Tried one of those fancy cloud-kitchen dal makhanis everyone keeps posting about. Forty rupees of cream hiding zero love. My dadi's recipe with half the drama beats it any day of the week, I promise you.

My son moved to Pune for his job and the house became so quiet I catch myself talking to the pressure cooker. Cooking for other people's children fills the silence a little. Nobody warns mothers about the empty-nest ache.

It started with three tiffins for my son's hostel friends. Now I can't keep up with the orders. My husband laughed at the idea of 'kitchen se business' — he's the one taping boxes shut with me at 7am these days.

Poha-jalebi is not up for debate

Non-Indori people will never understand poha AND jalebi together for breakfast, and honestly they don't deserve to. Add a little sev, thoda nimbu, some raw onion. Argue with your own tastebuds, beta, not with me.

Namaste, Komal from Indore. I run a small tiffin service from my own kitchen — twenty dabbas a day and slowly growing. My food feeds a lot of homesick students, so I've quietly become everyone's Indori mummy.