Author documents a lost history Some African-Americans linked by
blood to India Editor's Note: CNN's Moni Basu, a Bengali
immigrant, was born in Kolkata, India. In the next few weeks,
Fatima Shaik, an African-American, Christian woman, will travel
"home" from New York to Kolkata, India. It will be a journey
steeped in a history that has remained unknown until the
publication last month of a revelatory book by Vivek Bald. And
it will be a journey of contemplation as Shaik, 60, meets for
the first time ancestors with whom she has little in common. "I
want to go back because I want to find some sort of closure for
my family, said Shaik, an author and scholar of the Afro-Creole
experience. Fatima Shaik's grandfather settled in New Orleans.
She is going to India to see his home. That Americans like
Shaik, who identify as black, are linked by blood to a people on
the Indian subcontinent seems, at first, improbable. South Asian
immigration boomed in this country after the passage of landmark
immigration legislation