Unveiling shreds of genealogy and discovering the roots are a recurrent dream of every descendant whose inheritance is linked to the gravy train of slavery, convictism, indentured labour, ‘boatpeople’ and asylum-seekers. This book is a graphic account of rural Indian peasants who left their rustic homeland in search of their El Dorado in distant colonial outposts. Interwoven with reflections on his Aryan roots and his animated days in Bombay (now Mumbai), the author describes his quintessential journey to his ancestral village near Nepal-India border.

The readers are likely to relate the narrative to the experiences of their own ancestral families who were part of the historic global translocation of people during the last three centuries. The contracted coolies emerged from the traumatic bondage with the hope of being part of the new genre. In Fiji, a string of coups emasculated the entrepreneurial and political aspirations of a dominant community.

As Fiji transitions itself from a military dictatorship to a more democratic trajectory, the author predicts the shape of the political construction that is likely to emerge.