hearten for a bit and then die—both from existence and memory. When we choose to wear or eat something again and again, when we find great deep comfort and soul-stirring satisfaction in indulging in something, it is then that we know we have hit a jackpot and are on track for making the mindful choices that shape our lives into something sustainably fashionable and deliciously healthy.

India—the cradle of civilisation in more ways than one, the home of Ayurveda, the land of countless deeply delectable vegetarian and vegan recipes—is slipping into a coma of senseless and mind-and-body-numbing grub that is most carelessly fashioned after the worst food practices of the world. Cucina Povera, the food cooked out of poverty, is revered by the Italians, and the world is obsessed by its soulful brilliance, but our