article: Readers turn to Ruchira for its consummate coverage of traditional vegetarian dishes of the western Maharashtra state. The recipes are classic, but the pictures that punctuate the book reveal the changing social world of urban, middle-class Maharashtrians. The cover photo (above) shows a nuclear family eating a meal. The husband and two young children - a girl and a boy - sit at a dining table, and not on the floor as in earlier times. The woman, however, is not sitting and eating with them. In keeping with tradition, she is standing and serving them. She is smiling at her husband, whose expression suggests that he has just complimented her on the food. This is the 15th article in a BBC series India on a plate, on the diversity and vibrancy of Indian food. Other stories in the series: Tasting India's coveted holy sweet The street food so good, it is waved through airport checks The Indian state that is obsessed with beef fry The dark history behind India and the UK's favourite drink Why this Indian state screams for ice cream On the table are puris (fried puffed bread), a vegetable curry or dal, pulao, a prettily arranged plate of lettuce, cucumber and tomato slices, and three kinds of sweets - a far cry from the items and layout of the customary Marathi thali. And, instead of the more traditional metal utensils, melamine dishes are being used to serve and eat. Another photo (below) shows the ideal kitchen, once again straddling tradition and modernity. A refrigerator and a mixer-blender are prominently displayed, as is a soop (winnowing fan) and an old cast-iron mortar and pestle. Gleaming metal containers line the shelves alongside a row of recycled Bournvita - a local health drink - glass jars. There is a gas cylinder and a pressure cooker, and plastic flowers in a vase atop the fridge. One can easily imagine the miniature temple on a shelf where icons of household deities preside over this sacred space. This compact, neatly equipped kitchen exemplifies organisation, a vital virtue for the modern woman who must manage time and space efficiently for cooking - a task that still remains hers alone. "I used to want a kitchen like that," says Shubhada Deshpande. In the 1970s, she was a young bride in a joint family in Pune that included her bank officer husband, two-year-old son, her parents-in-law and an unmarried brother-in-law who was studying engineering. Every morning, she would squat on the floor to scrape coconuts on a whili (curved blade) and to churn butter from yogurt. Her mother-in-law would grind the shredded coconut into chutney on a stone slab. Now that Mrs Deshpande is in her sixties and lives alone with her retired husband, she still makes coconut chutney but in an electric blender. Instead of churning butter, she buys readymade, salty yellow Amul butter to spread on toast for breakfast. Her mother-in-law would not have approved. When relatives visit, Ms Deshpande makes sabudanyachi khichadi (savoury tapioca pearls) or saanja (savoury semolina). It's a gesture of hospitability to
summary: Forty-five years after it was first published, Ruchira, an Indian cookbook in Marathi language, continues to be a bestseller.