THE TRINI WHO HAS REUNITED THOUSANDS OF FAMILIES

SHAMSHU DEEN could regale you with true stories of emotional and unlikely reunions that would make a movie scriptwriter blush.

Deen, of course, is a renowned Trinidad and Tobago-based genealogist, someone who traces family ancestries.

He has studied the family lines of thousands of people who are descendants of indentured labourers who came between 1845 and 1917 to work on plantations in Trinidad.

He has dug into registries of his own family and that of former Trinidad and Tobago Prime Ministers Basdeo Panday and Kamla Persad-Bissessar, and many more.

Years ago, he journeyed back to meet current relatives of his ancestor, Munroe Deen, who had come from the State of Uttar Pradesh in 1858, to work on the Harmony Hall sugar estate.

He told of how he spent time in virtual rubble at the Red House in Port of Spain, ferreting out relevant information from abandoned, termite-ridden registries.

Deen said he “froze” when he came upon Munroe’s name in a tattered registry at the Red House after a few hours of search.

At the end of his period of indenture, Munroe owned two businesses, one at San Fernando and the other at Gasparillo, where he died in 1889.

Most research took much longer that than of his forefather.

“Trinidad’s family-tree detective,” BBC labelled Deen in a revealing 44-minute interview, in which he told of his fascination for creating family reunions.

He explained how he visits descendants of people whose ancestral roots he is seeking to link and draws family trees as he probes the relatives.

“I talk to old people to add to my research,” he said.

Deen makes it appear to be a simple assignment, but India is a land of 600,000 villages and so the exercise could be challenging.

But the assignment is made easier by his desire “to connect families.”

The genealogist has emotive stories of reuniting families who had long given up hope of getting back together.

Deen, who repeatedly said he has a passion for his work, has written books and articles on what he calls “living history.”

He gets great joy in bringing together the offspring of families who were broken apart through the brutality of indenture.

From 1845 to 1917, more than 140,000 such labourers came to Trinidad estates from Indian villages.

Deen has reconnected the descendants of many of them.