If memory serves.

Kashmiri treats, Gowda favourites, homestyle Khasi meals. Regional cuisines are helping connect more than their communities

Memory is a tricky thing. No one quite knows how core memories form, or what the mind might remember, unbidden, years later. But we know that once the mind holds on to something - a flavour perhaps, the taste of a meal made with love - no power on Earth can shake it.

It's probably why so many Indians who've moved away from their home towns miss the food of their communities the most. Restaurants help, but only so much - their generic recipes, and hard-to-source ingredients often make things worse. "For many years, the dum aloo and rogan josh in big cities bothered me," says Gurugrambased Nalini Moti Sadhu Sadhu, 60 who grew up in Srinagar. She opened her restaurant, Matamaal (which means Grandmother's home in Kashmiri) in Gurugram in January 2016, with her husband, Surender Sadhu.

Sadhu isn't a trained chef. She learnt to cook mutton kalia and traditional rich gravies, from her grandmother and her mother-in-law. Across India, Indians have been giving lesser-known cuisines a larger platform to reach a wider audience.