A note

Migration is not a journey; it is a riddle, one we must answer before we even know how to ask it. And for many of us, the question is not “Should we go?” but rather, “Can we stay?” The decision to leave is not always a choice; sometimes it is thrust upon you, a leap of faith into a sea of uncertainty, because staying means stagnation and survival, but not living. My parents left for Singapore, yes, but what did they really leave behind? Was it just the soil, the village, the streets lined with memories? Or was it something else — something more intangible — that slipped through their fingers, like water through a cracked cup?

Singapore — a city so sharp, so pristine in its outward promise of progress — becomes a mirror reflecting their disquiet. What does migration offer but the illusion of security? For my father, who started off as a blue-collared worker in this foreign land, the reality was long hours, strained silences in a language that was never his, and a life built from the edges of other people’s dreams. Migration is a gamble for families like ours: you uproot everything for something that may never fully materialise. What do you hold on to when you have consciously chosen to uproot yourself from your own land? What does it mean to live in a world that demands you build anew, while asking you to forget what was before?

Part 1: Migration – To Move or Not to Move?

The question of migration begins with an impossibility: Should we go? For some, it is a call of destiny, and for others, an echo of desperation. But what is left when you answer that call? For my parents, the choice was born not from ambition but from a quiet understanding that their homeland could no longer offer them the life they dreamed for their children. They left, as so many have before them, because staying meant survival—but not life.

But migration is never just an act of movement; it is a dislocation, a violent severance. For the privileged few -- expats, diplomats, the global elite -- migration comes with a plush blanket of ease, access to everything the new world has to offer. But for those of us who arrive with nothing but hope in our hearts and the language of our homeland on our tongues, the path is far steeper. My father came not with the promise of luxury, but with the sweat of his brow, with long shifts and the bitterness of being misunderstood, of having his very humanity reduced to a service. And so, for families like mine, migration is always an unspoken wager: you uproot yourself in the hope that your next step might bring a future more bearable than the one you left behind.

Part 2: Immigration – To Stay or Not to Stay?

Then comes the next question: Should we stay? It’s a question that carries the weight of the world — of memory, of loss, of love. My parents, like so many others, found Singapore to be a haven in its promises of safety and security. But safety — what does it really mean? Can you ever truly feel safe in a place that does not hold your name, does not know the shape of your history, does not hear the pulse of your song?

In this new land, my parents planted seeds — small, uncertain seeds of their culture which they knew might not bloom. My mother’s cooking, the scent of fish, rice, and spices that lingered in the kitchen like a prayer; my father’s lungi, a threadbare connection to the life he once lived, now a quiet rebellion against the conformity that surrounded him. They carried their culture with them, but it was a culture that slowly started to disintegrate in the sterile air of a city that had no room for nostalgia, no patience for memories. The question I ask -- one that remains unanswered --

is: Could they ever feel at home here? Or was their life always suspended between the land they left behind and the land they never fully embraced?

Part 3: Anticipation - To Hold or to Let Go?

For the children of migrants, the question shifts once more: Should we hold on, or let go? It is an impossible choice, for to hold on is to resist, and to let go is to surrender. How do you hold on to a past that the world demands you forget? In Singapore, I felt the weight of my heritage, like a stone in my shoe, something I could not escape. My Bengali roots were like a language no one spoke, a song no one heard. To many, I was simply "Indian," a category that collapsed all the diversity of the subcontinent into a single, indistinguishable mass.

People assumed I spoke Tamil, like so many others, as if South Asia were one vast, indistinguishable block of culture. It was easier to accept this and slip into the anonymity of being just another brown face in the crowd. But my heritage, my identity, was not so easily subsumed. I spoke Bangla, a language imbued with the songs of liberation, with the weight of a history of resistance, struggle and survival. How could I explain that? How could I make them understand that the songs of Tagore, the festivals of Pohela Boishakh, the spirit of Bangladesh, and the resistance of 1956, 1979 and most recently, 2024, are inseparable from me?

I often find myself questioning whether I have the right to demand such a strong belonging to Bangladesh. After all, although I was born in Bangladesh, I came to Singapore at just 4-months -old. I went back twice – once in 2005, and once in 2015, totalling to about 2 weeks there. I never got to eat the street food of the motherland as I was plagued with food poisoning, and neither could I experience any major festival. My Bengali identity has largely been constructed by my parents. Is it a mere illusion then?

But the real struggle was with my own community. Even within the South Asian diaspora, I found myself torn between worlds. Indian culture — its celebrations, its dominance — often drowned out my Bengali identity. And yet, despite all the pressure to conform, I resisted. My parents did not let me forget who I was. My father sang Bhatiali and Nazrul Geeti with a fervor that spoke to the blood of our ancestors, and my mother’s hands, worn from labor, carried the recipes of generations.

An Ode to Them

In the quiet moments, I wonder — did my parents ever feel truly at home here? Or did they, like so many others, live in the shadow of a life they could never fully inhabit? Migration, after all, is a story of quiet exile, of finding a place to belong when belonging is forever out of reach. But in their quiet resilience, my parents built something more than a life; they built a home. It was not a home of walls and windows, but a home of memories, of culture, of language — the fragments of a life lived elsewhere, stitched together into something new.

I write this post today solely because of my privilege. I was born to the right family – my parents’ hard work was met with the success of settling here, but it would be unfair to not acknowledge that luck too played a huge role.

This post is for them. For the parents who carried with them nothing but hope, for the families who crossed oceans and mountains to plant their roots in foreign soil, knowing they would never be truly “home” again. Their stories are not just theirs; they are the stories of a million others -- of those who have crossed borders not to erase the past, but to preserve it in the face of a future that demands they forget.

Because, in the end, belonging is not defined by the land you inhabit, but by the act of making a home in a place that never quite accepts you, by holding on to the roots that threaten to wither, knowing that it is the act of holding on itself that keeps you grounded.

Written by: Shazneen Hasan