Em’s mother spoke in code. She omitted almost all the important words in every sentence. She had had far too many languages drummed into her ears—first Konkani in Goa, then Burmese in Rangoon, then Bengali in wartime Calcutta, and now English, in which her child spoke and dreamed. It had taken away most of her vocabulary. She communicated through gestures, facial expressions and the assumption that everyone knew what she was talking about. It doesn’t sound likely, but it worked.
