I remembered how, at fifteen, I had withstood the pressure to be an engineer simply because I did not want to become one. At seventeen, I remembered how I quit my first job within a week—which, to my father’s delight, would send home a chauffeur-driven car to pick me up—because I did not want my precious hours spent on anything that lay outside my area of interest. I liked to eat nutritious food, dress well, buy plenty of books, go to a health club, play sports—to pay for all this, I worked on all kinds of odd jobs, from translating documents to being an usher at public exhibitions in the city for a few days each month. Despite my father’s insistence, and much to his chagrin, I did not wish my middle-class family to take care of this extra expenditure, and would pay my expenses myself.
Sitting in the back seat of the autorickshaw, the wind hitting my face, I remembered how I would find our Bengali family weddings outlandish with their superficial display of wealth and chants no one understood. I remembered how I had hardly ever accompanied my parents to any of those weddings. I remembered how my parents had thus given up on me, proclaiming that I was just trying to be different from the rest.
Upon reaching home, I found that the news about my engagement was indeed true. Without saying much, I packed a few pieces of clothing into a sling bag and left home to live with two friends in the boarding facility of my university. I slept on the floor for six months before I got a room of my own, which I shared with another student. Between classes, I worked as a junior editor at a nearby magazine so that I could pay for my education. With no means of transport, I would walk to work and back to class several times a day.
A year later, I completed my degree with the best grades in my university. I enrolled in a master’s degree course and returned home. But within days of my return, I discovered, hidden in a cupboard, a stack of continuing correspondence between my parents and their chosen groom for me—the same Bengali boy living in Tokyo. My parents had not given up.
This was the situation that motivated me to leave India. I was curious about the world, but my curiosity was not a strong enough factor to make me want to leave home. Instead, it was the situation that I felt trapped in that pushed me towards the decision.
Like Robert Butler’s monkey in a cage, I immediately recognized a window of opportunity when it opened up.
One morning, a professor at my university called me to his office to say he would like to recommend my name for an academic fellowship to study for a year in Paris at Sciences Po, France’s premier university. He asked me if I would be comfortable with that. After a brief conversation, I agreed. After a few months, I managed to win a monthly student stipend of €624 from the French government. The only challenge was my air ticket to Paris. It cost €1000, and I did not wish to burden my parents with this amount. My younger brother was bright and my parents were spending a fortune on his coaching classes so that he could make it through the IIT entrance exams. They had taken several loans for his studies already and worked overtime to make ends meet at home.
I wrote to thirty organizations—private companies, foundations, government agencies—to sponsor my air ticket to France. None responded, except one non-profit firm located in south Delhi. Its founder was an Indian woman who lived in the United States but was briefly visiting Delhi. I was asked to meet her at the organization’s office.
The office turned out to be an apartment in a residential complex. It was run by three staff members, one of whom accompanied me to the lounge. A few minutes later, a woman who appeared to be in her fifties entered the room dressed in pants and a floral chiffon shirt. She was smiling, her eyes twinkling. Seating herself across me, she introduced herself as the founder, and then, even without much of a chat, she took a chequebook out from her bag and flipped through its pages.
Holding a signed cheque for Rs 50,000 in her hand, she told me, ‘Here, you get this cheque for your air ticket on three conditions. One, you will forget this ever happened [I try but I obviously have not]; two, you will never, ever get in touch with us, three, you will do this for another girl if you ever can later in your life.’
This was how I moved out of India to an unknown country 6500 kilometers away.
My story is one of hundreds of millions. Every migrant who moves to another city or country has a compelling situation that motivates them to leave, and a few enabling factors or people that help them make the move. Each era in history has had ‘push factors’—situations that compel a person to leave their place of origin—and pull factors which are aspects of the host location that attract a person to live there. For these reasons and more, each migrant has a unique story and journey.
During the course of my academic research on migration, I met migrants across Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Rome, London, New York, Geneva, Cairo, Dubai, Nairobi, Beijing, Lahore, Islamabad and Dhaka. At university, I learnt migration theories and history from books, but my real learning
