Page 53 - My Creative Writing Portfolio

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Perhaps this is the paradox of migration:
To survive here,
one must sacrifice identity, comfort, recognition—
Yet through their struggle,
through their sacrifices,
they leave a quiet imprint
on the world they cannot fully own.

And still they race,
still they flutter,
toward the light
that promises everything
and delivers so little.

(About the poem - While I was in Sydney for some time (2017-2019), I watched young Nepali
migrants and learned about the struggles they go through to stay here. They come with a dream
of living in Australia, which they developed seeing Australia and people’s life style here in media
like Facebook, and stories they hear from other migrants, who generally hide their true experience
in order to retain their ‘honour’ or ‘prestige’ of living in a modern world just to brag themselves –
which I see nowadays as a need created by the education and society. They move from one State
to another, or from one type of training/education to another, to get a chance of getting a
permanent visa. They enrol in one college after another just to maintain visa, which has become
more and more expensive. They end up doing all these menial works like cleaning, looking after
the elderly or as a nurse and working day and night, generally in odd hours. They spend a good
part of their earnings to migrant agents, to a college, health insurance and immigration
department. Despite being grinded every day, they still want to stay because of social prestige
attached in their place of origin to a living in a developed countries and to earn something for the
parents or children back home.

I met a young lady, roughly 28 years, who was pregnant also. She worked as volunteer – without
pay in a private college – after completing Bachelor degree in accountancy. Her husband had
completed MBA degree from UK. He was working in an old-age house to care the elderly – certainly
his MBA degree was not useful for this. He worked and supported his wife to go to the college.
They seemed to belong to a ‘comfortable’ family in Chitwan, Nepal. Later I found out that they
moved to Tasmania to enrol in a college again so that it becomes easy for them to get PR. I felt sad
that the lady was in advanced stage of pregnancy and moving to a new place would have certainly
been difficult. This is just one example, and there are so many cases like this).