The first Anglo-Indians were born in 1601, and as the seventeenth century

progressed, the East India Company’s directors encouraged their employees in India

to take local brides and convert them to Protestantism. A gold mohur or pagoda was

paid to the mother of every child born from such a union. The offspring became

known to the local Indians as ‘feringhees’ (foreigners), mesties, topases, or

wallandez.
If a group of people

is displaced from

their place of birth

in spirit in the churn

of soul song pulse
If a woman is displaced

from her community

in body and flesh

becoming an outcast

in her place of birth
If a birthplace is displaced

from itself within

the bodies of a group

of its people, deflected

by alienation from

ritual culture politics
If the offspring of inter-

marriage are coded to the culture of the coloniser
If a group of people

is both coloniser

and almost-

colonised
(her brown skin

disappearing in

her brother’s white

or the reverse

their identity culture-

coded, quilling

bifurcation)
If the primary language

known to a group of people colonises their birthplace
(joyful borrowed phrases

wink on an amazed ceiling)
If you cross a subcontinent by marriage, you cross her deities
/
In the photograph

you are holding

a basket of flowers

in a lush garden

looking as if you belong

in Picnic at Hanging Rock

only this is northwestern India

and India surely lingers

in your features and attitudes

as you surely linger

in the body of India

your place of birth, of death
(as surely as your family

traversed the ocean

stepping away

from their home—

away from home)
But you were not Indian—

to have claimed this identity

would have suggested

something other than a name
There were so many languages of India you did not understand

(there were so many British spaces you could not enter)

there were the Anglo-Indian schools gathering your confession

in Western knowledge and Christian teachings
As the train wound into Jamshedpur … manganese ore poured into the furnaces lit up

the night sky for miles around.
/
Synthetic ochre

is a geological muscle on the verge of heat. Consider

raw yellow soil calcining    radiating    in the cadence of salt

                a swarm of hues forms to carry the pioneers across the landscape

                where earth is converted to burnt earth

As goethite becomes hematite, yellow darkens into red
As the hand’s tint or tilt    palm lines    earth lines

        turn    fold    with a lilt toward the hills

        so the angle at which a person enters history

may be altered by the material of desire. How grief forms in the rock surface

in wide willowy eyes. How quasi-

                    settlers place local news on hold

while servicing an Empire composed of several histories
only some of which rise to the surface
                                                                       Tears wake the cornea, moistening

epithelial tissue. Visual information pools into blurred names reserved

for artificial natives. Someone born here is nonetheless

        feringhee  |  foreigner    mesties  |  the child of a mulat

        and a white person    where mulat means the child

                of a black person and a white person
                                                                                     Many shades of person,

calling to each other over vast distances, are measured. Distinctions between

the British and the ‘countryborn’ Anglo-Indian are complex

The fair son may be sent to England to be educated. High adventure

ensues    opening to a technique of preparing images

                        in wave upon wave

                        layer upon layer of lime plaster    then milk of lime
/
There is this city within a city

in which you reside

there is this culture within cultures

in which you reside

there are these pigments within earth

in which you reside
If you stay, if you leave
Let the meaning of home rearrange itself
Rub each coat with a stone
Polish the surface with an agate stone




Sources: Gloria Jean Moore, The Anglo-Indian Vision, Australasian Educa Press, 1986 (including italicised quotes);

Anjali Sharma and Manager Rajdeo Singh, ‘A Review on Historical Earth Pigments Used in India’s Wall Paintings’, Heritage, 2021, 4(3), 1970-1994,

https://doi.org/10.3390/heritage4030112;

Yvette Hoitink, ‘Dutch term – Mulat, Mesties, Casties, Poesties, Testies’, Dutch Genealogy, 17 April 2017,

https://www.dutchgenealogy.nl/mulat-mesties-casties-poesties-testies/.