Like Renee Zellwegger completes Tom Cruise in Jerry McGuire, curd rice completes me. At first glance, it looks unpretentious. It doesn't exude the aura that an aloo tikki or dum biryani do. Even when decked up and dressed up like a bride, it doesn't assume lead star status in the line-up. It is like Rahul Dravid, steady, dependable and always playing second fiddle to the other Sehwags Laxmans and Tendulkars in the line-up. It doesn’t lend itself to poetry, give a foodstagrammer an orgasm or find mention in a 100 things to eat before you die bucket list. It has many secret admirers who outwardly pretend that they are most at home with an Italian dish they can barely pronounce and brush it off with varying degrees of embarrassment, like it is below their pretentiousness to acknowledge its existence. On a bad day, it comes to the rescue of a tummy on a bender and on a good day it can empty a bottle of mango pickle. To an outsider looking in, the fierce and unflinching...