On a warm September morning in 1943, Chand Ali Khamaru walked eight gruelling miles with a small bundle of rice to his father in Medinipur, in rural West Bengal" is the first line of Sharanya Deepak's stirring and expansive online essay on how the cuisine of poor Bengalis, holds the history of hunger and poverty caused by the Bengal famine, and how, for the poor, any setback devastates generations.

The year 1943 saw many walkers. At first, half a million refugees trudging to India from Burma, often dying en route. Later, Deepak writes, "Many thousands of people walked from rural areas to Kolkata in hope of a meal."