Kumaran left for the UAE in 1983. Unable to read or write, he had colleagues help him write letters. He would return home only once every three years, storing up his leave time so he could stay for two months. The ink pens and scented erasers he brought as gifts were the envy of his sons’ classmates. But the time with his wife and children was scarce. “He was always crushed that he’d be leaving again soon,” said Unnikrishnan, 49, the eldest of the five brothers. “My father lived for his family, not for himself.” When the brothers were small, they lived in a home with mud walls and a roof of thatched leaves, with every month an anxious wait for the arrival of the money from abroad that sustained 10 people in the extended family. Unnikrishnan said he couldn’t stand seeing his father bear the burden alone. He dropped out of school after the 10th grade. In 1998, he became the first of the brothers to go to the gulf. He took up a job as an assistant at the same company where his father worked, Ghantoot General Mechanical Engineering, in an industrial zone of Dubai. Years before, his father had planted a mango seed from Kerala behind the warehouse. By the time Unnikrishnan arrived, the tree was bearing fruit. One by one, the four other brothers — Ramakrishnan, Sethu, Rajesh and Pradeesh — all followed. “I told everyone to stay here,” said their mother, Lakshmikutty, a slight woman in a red-and-white printed sari, sitting on her terrace on a recent afternoon. “But everyone wanted to go.”