The first Portuguese ship, carrying Vasco da Gama, came to India in 1489. The Portuguese only left the country in 1961, after Operation Vijay in Goa. A new book, Batata, Pao, and All Things Portuguese: A Bird’s Eye View of Estado da India, written by Vaishali Shroff and illustrated by Suha Riyaz Khopatkar, tells the story from beginning to end of this sometimes neglected colonial power in India, and the surprising impact it has left behind.

The inspiration for the book came to Shroff, a Mumbai-based children’s author, after a trip to Europe sparked an interest in castles; “I was so enamoured, and wondered if we had any castles—not palaces—in India. I came upon Bombay Castle, and thought, ‘A castle in Bombay? A place I’ve been in all my life and yet never heard of?’ Then I found out it was built by Garcia da Orta, a Portuguese man and the first European to settle in India. One thing led to another, and I soon learned about 500 years of Portuguese rule in India.”