If someone asked you to name that one thing capable of reducing grown Indian males to slobbering, infantile idiots, what would you come up with? The prospect of Sachin Tendulkar's next test century? A marriage alliance with that girl two streets away, who has the brains of a mosquito but the breasts of Mallika Sherawat? The construction of more compound walls to facilitate full-bladdered passers-by on the roadside? All valid choices, but I'm going with Mom's Home Cooked Food – that craving... no, that borderline psychotic obsession unique to us.

When Amos from America wails that he's hungry, his mama slaps together two slices of bread, barely remembering to squirt in some store-bought mayo. When Junsaku from Japan opens his lunch box, there's likely raw fish in it, neatly surrounded by raw fruits, on top of a layer of raw vegetables. When Musu-Musu from the Masai tribe announces, “Dinner's ready,” she really means, “Go feed yourself on whatever's writhing at the other end of the spear. And Junior, don't drink up all the blood. Leave some for your baby sister.”

But Indrajit from India merely has to open his eyes in the morning, and even before the fog has cleared from his mind, the steam from fresh, home-brewed coffee has invaded his nostrils. And when he goes to bed at night, it's only after loosening his pyjama naada to accommodate a stomach that has no more space than the insides of a boa constrictor that's just made a meal of a bull elephant – all thanks to Mom's Home Cooked Food.

After decades of being pampered with idlis more delicate than our equation with Pakistan, the Indian male knows that it's all about Mom's Home Cooked Food – rather, One's Own Mom's Home Cooked Food. That's why, we secretly smirk whenever a friend asks us to stop by his house for a taste of His Mom's Home Cooked Food. (Can you believe the sheer gall of it all – just because my mom is a super maker of home cooked food, he automatically thinks his is too! Hah!) Of course, it's a different matter that you accept the invitation anyway, and end up emitting the obligatory burp signifying satisfaction. (You'd better, if you still want him for a friend. As an Indian male, he'd rather marry the 'before' girl in the Fair & Lovely ad than admit to his mother's cooking being anything but perfect.)

Such consideration for Someone Else's Mom's Home Cooked Food is extremely useful in the long run. When we're in a hostel, for instance, hundreds of kilometres away from home, we make it a point to visit Kamlakar Uncle regularly – the same Kamlakar Uncle we hated as a child because he always remarked how we were still at the same height, unlike his precious Arun who never seemed to stop growing. So okay, the man is still a pompous ass, but Shanti Aunty is a wizard (or, by gender, would she actually be a witch?) in the kitchen. Agreed, Pain-in-the-Butt Uncle's Wife's Home Cooked Food isn't quite the same as Mom's Home Cooked Food, but why complain when the other option is Sweaty Paunchy Finger-in-the-Nose Ramu's Mess Cooked Food? Why, some of our away-from-home brethren even get married early so that they get Wife's Attempts At Imitating Her Mom's Home Cooked Food Which Is So Clearly Inferior To Your Mom's Home Cooked Food But Hey A Man Can't Have Everything.

What's behind all this is the not-entirely-healthy connection between the Indian man and his maa. (It's a wonder no stand-up comic has yet come up with jokes about this phenomenon. “Why doesn't the desi male shop for belts? Because the umbilical cord is still holding his pants up.” And so on.) A daughter may be impatiently brushed off, but the son... ah, the son needs to be kept happy, especially if he's the eldest one – the alpha beta, if you will. As one myself, I can confidently claim that the three-month-pregnant Queen of the Royal House of Windsor, due to deliver an heir after twenty-five frustrating years of trying, cannot possibly be more fussed over than the first-born male of an Indian household.

Needless to say, such overbearing attention (from the mother) and such obsessiveness (from the son) won't let you get away without some sort of side effect – oh, like irreversible brain damage, or at least some version of it, like my own food phobias.

I was – and I still am – a fussy eater. You could say that, for me, it isn't about Mom's Home Cooked Food as much as The Subset of Mom's Home Cooked Food That I Like, But Only When Prepared In The Way I Like, And Only When I'm In The Mood. For instance, I was never a fan of healthy vegetables, so my mother made sure I had only the vegetables I liked – of course, only after ensuring that Disciplinarian Father Who Frowned Upon Excessive Consumption Of Fried Potato was looking the other way.

My father, like most Indian fathers, believed there was only one vegetable fit for a young boy – and that was ladies finger, because if you ate it, you'd be excellent at mathematics, which meant that you'd get into IIT, and then you'd get into a Master's programme at Harvard, and finally land a job with one of the most prestigious scientific institutions in the world. The ladies finger, in other words, was a one-way ticket to NASA – the potato, on the other hand, would only give you gas.

But how could my father understand? He spent all his life working hard to bring home the ladies finger, and he hardly made time for entertainment – so how could he possibly know that our cinema too is full of maternal figures whose eternal job is to shovel gajar halwa into their sons' mouths? According to him, had my mother not indulged me so, had she not pampered me with potato and yam whenever the rest of the family was chomping on the green stuff, it would have been my story you saw in Swades – I would have been the highflying NASA engineer who returned home and lit up a village. I'll never tell my father this, but I'm actually playing the lead in a production far more appetizing – it's called Mom's Home Cooked Food, and it's coming soon to a kitchen near me.