Pasta la vista, Italy

The European nation isn't the only one with a pasta tradition. India has its own regional variations, as do parts of Central and East Asia. Dig in, it's all delicious

- VIR SANGHVI

What do you think of the Indian pasta tradition? If your response is one of bewilderment, then join the club. That's what I would have said too — at least until a week ago. Then, I caught the food historian Kurush Dalal on Kunal Vijaykar's podcast. Kunal looked as befuddled when Kurush went on about Indian pastas and how our tradition dates back centuries.

I was startled enough to call Kurush. Did he really believe all this stuff about ancient Indian pasta dishes? It turned out he did and he regaled me with examples from nearly every part of India.

But before we go much further, here’s a little historical perspective. All of us think of pasta as being Italian, and we are not entirely wrong. Except that the Italian pastas we know today do not have deep historical roots. There has been some outrage in Italy recently over a book published by the food historian Luca Cesari (The English translation is called A Brief History of Pasta), which argues persuasively that Italians only started eating the pasta dishes that Italy is famous for during the modern period.

There is a reference to macaroni dating back to Genoa in 1279. This is important if only to dispose of the myth that Marco Polo introduced Italians to Chinese noodles. The early references to macaroni predate Polo’s return from China.