Mohan and I were waiting for a train on the platform at Shepherd's Bush station in London. It was a crisp November morning in 1999 and we stood in the sun soaking up the warmth.
"What will you do in Canada?" Mohan asked me suddenly. The unexpectedness of the question took me by surprise and I gazed into the middle distance along the empty tracks pretending to spot the oncoming train. Mohan was my flight attendant friend and colleague in Air India and we were in London on a scheduled layover. We were headed for The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. Though November might not be the best month to see the flowers, I had never been there in spite of passing through London hundreds of times in my 22 years in the airline, and had decided that this deficiency must be rectified before I migrated to Canada.
"I know what I will not do...", I replied blithely as I searched my mind and heart for the right answer. A couple of years earlier the same question had been posed to me by Laxman, a friend who lived in the same building as me in Mumbai. Back then too I had had no answer for Laxman.
The immigration agent (or "consultant" as they prefer to be called) who was in charge of processing our application with the Canadian High Commission in New Delhi once told us an apocryphal tale about a client of his, a young educated lady from Mumbai, who, when she was asked the same question by the official at the High Commission, answered confidently,"Sir, I will do anything, even clean toilets, just let me into your country!" The consultant thought this brilliant answer had increased her chances exponentially for immigration.
I had looked aghast at the agent. Was that the level of desperation required to emigrate? Okay, even Mahatma Gandhi made it mandatory in his ashram in Wardha that all the inmates should share the task of cleaning the bucket toilets, but this was done to highlight and address a social problem which condemned members belonging to the lowest of the low castes to spend their entire lives cleaning the shit of the rest of society. I reccomend reading "Endless Filth : The Saga of the Bhangis", a book by Mari Marcel Thekaekara on the subject. The performing of menial, boring chores was also very much a part of the great Eastern traditions of teaching humility to the neophyte in search of spiritual liberation. On the other hand, as General George S.Patton put it so eloquently, you don't want to be remembered by your grandchild for having "shovelled shit in Louisiana"! I had unclogged umpteen toilets at 30,000 feet and it did not appeal to me as a full time occupation. If dealing with human waste had been my forte, India, with its over one billion people, would be the ideal location for such a pursuit...
The question, "What will you do in Canada" lies at the heart of the dilemma faced by all immigrants into Canada. At the core of it all lies the mismatch between what Canada needs to keep the economy humming along, and the rather high standards it sets for potential immigrants : as per the "points system" the more educated you are, the better are your chances of being admitted. On arrival however, newcomers are rejected for jobs that they apply for on the flimsy (there is no other word for it) grounds that they lack "Canadian" experience or that their credentials are not recognised in this country. This is rather ironic, because the credentials were damn well recognised when they filed their applications!
Obviously I had fallen horribly short in exercising due diligence when researching the kind of work I might be able to find in Canada. If nothing else, it would have prepared me mentally for the opportunities (or lack thereof) I would find. Every immigrant's story should serve as a cautionary tale for the next in line!
Once the driver of a taxi I was taking to the airport happened to be a civil engineer from India! I bought a cordless telephone in a large retail chain from a salesman who sported a Ph.D in chemistry along with his name tag. This kind of "square peg in a round hole" syndrome seems to be fairly common. The dignity of labour and all that wonderful stuff is fine, but when human talent and skill is wasted it is a great loss for the host country. Perhaps the immigration guidelines and filters need to be changed so that all may benefit.
Happily, the policies never applied in my particular case! I tagged along as excess baggage with my wife ...she was the one who had qualified to immigrate. My profession as a flight attendant obviously had no value to the Canadian economy...and rightly so. A few months after I returned to Canada in July 2001, Air Canada laid off approximately 5000 workers! There was another fledgling carrier called Canada 3000 (who were planning to begin direct Vancouver - New Delhi flights!) which went bankrupt overnight : some of their crew were stranded in places like Hawaii and had to buy their own tickets to get home!!
Aviation was not the only sector affected in 2001. The softwood lumber industry (one of the mainstays of the economy in BC) suffered a devastating blow when the biggest importer - the good old US of A - slapped on an extra customs duty on the product. I remember reading in a newspaper that around 85,000 workers lost their jobs.
These localised events were then overshadowed by 9/11 and the paranoia that followed. The Iraq war followed soon after. The world seemed to be coming to an end.
Given the above scenario, did it really matter what I did for a living? As they love to say here in North America, you still have to put food on the table, you still have to pay your bills. My next post on this blog will cover the myriad things that I tried my hand at to keep the wolf from the door.
In tough times and in times of tribulation, some people turn to prayer and religion. Some turn to alcohol and drugs. I find succour and solace in the natural world, and locating these eternal fountains of inspiration and hope is never a problem in Vancouver and its surrounding areas.
"Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in its head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything."
(Act II, Scene 1, "As You Like It", by William Shakespeare)
