When AP Nagoor Masood stepped ashore in Singapore in 1920, he was following a rich tradition. For centuries, Muslims from south India had braved the tempestuous Bay of Bengal to trade in Malaya and beyond—daring archipelagic odysseys that turned mendicants into merchants, obscurities into icons.

But Masood was breaking from tradition too. His predecessors were almost always men travelling alone, chasing fortunes in South-east Asia. Some married local women and stayed, giving rise to the Jawi Peranakan. Others were peripatetic, spending parts of the year in the region trading textiles for tin and betel nuts before returning to their families in the storied port cities that dotted the Indian subcontinent’s eastern seaboard: Nagapattinam, Karaikal, Tranquebar.

Masood, his wife Meeral, and their children came from Kadayanallur, in the lower reaches of the subcontinent’s mighty Western Ghats mountain range. Kadayanallur was part of the “handloom belt”, one of numerous weaving settlements clustered in India’s deep south. For generations, its Muslim weavers had worked on looms perched in the front rooms of their narrow, palmyra-thatched houses that opened out into the streets. It was hard work, often involving entire families. From morning to night, Kadayanallur rang with the clacking of the wooden shuttles moving across the loom, carrying the weft back and forth through the warp to produce textiles that were sold in the town bazaars.

Often, the buyers were coastal merchants who prospered trading these textiles in Kerala, Ceylon, and further asea in South-east Asia—one variety popular in the Straits Settlements was called “Singapore cloth”. But none of this translated into economic abundance for the weavers themselves. In the distorted imperial economy, families like Masood’s survived on diluted corn porridge; rice was a luxury, affordable only twice a week.

When famine struck in the wake of the first world war in 1920, even that gruel vanished. “Starvation deaths became common,” recalled one of Masood’s sons, Maideen, then seven. Desperate, Masood tied his meagre savings in a cloth bag slung around his waist, Meeral gathered the brood, and they set off on a punishing 400km road trip to Nagapattinam. There, they boarded a ship for Penang and thence to Singapore.

Contrary to most popular accounts of 20th-century maritime fare, Maideen thought the food on board was “delicious”. Perhaps anything was a feast after famine. Here was one final break from their wealthier migratory predecessors: Masood’s family came not for riches but for refuge. Many more would follow in the coming years.