The knowns led me to the unknowns. Fascinating blanks emerged as I navigated the knowns. I tried to fill them in by delving into other alternate histories that linked both the men I shadowed: for example, the rise of the film industry in Hollywood; the growth of the city of Los Angeles; why South Asians came to the West Coast and thrived in south California; the convoluted and complex rulings on citizenship and immigration that affected the lives of these new outsiders from Asia; and even aspects of psychology and forensics as I tried to compare faces and appearances—in old photographs and films—and tracked movements to establish their presence at a certain point in time.

This story, with all the other stories embedded in it, tries to answer one crucial question: at what moment/s did this shift, alternating of identities happen, and why? It presented an opportunity to ask the great speculative question of history, what if? It was also a way to dip into the complex, convoluted and conjoined lives of South Asian lives in America.