Reshma’s Story
The perfect example of a TCK (Third Culture Kid), Reshma spent the first 16 years of her life living in Kuwait, until the Iraqi invasion forced her family to flee to their native Kerala , clutching only a suitcase each. “It was a very traumatic time” she remembers.
Adjusting to life in India was hard. Despite the fact that she was Indian, she didn’t speak the language fluently, didn’t relate to the culture or the attitudes. While she finished her education she grew up a lot. She had to acquire street smarts and social skills. “In the Gulf we lead such sheltered lives” she says.
She moved to Dubai 12 years ago, when she married. The physical transformation that was taking place, together with the cultural differences completely blew her away. Kuwait had been much more Arab and conservative. “Here in Dubai you forget you’re an expat” she says.
The first few years Reshma spent working in customer service until her son was born. She quit work as soon as she fell pregnant, much to the surprise of her friends “I wanted to enjoy my pregnancy” she explains. As a new mother she decided to pursue her passion and started a small catering business in Sharjah. At first it was the flexible job that all working mothers dream of but as the business flourished she found it started to take a toll on her both physically and mentally and in the end she took the difficult decision to close it. Her marriage also came to an end.
A period of transition and self healing followed during which she spent a lot of time reading, reflecting and being a mom. That’s what helped her to heal. “All of us have the ability to heal ourselves” she says. She overcame her depression, lost 20kg and embarked upon training in NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), hypnotherapy, pranic healing and jin shin jyutsu.
Her son is now 7 years old and she has rebuilt her life as a single mother. She lives in Dubai and works part-time as a complementary healer in a medical clinic as well as distributing nutritional products. She loves what she does. “Now I’m not doing work, I’m just being me” she says. Her son takes the bus to school and afterwards is cared for by a neighbour, who is a school counsellor and mother herself. “I feel very fortunate to have found her. He has a very loving family environment to come back to.”
Reshma is inspired by the vision of Sheikh Mohammed and what has been created in Dubai. “It has been amazing to watch the city grow” she says. Even though she still misses India – the nature, the rain and the street life – she has found her own niche in the UAE. She now knows that the answer to the question “Where is home?” is that it’s wherever she’s living at the time. “I belong in myself” she says. Her advice to other Indians moving to Dubai is “Come with openness. Don’t try to find India – find the world.”