“Where are you from?” It’s a question that Paromita Sengupta (48) has repeatedly been asked since moving from her native India to Ireland in 2019.
“Why do you have to ask?” is what Sengupta says she would like to say back.
“Right now I say I’m from Ireland,” she says. “But then some people ask: ‘But where are you really from?’ That bugs me a lot, that question, because honestly, I don’t think I’m from one place or another because I’ve lived in so many places.”
Sengupta spent the first 12 years of her life in Shillong, a city set in the mountainous East Khasi Hills district of eastern India.
RM Block
“It was built by the British. The landscape resembled Scotland, so it’s lovingly called The Scotland of the East. While India is known for being hot and humid, this is one of the wettest regions in the world. Near where I grew up there is a village which was in the Guinness Book of Records for being the wettest place on Earth.”
Now living in Limerick, Sengupta feels there is a certain irony in how similar the two climates are.
Her family were not from Shillong but had moved there for her father‘s job. When she was 12 her father was transferred back to Calcutta, where her parents were from.
“Though this was the place where we spoke the same language and was culturally similar, I was an outsider there because I was not very good at my mother tongue, as growing up I had done everything in English.”
Sengupta spent the next 13 years in Calcutta, going to secondary school and completing a PhD in English literature there, but says that it was never somewhere she felt completely at home. At 25 she married her husband, Abhi, whom she had known since childhood.
In India we don’t have these nuances with the language. We spoke and wrote a very different English
They first moved to Mumbai, before moving to the US for five years.
“We travelled a lot of the 52 states, I think we’ve been to at least 48 of them. But in 2013 I decided that I wanted my daughters to grow up in India, not outside of it. We moved back to India in 2013.”
The couple lived in India for six years, but moving back was not the smooth transition they had hoped it would be.
“I think my husband found it difficult to work where he was at. There were a few life-changing events actually.”
While the offer of a job in Ireland had been on the table for some time, Abhi finally decided to take the company up on it. Initially, Sengupta thought that they would be in Ireland for only a few months.
“I was in a full-time public service job. It was not just prestigious, but it was, most importantly, part of my identity.”
Sengupta’s father also worked for the Indian government and had instilled the importance of public service in his children.
She admits that she was quite unfamiliar with her new home before they arrived. “I thought a Limerick was a funny poem.”
In those first few months, Sengupta tried to get a job but was unsuccessful. However, it was how happy her children seemed to be in Limerick that convinced her to stay.
Comparing an average day for her twin daughters in Limerick versus Calcutta, Sengupta talks about how much time the family used to spend sitting in traffic.
“I was on the road maybe five hours a day. My husband was in a different part of the city, kids were elsewhere. We were scattered all over. Limerick is a very small town compared to where we were.”
After the decision had been made to stay in Limerick, Sengupta decided to return to her studies.
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“I did a filmmaking course at the further education college. Then I got a Government of Ireland scholarship for a master’s in Mary Immaculate College in Limerick.”
In 2022, she got a job as the director of studies for the Griffith Institute of Language. Though it was a job she enjoyed, she left in October 2025.
“I know that’s maybe a crazy thing to have done, to leave a permanent job with a contract, but I wanted to as my life has been all about changes that I didn’t choose. More like things happening to me, coming at me. I haven’t been able to explore or breathe easy for a very long time.”
Right now, Sengupta is exploring her writing. She has attended workshops organised by the Irish Writers Centre and is doing a creativity and entrepreneurship postgrad cert at UCD. Sengupta is also attempting to finishing writing her memoir, which will include a chapter on how she has navigated adapting to Irish culture.
“People here say ‘sorry’ all the time. In India we would say ‘excuse me’. So I had to learn to say ‘sorry’ when I’m not sorry. The same goes for ‘thank you’; often means ‘okay, we are done here’. But in India we don’t have those nuances with the language. We spoke and wrote a very different English.”
When asked about the future, Sengupta sighs. “I’m not a person who thinks too much about the future because of the way my life has been.”
However, the family plan to remain in Limerick at least until the twins finish school.
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