Who Do You Think You Are? - Mishal Husain

 

Journalist and broadcaster Mishal Husain's surprising and interesting episode of Who Do You Think You Are? (WDYTYA?) aired last Tuesday.

Mishal started her journey where she expected to - in India and Pakistan, in the days of the British Empire. 

From there she followed the 'Anglo'-Indian (or, in this case, Irish-Indian,) part of her family, and a hard-working doctor named Thomas Quinn.

Thomas managed to break the barriers placed in the way of mixed-race people in British India, eventually becoming the private doctor to a maharaja.

Following her European ancestry, Mishal learned of her family's life in a Danish-Indian trading port, as well as in French-Indian settlements.

The big twist (and if you haven't seen it - you might want to stop reading here!) - came when she learned that one of her white ancestors was not European... but American.

Travelling to the USA, and clearly more than a little surprised by the turn of events, Mishal ended up in the prestigious halls of Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and beyond that to the founding of the United States as a whole.

This was an extremely interesting episode - not only in its own right, but also as an example of how interconnected we all are, across many different countries, whether or not we know it.

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