When Joachim leaves Mangalore for Bahrain in the hope of building a better life for his young family, he soon discovers that the promise of a life abroad comes with its own share of struggles. Back home, however, his nephew Darrel sees only what appears to be a life of opportunity and dreams of following in his uncle’s footsteps. In her debut novel, You Envy the Coutinhos, Michelle D’Costa explores the complicated realities of migration through the lives of an Indian Catholic family, tracing the distance between the life one leads and the one others imagine. Drawing on her own experiences of growing up in Bahrain, Michelle brings to the fore the largely underrepresented stories of Mangalorean, Goan and East Indian communities in the Gulf.
Finding the Story Behind the Novel
Since I read The Namesake when I was around 15 years old, I was thinking about stories of migration, of the Indian diaspora, especially in the Gulf and I didn't see these stories in books and movies. I don’t think I saw any character from my community represented authentically.
Reading more Indian writers, especially North-Eastern women writers like Jahnavi Barua, Anjum Hasan, Janice Pariat gave me the confidence to explore my own voice. I started writing short stories and poems [like Toni Morrison said write the books you want to read] but I hadn't found the right idea for a novel yet.
I badly wanted to write a novel but the idea never felt right. With this idea, the Coutinhos, somehow I had the belief with the assurance of a few beta readers as well, that it could work out or that it had potential. And I believe the only way to test out the strength or agility of an idea is to execute it. I’m glad I made my debut with this.
Approach to Writing the Immigrant Experience
Representation matters. Not representation for the sake of it. But feeling seen and heard in pop culture matters. I wanted to specifically capture the Indian catholic experience in the Gulf. That too specifically the Mangalorean, Goan and East Indian communities. I guess it was fueled by the desire to see us on the map of Bahrain, and South Asian migrants in Bahrain on the map of literature. This was a subconscious desire. I didn’t write with an agenda in mind. I wrote from a place of lived experience.
Breaking the Illusion of a Perfect Life
It is not easy being a migrant, anywhere in the world. Especially when you don’t have the ‘right’ passport. The ones with the right passports are called ‘expats’ . The Gulf is definitely a land of opportunity, but also heartbreak because not every migrant gets the privilege to visit home often or bring their family with them or get citizenship. And many people outside India don’t even know that the Gulf has a huge migrant population. There are skewed views of the Middle East because of how it is often portrayed in the media. So my aim was to first show: there’s opportunity second: heartbreak comes with it.
Bollywood and Ambition
The lure of Bollywood has fascinated a lot of people. Just like cricket. We have heard of sham cricket matches being held in the name of talent scouting and this preying on vulnerable people who have a dream and want fame is not a new story. It happens everywhere but I wanted to write about Joachim being a Catholic Mangalorean man wanting that for himself, and what that might look like, given his background, and the conflict of not being in Bombay for long [just on vacations].
Writing Envy
I think envy is an easy emotion because it doesn’t require ‘work’ on understanding the root cause of it. It just needs you to desire something that someone else has and that’s easy because you don't see the full picture. You only see what they show you or what you want to see. The novel was an exercise in digging deeper into this.
What’s Upcoming
I’m working on another novel but I can't say much about it because it’s in its formative stages but here’s a hint- it’s again about migration but with a different angle and approach.
Words Neeraja Srinivasan
Date 3.11.2026