I was born in the Caribbean but have lived in India a long, long time. So I sometimes find myself starting a sentence talking about ‘we’ who speak Creole languages and in the next breath segueing smoothly to ‘we’ who speak Indian languages. Could I really be in Trinidad and in India at the same time?
Some years ago, I went back to Trinidad to see my mother. She met me at the airport looking a few years older, handed me the keys to her car and I drove us back home. The phone was ringing and I rushed inside to answer. Someone who had no idea that I had ever been away wanted to talk to me about a piece I had written. And another life resumed. That was when I realised that I could. That when I ‘snoozed’ India, my eyes opened again in Trinidad!
When I first came to India I kept being told that my Bhojpuri was different: it didn’t...
