Dave Prager was a typical copywriter working at a typical Madison Avenue advertising agency until fate (and human resources) offered the opportunity of a lifetime: to spend a year-and-a-half working at the agency’s office in Gurgaon.

Well, the opportunity of his lifetime, anyway. While many Americans would recoil with visions of mosquito Armageddon and monkey pickpockets, Dave and Jenny leaped to spend the next 18 months immersed in the cuisine of their dreams.

Dave and Jenny lived in Brooklyn, New York, for eight years prior to their shift in Delhi. They met in 1998 and married in 2005. After leaving India, they spent a year in Singapore before returning to the States to start a family. They currently live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Their daughter Georgiana is not quite old enough to appreciate Indian food yet, but she’ll certainly be eating baingan bharta long before the rest of her classmates.