Message for migrants in the time of the Covid pandemic


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Khalda brake tey mar!

I'm in a hired car on the GT road from Lahore.  Typical driver, driving rashly as if in great hurry. His phone rings. He lifts it, looks at the screen for a few seconds, answers reluctantly. His wife shouts, 'Have you paid the doodhwalla', milkman? 'Yes!', he says sheepishly. She goes on complaining about how milk was not delivered today and she has guests at home, no tea to offer them, doodhwalla is unreliable, evil, and life is shit, and so on and on... He manages to say 'Khalda brake tey mar!! Mien phone kardan unoo' .  Hangs up. Calls doodhwalla whose excuse is that there was a wedding today. 'Whose wedding, yours or the villagers' ... 'or the cow they milk', I add in my mind. He is upset with the milkman, shares how the family back home is frustrated and gets him to promise to do it this evening, bring milk, wedding or no wedding. Back on phone to Khalda, explains the situation, complains about her being so impatient, not circumspect at ...
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Wife on instalments!

They got her married to someone who was already married. He was rich even if not around for most of the year. He worked in UAE , or was it Saudi Arabia ? Doesn't matter! She fell in love with a Mirasian da munda , a   boy from a different village who worked at a barber shop in the town.  This  Mirasi boy brought her home.  A marriage was  registered between the two before a district  judge who she told that she was divorced from her first husband.  A few weeks later, the first husband's family contested the divorce claim.  The court asked for a proof from her. The Mirasi family had saved some money by selling an old house to buy a new (bigger) one. This money was now spent on lawyers, court fees and police. Some of it was also spent on feasting relatives and friends for their support. The girl’s parents and her (first) husband’s family wanted her back. They approached an influential person in Mirasi's village through an influ...
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rites de passage à l'anthropologie

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The metaphor of threshold is central to understanding life-course changes in anthropology. Scholars such as Van Gennep (2011) and Victor Turner (1967) popularised the idea of rites de passage to account for cross-cultural practices of performing certain rituals to mark one’s transition from on stage in life to the next. A good example of such rites would be the initiation rituals which are usually performed around the time of puberty to mark the transition of an individual into adulthood i.e. the status of a full member of the society. Rituals associated with birth, marriage, death or even graduation are some other examples. Anthropologists have likened life-course to a series of rooms which are connected to each other through doors or portals between them. One enters the next room by leaving the previous room behind. Importantly, crossing the threshold is a moment of great uncertainty because it is at this precise moment that one is neither here, nor there . According to anthropol...
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