India, Feb. 5 -- My wife is not a vegetarian. She loves a good meat biryani as much as I do. Give her a kakori kabab, and while the high fat content may vanquish her after the second kabab, she will still enjoy it enormously.

But take her to an Indian restaurant abroad and she will suddenly refuse to eat the meat. No mutton kababs for me, she will insist. No lamb at all, she will add. At European restaurants, this refusal will be even more emphatic. Even if I tell her that roast lamb will go perfectly with the very nice Bordeaux I have ordered, she will eat something else.

It's difficult to explain to most people - especially foreigners - why she will eat mutton in India but not abroad. But if you understand the linguistic confusion per...