Bengal is a land of rivers, and hence rice fields, created when the monsoon rains encounter the Himalayas. But the mountains of Assam were also - as the British soon discovered - an ideal place for growing tea. But how was it to be shipped for export to Europe?

The replacement of sail with steam enabled the new-fangled steamships to sail right up the Kushiyara River (the Brahmaputra was much too wild) to collect the tea which had been shipped south out of Assam. Those ships also needed stokers, and adventurous young men from villages close to the loading points along the Kushiyara river jumped at the new opportunities on board ship.

So it was that they and their successors were soon able to move into a similar position to that enjoyed by the Mirpuris and the Chhachis, though in this case on board Calcutta-based steamships.

The stoke-hold lascars, as they were known, sought to make the best of their opportunities. To be sure the work was hard and dangerous, and as lascars they were only paid a fraction of the wages paid to seamen of European descent. But the job provided a reliable source of income and these young men came from families of subsistence farmers who could only earn cash by selling the small surplus left over after they had fed themselves. The wages on offer seemed to be - from their perspective - sky high.

So it was for the next 50 years successive generations of young men from Mirpur, Chhach and Sylhet signed up as stokers, and returned home with their pockets full of silver rupees. This allowed them to build smart new to houses for themselves, to marry (if they hadn't done so already), and to enjoy a life of contented retirement looking after their children.

However all this came to an end after the Second World War. Coal-fired steamships had by then become old-fashioned: diesel power was cheaper, cleaner, and drove ships much faster. Coal-fired ships disappeared even more rapidly than did the boat trade on the Indus river system, and all the stokehold lascars suddenly found themselves out of a job: it was then that settlement in Britain began.

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