When Ebhone Kumari from Ranchi met and married Sandeep Perriera, from a small village near Alibaug in Maharashtra, the 21-year-old was determined to learn Marathi as soon as possible to endear herself to her in-laws. Instead, what she had to learn was Portuguese, which, she discovered, was the language handed down through generations at her in-laws’.

Korlai, a tiny village in Raigad, 130 kilometres from Mumbai, is home to barely 270 families of a predominantly farming community, all Catholics. Portuguese is the language spoken in every home though Marathi remains their mother tongue and the language of instruction in the schools their children go to.

“Or rather a version of Portuguese, for the original language has been diluted considerably over the last 400 years now, with a whole lot of Marathi and English words added to it,” says Father Diego Perreira, manager at the Mount Carmel School who has been in Alibaug for four years now and has been closely working with the villagers. “What they speak now is Creole Portuguese, but that too is a one-of-its-kind distinct dialect. In fact, some call it Korlai Portuguese.” And no, nobody in the village can read or write the language.

There are many stories on why only a slice of Portugal got left behind. Residents say it was around 1520 AD when some 10 Portuguese soldiers of the British Army fled to the village and settled here after the Korlai fort was taken over by the Peshwas. They married locally and as their numbers grew, a whole new community came into being.

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