Home is Where the Heart is, by Rajashri Sai, Mumbai

Born in Pune, Maharashtra, raised across India and the middle east, and now residing in Mumbai, Maharashtra, Rajashri is an avid change maker and serial entrepreneur with a vision to positively impact five million people by 2025.

(Note: names have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals mentioned in this story.)

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“The train is moving, madam, we are going home. Thank you for everything, we are finally going home,” said Arvindan, a migrant who had been stuck for over three months at a railway station, on a platform near a sewage canal. 

We came across Arvindan and about 1,300 other people from Tamil Nadu, stuck in Mumbai station or in surrounding forests, during the nationwide lockdown. At 2 a.m. that night, he and his team were finally going home. 

I heaved a sigh of relief at my dining table. The house was quiet, everyone was sleeping, and my husband was looking after our well-fed, sleeping toddler. I started to cry, not for Arvindan, but for the thousands of people who had been named simply as “migrants.”

Was it the fault of pregnant Arti, holding her bump at the government hospital, that she was told, “You can’t deliver here”?

She was on the street– perhaps she and her unborn child had COVID-19. Rubbing her bump again and again, she had tears in her eyes. 

“Who asked them to go?” said one minister. 

“If they went, why did they want to come back?” another asked. “And why should I get them home? It’s not my responsibility,” he had told us. 

I remembered Arti, and my jaw clenched. And I remembered the official who looked pained as she spoke to me and fellow citizens on a Zoom call. 

She said, “Everyone is stretched, we all are tired. I know today you think the system is broken, but it was never right to begin with. COVID-19 has shown we are a land of the privileged. Everyone has become a number, a cost per head, and states have become feudal lords. The registration process to get home is rigged against the poor, to make sure the rich stay safe while an illiterate person does not have a choice. But, if you get me the documents that will comfort the powers above, and the money, I will get you a train. It will not be ideal; you will have only three hours to get people on board. But work with me, and I promise the train will leave.”

On May 23rd, we did just that. We mobilized 1,327 people to board a train in less than four hours. They didn’t have food or water, but they were going home. 

Our team worked hard for the next several weeks, not as CEOs, entrepreneurs, citizens, government officials, or the police– our day jobs– but documenting, negotiating, and running trains. 

We are all migrants who left our states; we know what loneliness is. Some of us know what it means to have food and still not feel full. All of us know the happiness of going home to a wife, a child, a mother. 

In this, I found the answer to that minister’s question, “Why come back?”

Well, home is where the heart lies. 

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(This story was prepared for an “Imagine Another World” online storytelling workshop held October 14, 2020.)

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