Emigration: One More Year of Memories

One More Year

To this day, every time I land at the airport in the city where I have lived for over two decades, I look around to find myself from that day we landed.

A passport stamped, a document created, and we were placed in a category called Landed Immigrants or Permanent Residents. 

Oh, You Are A Newcomer

I look back now and notice how gradually, we became other categories unbeknownst to us. These categories were embedded in the paperwork as well in the minds of people with whom I interacted and slowly steadily they seeped into my consciousness.

I remember how I began introducing myself as a newcomer because someone had told me that I was.

Market Places and Me

I knew from our family’s travels on international job postings around South East Asia that India and her neighbours constituted the South Asia Area marketplace for goods and services.  So when I began to be seen and named as South Asian, I began to take up that naming.

Setting Up The Display

In a previous post, I had shared how in April-May 2002, soon after she joined the school team, the vice-principal of my daughter’s school invited me o participate in some family-school partnership (though I did not know that name then).

I remember taking in books and brass, copper artifacts, a not so favourite sari or two and wearing one on the day of the celebrations. 

I remember being invited to lunch with staff and I remember the outrage I’d experienced when another guest said loudly with raucous laughter “where is the real food?” My daughter’s teacher sat with me and we talked. We shared recipes of what we had brought to the table. That was special and warm.

Learning The “Language”, Naming the Margins 

None of what I experienced then I wrote about to share like this.

I was super fluent in the language of instruction though and I knew how to read between the lines. Yet, no one would have read what I wrote then as I had not yet gained the sociological language to express those situations.  More importantly, I had not yet become the me I am now.

Recently I read another, more renowned author say that as he has some fame now, he can say things others are not able to. Maybe all those experiences marinated very well. The writings that began in my experiences, felt deeply and viscerally as a tingling of the skin or sharp intake of breath at what my body knew was an insult at y presence here, lived through that time.

The experiences became silken threads that I bravely and patiently wove into my books, my blog posts, my research papers and a thesis. Reflexivity is important.

Looking Back

Today, I sit with my thoughts approaching the time of day when we must have landed. 

I remember every detail from my standpoint of that evening. I remember what I did – bought chicken noodle soup and salt topped crackers for the children at a counter nearby and waited patiently with them while things unfolded around me.

I was a “dependent spouse” on the paperwork, after all. 

Many Changes

2 and a half decades is a long time. Much happened, life events, milestones, you know. We lost one member of our family to patriarchal reclamation. 

The three of us, the children and I have made a rich and fulfilled life for ourselves that we didn’t know then that we could do.

Now, I am Dr.Karnad-Jani, with a world view that’s deep and broad and satisfying in its beginner mindset with most things.

How Do I Commemorate 

I look at the softly falling snow.

I feed birds.

I come inside.

I make tea.

Dr. Rashmee Karnad-Jani

Reference:

Olmos-Vega, F. M., Stalmeijer, R. E., Varpio, L., & Kahlke, R. (2023). A practical guide to reflexivity in qualitative research: AMEE Guide No. 149. Medical Teacher, 45(3), 241–251. https://doi.org/10.1080/0142159X.2022.2057287