The breeze took with it too another ship, not of our fleet, the last of many that were all supposed to have left by the previous day, carrying away from Spain the Jews who had failed to undergo the Catholic baptism decreed for them by Columbus’s blessed Sovereigns. I had seen these people, kin to the Yehudis of Cranganore who had found safety in my homeland after an earlier European persecution (fleeing Romans then as they fled Christians now); I had seen them clogging the roads around Palos with their pathetic drooping donkeys and their overladen carts, choking the air with their chants of lamentation, stifling the sea-breeze with desperate sobs. I had seen them everywhere that Spanish summer, bundling their possessions on to carts, on to their backs, into their hearts, condemned to stop being what they were or stop being where they were, obliged to either betray their beliefs or abandon their homes. They were in our way at the port, screaming and wailing as they climbed pushed stumbled on board the ships that would take them away from the only homes they had ever known for generations. They suffered terribly, those Jews, suffered not just their immediate loss but even more the future loss of what they would never have again, their own country, the land to which they had given so much. I wanted to say to them, go in peace, my brothers and sisters, do not weep. I wanted to urge them to sail, sail away from this land where people think there is only one Truth (which they know), sail far without fear and without tears, for this Europe is a close-minded continent, full of intolerance and oppression, a place worth leaving behind. I wanted to say to them, there is a world beyond where men can be men whatever the colour of their skin or the shape of their nose, where you can grow your beards or put caps on your head or worship in your own way without anyone asking you to explain or defend yourselves. I know that world exists because I am from it, it is my world, it is India. Sail with me and I shall take you there.