The story of John Footman as told in the film is also the personal history of the writer’s great-great-great-grandfather. Yet John was among the few Irish nationals to travel as far as India and begin a unique Irish diaspora there. They did not fully embrace Indian culture, and the women of the family rarely if ever wore Indian clothes. Ian recalls that, as a child, the distinguishing characteristic of his family was their accent — an unusual hybrid of Irish and Indian. From Joyce, who was born an Irish Indian in Bombay, he learned that most Irish Indians worked on India’s vast network of railways engineered by the British.