The history of Goa written by those who wore those imported hats, is quite different from the history of Goa as lived by my parents in the villages. Their history belongs to the cooks, clerks and tailors that made their way to Africa and set up a Saint Francis Xavier's Goan Tailors' Society in Mombasa as early as 1905. It is written on the pages of passports, people made to go to the Gulf, to live in hot, arid deserts where water arrived in biscuit tins, carried by over-burdened donkeys; so browned by dirt, it had to be strained three times through a muslin cloth before it could be drunk.

My father left Goa in 1967 for the Arabian Gulf. To understand why my father left, one has to understand the desultory, isolation of the village. For all the things that could occupy a young man's life during the day - fishing in the lake or thatching the roof - there was always the eerie silence of the night. The empty, hollow sense that nothing could germinate in the village which could take one beyond its boundary. Nothing in those dung-floored houses could lead to success. There are those who will argue for the quiet eloquence of rural Goa; the peace, the tranquillity, the self-sustaining village life in which one seeks solitude. That is not what young men with blood coursing through their veins and arrogance flaring in their aquiline noses seek. They seek adventure, dream dreams larger than themselves and seek mythical fortunes. Only their instinct tells them these fortunes are not as mythical as everyone says. They see a life beyond their own hemmed-in horizons.

The stories of Goans who left the shores are as integral in piecing together our collective identity as those that stayed behind. What drove these Goans to journey into the interiors of Africa, the arid deserts of the Gulf and the bitter cold of England? What were their lives like in these foreign countries? Did the Goan in them survive at all? Did they cling to the motherland only in memory or did they refuse to sever the umbilical cord, drawing an almost spiritual strength from the culture, language and religion it had engendered and which ultimately favoured their survival in the Diaspora.

More than two years ago, I sought to travel back in time, talking to people who are the custodians of our Diaspora history, gently gathering their stories and unravelling them through the nip of my pen. This gestation period has finally given birth to my book, Into the Diaspora Wilderness, set for release at the Goan Festival UK, 25th July, 2010.

Some were reticent to talk; painful memories of wars, bombings, drownings, incarcerations and expulsions were like fog clouding the mind. It all happened so long ago, they said, but the gaping scars had not yet healed; the anger and pain still enflamed. There was the expulsion of Goans from Malawi, a tiny land-locked country in East Africa. The people implicated in this episode have never before told their side of the story but have opened up for the first time in this book. I was lucky enough to talk to Emma Gama-Pinto. How did she meet Pio? What really happened the day he was shot?

Lesser known heroes with epic tales to tell, abound in the book. Joe Fernandes was caught onboard the MV Dara when it was bombed off the coast of Dubai in 1961. An unsung hero who gave up his life-jacket and dived into the Indian Ocean. Remedios Anthony, encouraged by the acerbic Krishna Menon was instrumental in setting up the Goa League in London, which lobbied for the Liberation of Goa. The famed artist F N Souza kept close company with Menon in London, and his then wife, the attractive Maria cooked sorpotel for all those Goans who attended the League's first meeting. Anthony was ailing in health and passed away before I completed the book.

Other spectators, left letters and interviews, now resting in the yellowed pages of files in archives. Claude Bremner, the British Consul based in Goa during World War II, kept almost a diary-like correspondence on Goa, as did his successor, M R A Baig, who gave his own reason as to why so many Goans became "denationalized" and migrated. From the first time, we read about Goans, reflected not in the eyes of the Portuguese but that other Imperial power-house, the British. What did they think of us, as we worked alongside them on the creaking decks of British India ships, on the desolate, remote plains of East Africa and in the deserts of the Arabian Gulf?

Wilderness, deprivation, constraints of colonialism and racism were close and constant encounters for Goans in the Diaspora. Yet, austerity fortified the Goan. And the opportunity of chance willed him to go on. 8 pages of rare photographs provide a visual of our history in the book. It is my ardent hope that one day, it finds a place at a Diaspora museum in Goa.