Everytime I scan the web to find out more about the Indian diaspora in Dubai, I reach no where. I have a lot of friends working there, doing well. Most of them are now leaving Dubai, to live in Canada and Australia.

Me, being a researcher on "Films on the Diaspora", I look around for audio-visual stories, I have seen movies from Mississippi Masala to Bride and Prejudice, the story line is the culture of India, that we like to fantasize about, exotic to point of being 'only exotic'. But what I yearn to see is the story of the Indian diaspora in the Middle-East, we have heard horror stories of maids being confined, of workers having no legal rights.

So when I read this article Dubai's Kerala Connection - Hidden behind the Gulf State's development are Indian "foot soldiers of globalization" which also had pictures, I think I have found a man who is equally interested in capturing the diaspora in pictures as I am.

Steve Raymer is an associate professor of journalism at Indiana University in Bloomington and was a National Geographic Magazine staff photographer for more than 20 years. He is working on a photographic book about the Indian Diaspora.