DEPARTING BY LAMPLIGHT

Socio-economic pressure made thousands of Malayalis take up nursing jobs abroad. In the decades since, along with other migrants, they are a force that has changed Kerala’s society and economy.

- Siddharth Premkumar

FROM the tarmac, Graciemol Thomas spied the modest two-storey airside terminal at the Calgary international airport and knew she was going to be alright. All of 22 years as she stepped off her second trans-continental flight in as many days in 1971, the devout ingénue from Kuttoor, a “small village just beyond” the municipal bounds of Tiruvalla in Kerala’s Bible belt, recalls the tears of relief as handmade ‘Welcome to Canada’ placards went up in the public viewing area. Cold, inhospitable London had left the trained, but unseasoned, paediatric nurse thinking she was in over her head. A day later, still fighting jetlag, Thomas made the four-hour drive to Blairmore, the nondescript Albertan community the “village girl” would call home for nearly four decades.