On Shamshu Deen’s desk in his home office are notebooks, documents stacked one on top the next, a flash drive and, of course, his trusted laptop. To see Deen at his desk is to see a detective at work, except that he is not inves­tigating crimes but helping families trace their roots and reunite with long-lost blood relatives.

For a quarter of a century, the genealogist has helped hundreds of descendants of indentured labourers find their loved ones, and at 77, he has no plans of retiring anytime soon.

“If I’ve contributed to genealogy in Trini­dad, especially East Indian genealogy, then Munradin has to take a lot of the credit,” said Deen.

Munradin was Deen’s great-great-grandfather who left India for Trinidad in 1858. He was also the reason why Deen, whose extraordinary story was recently featured on BBC Outlook, became a genealogist.

You can read the full story in an article by Kimberly Wallace published in the Trinidad Express web site at: https://tinyurl.com/ynmcdfux.