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Migrated Malayalis talk about life in the UAE
Updated On: 23 January, 2022 08:32 AM IST | Mumbai | Sucheta Chakraborty
With the UAE promising to open a state-of-the-art food park in Kerala, Malayalis who migrated to the Gulf years ago discuss the advantages of life in the country even as some insecurities remain
The Gulf Dream has found reflection in popular culture. Period drama film Pathemari follows the life of Pallikkal Narayanan (Mammootty) who migrated to the Middle-East in the early 1960s. Photo Illustration/Uday Mohite
Ambili Narayanan moved to the UAE from Kerala after she got married in 1989. Her husband who worked with a British firm at the time which had associations with several ministries was able to get a visa for her even before they got married. “From day one, it was a decision that we took together,” says Narayanan who started her career as an environmentalist in the early 1990s at a time when it was still a fairly new discipline. She now works as an environment and sustainability manager and has been associated with several infrastructural development projects in the Palm Islands and with Etihad Rail and has worked in countries like the UAE, Qatar and Kuwait. Nearly 32 years later, Narayanan says she never felt regret about their decision, both husband and wife having used these years to accomplish themselves with educational degrees and starting their own business. “We never saw this country as a temporary home,”
she says. “It wasn’t just me coming all by myself; we moved together as a family.”
Moreover, because of her husband’s job, they found themselves living a comfortable life in a villa in the new country. “Had we come into a small flat, I may have felt differently but since that was not the case, in my mind it was just a shifting of location.” She admits that at the time, she knew few families from Kerala who were moving to the Gulf the way they had. “I went from being part of a subset to a superset, so initial challenges were there, but my husband had already lived in the UAE for a few years by then so he already had friends with families for me to get accustomed to. I could interact with members of other nationalities too—it was easy for me to get into that current.” At the same time, Narayanan has held on to her roots through Mohiniyattam, Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi classes, allowing her to participate in and teach children for social functions and preparing elaborate Onam sadhyas with members of her husband’s family, originally from Travancore, who like her are now based in Dubai.
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