The cooks arrive the evening before, with their own brass vessels and a truck of firewood. By midnight there are six fires going in a trench dug behind the house, and the rice has been soaking since the afternoon.

A Mandi dham is served on leaf plates to guests sitting in rows on the ground, and it comes in a fixed order: rice, then a moong dal, then a sweet sepu badi, then the sour dishes, and last the meetha. Nobody asks for a menu.

The cooks, called botis, are a hereditary trade. The head cook of the family we watched learned from his father and now teaches two nephews, who carry water and keep the fires until they are trusted with a pot.

There is no onion and no garlic in a dham, and almost no measuring. The head cook tastes the madra once, adds curd, and moves on to the next fire.

By eleven the next morning five hundred people have eaten, and by two the brass is packed and the truck is gone.