Kadhi has always been more than a way of remembrance of good times for the women of my family. My nani would send my mother some flour at the end of my summer vacation. The railway station where we would take the train to my city, Kanpur, was five kilometres away from my maternal village. We would arrive at the station first and after a while, my maternal uncle would come on his cycle carrier, carrying a white plastic gunny bag filled with besan, black chana, moong daal, urad daal, freshly pickled mango pickles, and sometimes, a can of freshly extracted mustard oil. On reaching home, my mother would empty the bag and put the items into the allotted steel jars. The next day she would ask my father to bring some curd, preferably ‘sapreta dahi’, sour curd bereft of cream, produced from non-fat milk. She would use this to make kadhi. Watching her I learned that the trick to a successful kadhi lies in the constant yet gentle stirring of the pot. If you …