In 1992, during the Gulf War, my parents applied for Canadian immigratioin; we were living in Dubai, where I was born. Later that year we did our immigrant landing in Calgary.
After a few moves, at 24 I became a Canadian citizen and though my new passport looked a lot like my Indian one, it changed things. I grew up too conscious of what citizenship and immigration mean. How borders imply different things for different with different passports. How I spent 24 years needing a visa to go absolutely everywhere, always having to prove I planned to leave.
As a Canadian I was suddenly trusted, and of a different world-status it seems. I hadn't changed. But the way people determined my eligibility to cross borders and move around the world had.
It bothers me: the way it is. People displaced because they were born on the wrong side of a man-made line. People having different worth and value because of a slightly different crest on a little blue book. People having fewer life options because their country is "3rd world", and dying trying to migrate.
This piece is quite simple:
Migrating geese have no borders. "Migration" means something different to them. They fly to survive. Momentum is their life. It is innate. They're not defined by the lines we draw in the sand.
I'd like to live like geese.
Commissioned for YYC Bump Festival 2019 in Calgary, Canada.
