Personal Take: In search of refuge

It was my grandfather's favorite story - the one which had his father, my great grandfather, as this invincible hero who travelled all the way to Kolkata, some 1000 miles away from his native village, in search of a decent living for himself and for his great Indian joint family.

He came to the city as a pauper, a stranger, a traveller. But the city wasn't unkind to him. Like thousands of migrants, he eventually found a job to pay for the six by six coop where he could cook his meals, or sleep, or read the newspaper, or make love to his wife who had followed him years later. They continued to raise a family, generation after generation, and a couple of decades down the line the six by six feet coop expanded into a three bedroom apartment.

But the family never really belonged to Kolkata, the city. Till the generation that preceded mine, my family had two addresses in all their official documents - the 'temporary' city address where they lived, and the 'permanent' village address where they belonged but could never go back to.

I have grown up with families who migrated from western sides of the border during partition post India and Pakistan independence. In the small town where I grew up, we had a refugee colony, and a refugee market, which provided home and living to the 'refugees' who had come from the other side of the border. More than half of my husband's family migrated to the US and UK way back in the 70s. Every single person I know is a migrant in some way or the other.

My generation continues to be the migrant generation. We live in several cities, and in several places. We no longer have a permanent address. We no longer cling on to our singular identities. I live in Delhi now, with my 8-year old twins, who hardly know the difference between 'permanent address' and 'temporary address'. For them, home is where the proverbial heart is. We take pride in connecting to extension of families who had moved to Mauritius, Fiji and Surinam centuries ago as Girmitiya (indentured) workers. We plan our vacations with our second and third generation relatives in Europe, North America and South Africa.

This is, however, just one side of the story - prima facie simple and uncomplicated, because it has largely been a story of legal migration. The other side of the story is far murkier, multiple times more complicated.

The fact is, every single day millions of migrants try to get from one part of the world to the other in search of a safer existence and a better livelihood. Thousands of them risk their lives, trying to flee conflict and instability, and death, that they face in their homeland. In India, illegal immigration has been repeatedly called a 'national problem' by the parliamentarians. The urban catastrophe that internal migration is causing is an issue we don't even want to discuss right now in our country.

While there can be no quick fix solution to illegal immigration in the world, the issue can't be looked at without compassion. It is absolutely commendable that the European Union has still been trying hard to standardise its asylum policy despite the challenge of getting 28 member states to think and act in harmony. Sadly, the latest Mediterranean tragedy will hardly work as a deterrent. This faint hope of refuge in the face of persecution and insecurity far exceeds the fear of death.

The irony, however, is far too striking. The more fortunate ones like us, who can choose to live wherever they want, call ourselves the 'global citizens'. We command choices. We take pride in our pluralism and homelessness. We flaunt and celebrate our indigenous identities. We call our forefathers the 'invincible heroes' only because they dared to explore new territories. Inside, in our hearts, we all live with this curiosity that who knows at which end of the world our children and grandchildren will find home.

And yet, outside in the real world we stand cruelly divided for those who want nothing but some compassion, and ground beneath their feet.

Anu Singh Choudhary @anusinghc is a Delhi-based freelance journalist, author and documentary filmmaker. When she is not fretting over her 8-year old twins' handwriting and spellings, she travels through villages and cities across India in search of stories.