The first time in India, where I was born, and the second time in Ireland. I was 24 years old when I arrived in Ireland in 1986, one of a handful of “aliens” in Sligo town. The only Irish people I had known until then were nuns, formidable women all, who ran many convent schools in India. India has its overt, blatantly cruel caste system, and Ireland its hidden, insidious class divides. I was already familiar with politically stoked Hindu-Muslim animosities, but Ireland wasn’t slow in schooling me about sectarian divisions.