7-Year-Itch

Aman (name not changed) has worn her favorite red Punjabi suit today. She bends towards the mirror checking her mascara. She picks the lipstick and applies another coat. She is looking like a princess.

Today is the D-day. She and her parents have waited for this day. Today, she will be what she has always wanted to be in life.

Today is her Interview with the Hong Kong Immigration Department for becoming a Permanent Resident in Hong Kong.

Aman was born in Amritsar to a family of six where her father, Jagjit Singh, worked as a scooter- mechanic. A typical dream of families from interior Punjab is not to provide their children with good education, but to send them abroad. By all means.

Be it on the basis of education, work, marriage or sponsorship, irrespective whether legal or illegal, their motive in life is to be abroad.

Like others, Jagjit Singh too had approached an agent to get “advice” on supposedly foolproof methods for reaching the destination countries. He sold off the family gold, mortgaged his house, emptied his bank accounts and took loans from friends and neighbors to raise $40,000 to send his son to Canada. 

He was not alone. Every family in the village has a son, son-in-law or nephew living abroad and sending money home.

Destination B was Hong Kong and target no. 2 was Aman with the plan of a ‘marriage agreement’ to get Aman a dependent visa as a wife. Though she stayed not more than 5 months with her husband, yet completion of 7 years as his legally wedded wife here has made her eligible to be a PR now.

Aman has got a 6-years old daughter out of this wedlock, currently brought up by Jagjit Singh in India while she works here as a cook in a Chinese restaurant.

Her daughter holds an HK-SAR passport and incidentally Jagjit Singh’s family didn’t have to pay for it.

When Aman went to Punjab this time, she met some boys of her community desperate to settle down with her in Hong Kong.

After her divorce, she would apply for dependent visa for her brothers first. Her family has proudly secured a place in the village to have successfully settled their kids on foreign lands.

She pins up her dupatta on her shoulders slips in her stilettos and waits for bus no. 18 that stops at Immigration Tower. 

Could the 7-year-itch ever be so pleasant?