It was my first experience of the instinctive friendliness of the people of the state of Kerala. I never thought that, many years later, nurses from the region would be a very visible feature of the Irish healthcare scene. The spice market was in a narrow street crowded with small shops and with a webwork of telegraph and telephone wires strung overhead. Then I saw the big sign and a row of gunny sacks holding spices of various colours. Driven by the prospect of playing a dominant role in the lucrative spice trade, Portuguese explorers set out from Lisbon and sailed south.

Source: The Irish Times April 28, 2019 22:52 UTC