“Yet it is the tamer, more traditional takes on Italian cuisine – pink-sauce pasta, malai tikka pizza – that have white folks everywhere gasping in uncanny-valley horror, as if the sanctity of their Tuscan holiday has been destroyed by South Asians adding spices to their pasta several oceans away. Last year, at a party in London, an acquaintance told me that when his girlfriend of Italian origin visited India, ‘it was hard for her’ to see the garlic-filled, spice-laden pasta sauces. ‘She had a difficult time,’ he said soberly, as if narrating incidents of systemic inequality.”

Sharanya Deepak on the wonderful world of South Asian Italian food