Immigrants (We Get The Job Done)

Sep 21

*Image of Jhumpa Lahiri’s Namesake (film). Image via Scroll In*

So many of our families left South Asia because of varying, but equally heartbreaking challenges: a lack of opportunity, systemic corruption, economic failure, indifference about humanity. Apathy.

I sit here and wonder sometimes, what’s the point of it? The divide and the hate have followed us. Horrific genocide – colonisation. Famine. Foeticide. Resistance. Counter-attack. More divide. We’ve suffered it all as South Asians. Divided in so many different ways by colonisers and twisted politicians since pre-”independence.” Since the time we lie to ourselves that we stripped ourselves in half willingly for those who never cared about us to begin with. I know my great grandfather played in the fields with yours. We are one of the same.

Blood spilled. Four and seven. Seven and one. Eight and four. I’ll never play these lotto numbers. Today. Blood keeps shedding. At what point does bloodshed cease to be our biggest romance? What are we hurting each other for?

Traumatic, life-boggling horrors happened. In resistance, in sadness, in silence – people left. Stripped away forcibly or helplessly from everything they held dear and had called their home. Because the divide threatened them. Every time. Collectively, eventually, among all the chaos, we are complicit in letting the worst of it all happen.

via YouTube

A new land. A new culture. A new place. A safe place to let the children be children and grow. To be promised a future. Security. Abundance. Stability. And they stayed. Got the job done every single day, time and time again – worked hard, made a modest living, prayed to God every day.

It rested deeply. For decades. And then it awoke again – violent, angry, lustful, hungry. Like the headlines of horrendous rapes that we see. Of all the ways we hear Mother Earth crying. Stop.

It’s time to feed. The bloodshed follows. Because the divide follows. Every time; we let it.

Why is my existence still a threat to yours?

[I’m sorry that your existence appears to be a threat to mine]