Biryani was not always my favourite food, as a child I was unimpressed by the heap of rice and meat on my plate. But growing up there was a phase when Biryani was a weekly affair, dreary Sunday Mass followed by Biryani for lunch, for my aspirational father Biryani was a symbol of prosperity and for my culinarily gifted mother it was her prized blue ribbon.

People have written paeans celebrating biryani, marriages are sealed, sometimes broken over biryani - like the example of the 2014 wedding that was called off when the two families quarreled over chicken biryani; the groom's family had categorically asked for mutton biryani.

Or this anecdote from the Chennai floods.

Recently a friend who went to volunteer with relief work during the Chennai floods narrated a story about driving through the pouring rain and flinging packets of sambar rice from the window to people hanging off rooftops. Instead of gratitude they were met with disappointment, and were asked, "Yenna ma biryani illeya?" (What ma, you didn't bring us biryani?). In their defence some localities were being served portions of Paradise biryani that had been flown in from Hyderabad.