Nash Mithani is the archetypal non-resident Indian (NRI). He is typical of the vast and growing group of south Asians that trace their roots back to the subcontinent, but who work, invest and pay taxes overseas, often in global cities like New York, London and Singapore.
One day in 1890 his great-grandfather Dayabhai boarded a vessel in Gujarat bound for the port of Aden. The ship flew under the flag of the British East India Company and both places were controlled in London, part of a empire on which the sun famously never set.
Instead of continuing on to Kenya or South Africa to build railway lines, Dayabhai headed across the Red Sea, winding up in the Sudanese city of Suakin, where he stayed, married and built a new life for himself.
“Our ancestral home is still there,” says Mithani, a fourth-generation NRI.
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