You may be aware that Indians, like so many others, have an expansive sense of hospitality. Admire one of your host's items of property out loud at your own peril; s/he may give you it, or a similar object. In my parents' circle, a visit isn't complete until the guests have taken some colored powder -- turmeric and kumkum -- and anointed their heads.

And of course there's the food thing.

Another Indian-American woman I once met described a meal at an aunty's as like one of the legendary battles at Kurukshetra -- a plate a foot wide and an inch deep, piled with food, and refilled as soon as she made any headway.

My mother and I visited a sort of grandmother a few weeks ago. She insisted that we have a single dosa -- it happened to be lying around, already prepared, she claimed. We laughingly demurred, then cheerfully agreed to split it. She gave us each a dosa, then went into the kitchen, then gave me another dosa while I was eating my first. We cracked up.

When Leonard visited India, I taught him a few Kannada words. Hesaru, name. Santosh, happy. Thoomba, very. Snana, bath. And jasthe, saku, beda: too much, enough, don't want. But it is as though Kannada doesn't even have those words; people go ahead and ladle rice and broth onto your plate as though the sounds you've made have no meaning.

But it's all with a smile, because it's all about demonstrating love and prosperity.

On my recent trip to Mysore, as a visitor from afar, I sometimes visited four or five homes in the course of a day. This led me to decline food even more desperately, in the interest of my own safety. And it led me to grasp some troubling game-theoretic implications of this custom.

If I plan on visiting other hosts the same day, I need to refuse food even if I am hungry, to ensure that I have enough appetite to eat later. Thus, a host who wants to feed me has an interest in keeping me from visiting the next house on my schedule.

Social schedules change often in my parents' India. So I have little confidence in my own knowledge of whether I am visiting more houses later. Since food is available at home but appetite is, in the short run, a nonrenewable resource, the more dangerous scenario is the one where I have eaten my fill and suddenly must confront a new host, an aunty or uncle hungry to feed. Thus, the safer course for me is to always refuse food as vociferously as I can -- again, even if I am hungry.

Sometimes hosts offer tea instead. Don't be fooled! Black Indian tea with milk and sugar will arrive, accompanied by a sweet or salty snack that is barely optional. And jet lag requires carefully titrated doses of caffeine to treat; hundreds of milligrams at unpredictable intervals wouldn't help.

A Russian textbook once advised me that the only sure way to get Russians to stop peer-pressuring booze upon you was to say, "I am an alcoholic." I worry that telling Indians "I am a binge eater" would only result in getting adopted.