‘The Beyond is, first of all, for the coolie who settles, a confused poetics, pregnant with silence, looks, unsaid words. This last-comer was forced to situate himself in this new cultural challenge where the other is an ambiguous figure, bearer of signs of reconnaissance and annihilation, and capable of wrecking symbols. The game of anomy, based on the absence of social landmarks, pushed the coolie to the bottom of the ladder, out of speech.’

The metaphor of the voyage was played out throughout the coolie's life. From the first crossing of the kala pani – that forbidden sea journey – the migrant was cast in the dual role of adventurer and victim. Coolitude explores the concept of the ocean as a nodal moment of migration, a space for destruction of identity, yet also one of regeneration, when an aesthetics of migration was created. This chapter revisits the recruitment of the coolie and the experience of sea-crossing, detailing the expectations and experiences of the overseas migrant, the raw emotion of transition and upheaval, of uncertainty and struggle, the evolution of another identity beyond India.