ABSTRACT
Within the indentureship period and its immediate aftermath, the pain of separation from familiar surroundings and the longing to return to the motherland — notwithstanding some of the reasons that might have driven the migrants to leave home in the first place — is well documented. Today, however, after 172 years and having gone beyond survival, authors are talking mostly of entrepreneurship and identity formation, of cultural persistence and of innovative ways of presenting old and new wine in different sizes and colours of containers and bottles. Pain is an uncomfortable feeling that they experience and which tells they that something may be wrong; this could be physically, mentally or spiritually. World religions have not only written extensively but engaged in teaching and practising the necessity of pain and mortification in the attainment of higher planes of consciousness and even salvation.
