I WAS AT SEA when the smell of my ancestors came out to bring me ashore. The blush of tangerine in the morning sky had faded; the mood and colours of the ocean spoke another language. Choppy, brown waves slapped up against the bow of the ship. The sea no longer heaved and swelled as it had done mid-ocean under the searing equatorial sun. Then it had driven third class passengers down into the bowels of the SS Karanja, bending adults into foetal positions on bedrolls scattered in the metallic shade.

Most days, in the heat of the early afternoon, I would retreat to my windowless cabin. The toothless old Gujarati man, who had laid claim to the bottom bunk closest to the door, had pulled the stained spittoon even closer, within retching distance of his pillow. I would lie on the far top bunk and look down on him through my own nausea, clutching a tired English paperback or the journal that had become my faithful companion during that trip. He would return my stare vacantly. From time to time, he would rise on an elbow, lean towards the receptacle and, with a jerk, add fresh layers to the cocktail of oil, sea and human odour that filled the submarine compartment occupied by eight men.

In 12 days at sea, he had spoken to me only once.

‘You Punjabi?’ he had asked in Gujarati soon after we set sail.

‘Ji ha.’ Yes, sir, I had replied in Hindi.

He had nodded, not unkindly.

I was relieved that he did not speak to me again. At 18, cooped in a cubicle with a group of middle-aged Indian men, I may well have been asked to shift the spittoon. Their claim to respect as elders would have overridden the lines of language, caste and religion, which crisscrossed that cabin. I can only assume that it was the books I carried with me and the scribbles in my diary that saved me.

The innards of the ship had begun to stir well before dawn that February morning in 1972 when the sticky past came to meet me.