South India’s Misty Mountains
It’s true what they say about the Nilgiri Hills, where my father’s father was born, and where his grandfather appeared and disappeared, the blue haze never leaves their sides. Share...
Read MoreHills of tea
You can’t forget the tea for long in Coonoor. It surrounds the town, cascading down the mountainsides onto terraced plantations of emerald green. My father always suspected that his grandmother had been a local tea picker. He’s not sure how he came by the impression, but whenever we make Nilgiri tea back home, it’s always steeped in the fanciful notion that we are brewing an ancestral crop. Share...
Read MoreHand-picked tea
The armies of women who are hired to pluck tea wrap their heads in brightly coloured scarves, just as they did in my great-grandparents’ day. They wade chest-deep between the shrubs, removing the waxy upper leaves with a swift flick of the wrist. Share...
Read MoreWelcome to Jamaica
Buying Jade her first young coconut at a roadside stall in Falmouth, Jamaica. Share...
Read MoreDo you know any Crooks?
I hoped to find leads to the Crooks history in town. The Falmouth Renewal Offices seemed like a good place to start. But it was dark inside and stripped to the studs. The contract supervisor, covered in a fine layer of dust, eventually joined Troy and I out on the street. “I’m sorry to interrupt your work,” I said, and explained what we were after. “Crooks?” he said. “Don’t they own a nightclub in Montego Bay?” “Oh. Well, could be,” I said, thinking that would be an entirely predictable vocation for my kin. “Which club is it?” Share...
Read MoreSearching the Jewish Cemetery
In Falmouth, driving up Duke Street one afternoon, we found ourselves at the old stone wall of the Jewish Cemetery. A small wooden door served as the entrance, like a portal to a secret garden. We all got out to take a look, trampling overgrown vines between knee-high tombs, many of them cracked or too weathered to read. Jade hunted for unusual insects, the rest of us, for Crookses. But most of the names we could make out were Spanish — Carvalho, De Casseres, Morales, Delgado, DeSouza. Most of them the family names of those driven to Jamaica after the Spanish inquisition left them...
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