Series: Young India, Mobile India

Corporate Migrants and Urban Ghetto

Memories, Collective identity and Comfort Zone

My friend, an IT professional, recently relocated to Delhi after a stay of three years at Bengaluru. Visibly relaxed and at ease, she said, “The job was good but only the job. Life was difficult.”

I said, “It is an interesting place. You must have made interesting friends from among the locals.”

“They don’t speak Hindi or English and there is no time.” She said exasperatedly. “We missed the life back home. Missed the chapatis, Holi and Rakhee.”

Food, festivals and language are major struggles of corporate migrants constituting the professionally skilled workforce. This is the story of not only my friend but that of any corporate migrant moving from one corner of a city to another.

Food is a survival issue. Food is not only about nutrition.  Food is also about palate memory. The regularly consumed food for a large part of life becomes a part of one’s palate memory making one long for a particular type of food. This memory compels one to feel satiated only after eating what one is accustomed to. A Gujarati enjoying a Gujarati Thali in Gujarat is reinforcing the existing palate memory. A palate memory can be consciously broken and a new palate memory be developed. A migrant continues to battle with the palate memory.

Language brings in a daily struggle. “Na Hindi bolte hai aur na English bolte hai.” This is a problem because one is handicapped by not having a common language to communicate. A corporate migrant is equipped professionally with culture, communication skills and a crash course in a foreign language prior to a business visit to a foreign country. Do we miss such a preparation while migrating to a different state within our country?

Festivals are occasions for memories and identity. I recalled my niece located in Bengaluru airing her frustration, “Yaha Rakhi manate hee nahi hai. Chutti bhi nahi hai. Bacche kaise seekhenge.” It is not a problem of holiday. It is   a community sense of a collective celebration that is missed. Located in a socio-cultural set up different from one’s own, this apparently a minor event becomes the challenge of educating their children about their traditions.

Corporate migrants diffuse these struggles by preferring to reside in areas dominated by other corporate migrants from their states.  At ease with familiarity and reinforcing the collective identity of different states within a city, these areas become urban ghettos. Though a historical context of ghetto is the Jewish quarter in a city, over a period of time it refers to any part of city in which citizens who form a minority on the basis of socio-economic parameters live and; it also is a segregated area of a group offering them safety. Generally it evokes an image of the poor, but the ghettos formed by corporate migrants house a professionally qualified middle and upper middle income group.

All these are problems of viewing life from one’s memories and one’s identity. Viewing the differences in language, food and festival as ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’, highlights the identity as migrants and mainstream citizens of a society.  This can be addressed if one decides to break the comfort zone. At larger level, it may be a problem of building a cohesive society, but at an individual level it is the attitude and effort to enjoy a rich socio-cultural life.

<< Previous

Housing Matters