Maple Leaf Calling

No wonder, Canada is regarded as immigrants ‘haven. I mean where on earth would you find a generous country like this, where every day hundreds of people land, who in most of cases don’t even know the name of 13 provinces of Canada. But voila! You are here. And No sir! You won’t go back, unless you are deported or have received your citizenship.

Once upon a time, people were familiar to American dream .Now the latest dream is the Canadian One. I asked many of my friends why they chose Canada. And their answers, on average were same all the time.

“You get E.I. for not working......”

”You get paid for being a baby boomer........

“You don’t need to worry about English, you can speak whatever the language you know, and there are a lot of people like us here.....”

“If your husband is ugly and you want to leave him, just hit your head with a base ball bat, then call 911, Canadian Govt will send you in a shelter, you will be easily divorced with lots of compensation (paid from the pocket of ex-yours truly .......)”

”When you rent a house, there is already a refrigerator installed in it for you, for free.....!”

And the list goes on. All of the things that will make you atleast obtain PRC from this country. It’s funny how people who don’t know anything about western world, start their lives here and after 3 to 4 years become quite settled, (although everything is settled on the base of mortgage and credit cards).A woman who used to be my colleague once told me that until she moved to Canada, she used to think that Pena Colada is the name of an African dance! .And that, cold calls to an employer can be made in winter only.

Name one foreign item that you won’t find in shops and malls of Canada. From Sari to skirts, Herbal medicines to turtle’s eggs, from coffee maker to lota! .Every things is here. All you need to do is to find an area where you can find your own community and you are set to go. I arrived in GTA in the month of March. And believe me, I found more Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis, Philippinese and Jamaicans here on roads, malls, and in transits, then the natives. I was taken aback. It wasn’t like what I saw in Holly wood movies. It seemed as if I was in my own country and real Canadians looked immigrants to me being so few .Where are the natives? I asked our hosts who kept us at their home on arrival. “Ummm, they will come out in summer!”

I am not sure who came out first, the green leaves or natives? .But it seems there is some correlation between summer and original Canadians. Suddenly they were everywhere. And finally! I was able to take my pictures with a back ground that excluded my immigrant majority and showed some real stuff.

Very soon after your arrival in Canada, you feel like you are going through a process of transition. Now ladies wearing saris and shalwar Kameez all their lives, start reconsidering jeans and long skirts. And those who were already wearing jeans and skirts way back home, they get out of control! .Teen agers, who used to have lots of friends in their country of origin, now will be seen with a bunch of buddies here, and off course! all of these buddies are referred with a common name ,i.e. .Yo ! .I wonder ,how do you differentiate between so many Yos ? .Shouldn’t they be named as Yo1,Yo2,Yo3 .... ? Your kids will soon start to forget how they used to walk in their home land. Now they will walk with their shoulders following Newton’s Law of Gravity. Duplicating each arm with a simple pendulum, you will see them walking (rather tumbling) on roads and walk ways, in a rhythm of right side up, left side down ! .Then left side up, right side down. Looks funny though, but not scary .Yes! You are right. Scare begins when you look at their hands while they walk .These hands now moves with a twists and turn and those miserable fingers attach at their ends seems to be turning in all 360 directions. No! it doesn’t have to do with any sudden loss of calcium due to Canadian weather. It’s just due to the fact now your child tries to adopt this mega culture environment all in one chunk and ends up being another Yo.

There are more changes to follow, such as change in your accent. You see people speaking English in Indian accent , You see people speaking English in Chinese accent, You see people speaking English in Mexican ,Arabian and Nigerian accent .And then you come up with your own customized accent ,which is neither yours ,nor theirs. Some times when you speak, It’s only between you and God Almighty to understand what you are saying.

The reality show begins when you go to find a job. You  see that you end up mostly working labour jobs, security duties and cab driving. It’s a well recognized fact that comparative to rest of the world, Canada has the highest number of Phds serving as cab driver .You begin you search with big sites like monster, workopolis, yahoo jobs. You go to their search engine and proudly type in your once profession; engineer, surgeon, professors .You name it. And when you apply, you never qualify. After few months of spent savings,now you don’t visit big sites and big agencies any more .Now you open kijiji.com, and type ‘general labour' in search engine. So much for a Canadian dream. To people back in your home land, its a paradise, where dollars hang upon a tree .All you have to do, is to grab them, spend them and in some cases send them back home. They don’t know that here, dollars don’t hang upon trees. Its immigrants, and is in an upside down position!

After 6 month of your arrival you stop taking pictures of greenery or snow fall. You stop drinking Coca Cola and Pepsi like crazy(They are very cheap here to buy) .One of the Wall Mart employee told me that the simplest way to guess if the customer has newly arrived in Canada ,is to see how many litre bottles of beverages he is buying in food items. Now you don’t get excited with the name of Niagara Falls .Ladies, who were previously dragging all skeletons out of their friends’ closets, only because land line to line conversation is free. Now use phone when they need to check if their husband is still loyal and not having an affair in the office. Men turn bald and worn out. Women become artificially blond, their eye brows get thinner than ever and waist line grows like US military budget (thanks to BBQ tradition) .It’s rightly said that “more than 45 is an atomic waist". But as long as obesity is not taxed in Canada, nobody will seriously think about it.

It’s a long story to tell but I am keeping it short for the convenience of readers. No matter, what happens to you in this country, you will never want to leave this place. No! Not because of baby booming benefits. It’s due to the heart touching fact that Canadian grounds and people accept new comers with openness and true warmth .They won’t discriminate you, they won’t disrespect you. You will be among them with same level of regard and treatment. No matter which ethnicity, geography, or religion you originate from. If you are in Canada, you have Canadian rights .Besides; you really get E.I being unemployed  :)  :) ............