Normally, I skip meals while out reporting, not wanting to waste precious time while on the field. But a cardinal rule of journalism is that it’s impolite to say no to a source offering food.

In August, my colleague Raghav Kakkar and I were in West Bengal to meet Indians who had wrongly been labelled as Bangladeshis and forced across the border at gunpoint.

The story eventually took us to Malda, where Amir Sekh and his family insisted that we eat lunch before they gave us an interview. It looked like a standard Bengali meal of rice, dal and chicken. In hindsight, we learned that we had been deceived by its apparent simplicity.

The rice was more starchy than the basmati that our city bodies were accustomed to. Its grains were more round than pointy, which helped it soak more and more of the chicken gravy on our plates.

The light, mustard gravy was a refreshing break from the mishmash of masalas that has become the hallmark of most food in Delhi, where both of us live.

We gorged on the meal.

The food coma hit 30 minutes later. I could feel myself slowly collapsing in my chair, when Amir was narrating his ordeal. To fight the grogginess, I rose up in the middle of the interview and changed...

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