The ubiquitous Malayali nurse has a story to tell – be it the fictional character Prabha from the celebrated film All We Imagine as Light or Nimisha Priya, in a Yemeni prison, who narrowly escaped being executed for murdering her Yemeni “husband”.
A tenacious, transnational figure, the Malayali nurse has worked in European countries since the 1960s and crossed the Atlantic to the United States. They are known to have rescued the German healthcare system from an acute staff shortage and are found hard at work in areas of strife and war, like Priya in Yemen.
Malayalam novelist Benyamin’s Nishabdha Sanjarangal, or The Silent Journeys, honours the Malayali woman who rescued many poor families from deprivation, perhaps even before Malayali men set off on migratory journeys.
The “Malayali nurse” supports her community but is also a source of anxiety, seen as a threat to local societies often because of the single, unattached lives they lead in far-off lands, away from the surveillance of the community. This social context is central to the story of Priya, who came to Yemen when she was just 19 years old.
A Malayali nurse in Yemen
War and civil strife since 2015 in Yemen and an absent sovereign government have left immigrant women workers, like Priya, especially vulnerable. She must have found life and work in a foreign land difficult, even though her Indian husband and child were with her briefly. Her desire to establish her own medical clinic led her to explore partnerships in Yemen, since non-Yemenis are not allowed to run enterprises. Priya relied on her association with a local man. He used forged documents to pretend to be married to her, but seized her passport and began exploiting her financially and sexually.
Desperate to flee with her passport, she tried to get her tormentor to fall asleep by drugging him, but he died of an overdose in 2017. The violent trail of “sexual reputation” haunts Priya, compounding her already vulnerable status as a non-Muslim, immigrant woman. At the same time, a woman who murders her husband is not deserving of sympathy, be it in Yemen or in India.
Big dreams, hard work
Nurses from Kerala have a good professional reputation, a wide global network and are willing to travel and take risks for better prospects that will secure good marriages and education for their siblings, a house for their parents and sometimes even a dowry for themselves. Brought up in conservative households, these women have had to struggle against the norms of mobility, work and sexuality and have come to enjoy freedom from the restrictive environment of the family, control over their income – at least on a day-to-day basis – and their mobility.
It is this complex set of reasons that lend them the courage to adapt to a new milieu and enjoy their work and new-found freedom while bolstering their families economically and socially. Similar dreams must have fuelled Priya’s journey from Palakkad to Yemen.
Research on the migration of nurses from Kerala to other parts of India have highlighted several dimensions that are relevant here. For instance, a study by two of the three authors in 2006, based on long conversations with Malayali nurses employed in Delhi, found that most of them aim to apply for overseas jobs: West Asia’s Arab countries, Europe and the US, were the preferred destinations.
India’s adverse nurse-patient ratios and arduous working conditions as well as a continuous demand for nurses abroad, drive the high aspiration to go overseas, especially among young nurses, despite the likely hardships.
Priya’s own story reflects this.
She is a vulnerable victim of war who stepped out of the familiar in search of a better life for her family. Yemen, like India, is among the 55 countries that still has a death penalty, which disproportionately affects the poor immigrant who does not know how to work the criminal justice system. Apart from Priya’s family, she has the support of civil society groups that have been negotiating with local Yemeni groups and the man’s family to secure her release. The exchange of “blood money” seems to have resulted in the murdered man’s family pardoning Priya.
The figure of the Malayali nurse is urging us to accept and understand Nimisha Priya, and countless other immigrant women workers, as victims of complex social circumstances. May we be able to imagine her life wholly, not just as a victim but a fighter and (hopefully) a survivor, rather than a criminal.
Sumangala Damodaran is Professor, International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs).
Krishna Menon is Professor, Gender Studies, Ambedkar University Delhi.
Bindu KC is Assistant Professor, Gender Studies, Ambedkar University Delhi.
