Padma Damodaran (left) with Choiti Ghosh

It’s a dhaaba where the brinjal is the star of the menu. In fact, the entire menu is themed around the brinjal, in all its varieties and sizes. With this undisputed position in the kitchen, the brinjals know nothing beyond their purple world and even follow a peculiar social order — until one fine day, they wake up to brown, dusty, odd-shaped potatoes in the dhaaba, which they later realise are vegetables themselves. And they are here to stay.