migration

In a sea of human beings, it is difficult, at times even impossible, to see the human as being.

The news in those days was full of war and migrants and nativists, and it was full of fracturing too, of regions pulling away from nations, and cities pulling away from hinterlands, and it seemed that as everyone was coming together everyone was also moving apart. Without borders nations appeared to be becoming somewhat illusory, and people were questioning what role they had to play.

Whenever people talk in the abstract about the pros and cons of immigration, one should not forget that immigrants are individual human beings whose lives happen not to fit neatly within national borders _ and that like all human beings, they are all different.How different, though? Different better, or different worse? Such basic questions underlie whether people are willing to accept outsiders in their midst

The UN has protocols on both 'smuggling people' and on 'trafficking in persons.' At meetings to discuss these laws, it became clear that 'trafficking' was the term used to discuss women and children, while 'smuggling' was used to refer to men.

Summer has weeks left, but once the calendar displays the word __eptember,_ you__ think it was Latin for __vacuate._ I pity them for missing the best weather and the most energized time of year_It__ an extremely impressive display of life at the apogee of summer, the year__ productivity mounded and piled past the angle of repose. It is a world lush with the living, a world that-despite the problems- still has what it takes to really produce.

Migration is often accompanied by a feeling of unavoidable disorientation, and the circumstances of 1947 would have pronounced this feeling. In most cases, it would have created an involuntary distance between where one was born before the Partition and where one moved to after it, stretching out their identity sparsely over the expanse of this distance. As a result, somewhere in between the original city of their birth and the adopted city of residence, would lay their essence _ strangely malleable.

The past was like a bad dream; the future was all happy holiday as I moved Southwards week by week, easily, lazily, lingering as long as I dared, but always heeding the call!

When this flood blocks the road I am worried more by my soil getting washed, than by getting late to reach my destination.

Stuff and nonsense: you must regard this deviationfrom your plan as part of the adventure that you soughtwhen you decided embark on it in the first place. Trueadventure does not follow well-trodden paths. Absenceof certainty is its essence. People, like you and I, whochoose to shun the mundane must not only expect, butalso enjoy and profit from surprises.

History in its broadest aspect is a record of man's migrations from one environment to another.

exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted. And while it is true that literature and history contain heroic, romantic, glorious, even triumphant episodes in an exile__ life, these are no more than efforts meant to overcome the crippling sorrow of estrangement.

Every time the train stopped at a station, we would all hold our breath, making sure not a single sound drifted out of the closed windows. We were hungry and our throats parched. From inside the train we heard voices travelling up and down the platform, saying, __indu paani,_ and, from the other side, __uslim paani._ Apart from land and population, even the water had now been divided

The fury of those nativists advocating wholesale slaughter was what struck Nadia most, and it struck her because it seemed so familiar, so much like the fury of the militants in her own city. She wondered whether she and Saeed had done anything by moving, whether the faces and buildings had changed but the basic reality of their predicament had not.

When you are born--what you are born into, the place, the history of the place, how that history mates with your own-- stamps who you are, whatever the pundits of globalisation have to say.

I didn't know where it would lead. I wanted things to develop naturally.

If our goal is to slow migration, then the best way to do so is to work for a more equitable global system. But slowing migration is an odd goal, if the real problem is global inequality.

Our fights must be rooted in experiences, in stories, and in anecdotes. People remember these more than sterile numbers or facts. Myths are powerful magic and can turn enemies into friends. In a world where too many still tell stories that some are illegal and that to be free we must control the movement of others, the work of making new myths is essential.