Friends in deed

There for each other

BY HARSHAD PANDHARIPANDE

You’re not alone. We’re with you. That’s the sentiment, repeated over and over by hundreds of apparent strangers, that has kept Vikramjeet Singh going these last few days.

Scrambling to arrange funds for his visiting mother’s medical treatment and with very few people to turn to, Granville resident Vikramjeet - who moved to Australia just over a year ago - made an impassioned appeal on the 27,000-member-strong Indians In Sydney group (IIS) on Facebook.

How the community responded over the next few hours and days was part heroic, part human and deeply touching.

First came financial help (Vikramjeet had received $4,000 before the day was up), then advice (using which Vikramjeet set up a GoFundMe page) and then a lot of initiative (people tweeted out Vikramjeet’s story, tagging India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, the Indian Consulate, and the Indian insurance firm whose cover Vikramjeet’s mother had bought).

The result? A representative of India’s Ministry of External Affairs, visited Vikramjeet on 4 December, promising help. By 5 December, Vikramjeet’s GoFundMe page had raised over $65,000.

It is just the latest illustration of how migrants, both old and new, are finding solace and support from online communitiessuch as IIS. From desperate pleas for job opportunities, questions about visas and travel advice to restaurant reviews and shopping recommendations (and the occasional forwarded joke or three), the groups are the whole spectrum of human emotion on display.

The groups are also a fairly accurate representation of what the diaspora is talking about and thinking about. They offer an insight into the community’s aspirations and ambitions, its fears and frustrations, its hilarity and heartbreaks.

They are also an embodiment of Indians’ intrinsic unity but also, at times, their inevitable fault lines of regional and linguistic differences and political persuasions.

But despite this, and due to the spike in migration numbers in the last three years or so, the groups have become both increasingly populated and increasingly popular. For the typical FOB, they serve as an all-you-wanted-to-know-but-didn’tknow-whom-to-ask forum, with old-timers dispensing advice with avuncular patience.

And in these collaborative communities, some truly heart-warming stories have emerged of how the group members have come together to help each other out.

So, for instance, a new migrant who faced a last-minute glitch in his accommodation arrangements posted a message on the group, saying that he couldn’t afford to buy a mattress and asked if anyone had a spare.

Not only did people come forward, some even offered to drive to his place and drop it off themselves!

Then there was the time when the members came forward in aid of a fellow IISian (that’s what they call themselves) who sought a bicycle and a mobile phone to help him work as a food delivery person. One member who lives in Perth but was flying to Sydney that night offered to meet the creator of the post, Saiprasad, and buy him a bicycle. Several others wrote in, offering their old mobile phone. Some others asked Saiprasad to send them his CV so they could help him find a job related to his field, IT.

Advice and opinions

Even when it is not about material goods, the group has plenty of advice and moral support - sometimes a kind word is all you need - for several other queries.

Many posts are about the biggest concern of new migrants: finding a way to crack into the competitive job market. On every desperate post asking for a job - any jobthere are invariably several members who ask for the CV to be sent to them. Others who can’t help directly always have words of encouragement, general advice and tips and suggestions to make the CV more relevant.

Visa categories and subcategories can confuse the best of us, but trust the resident experts (or MARA agents) to bring clarity on the issue.

And then there are posts about the more mundane - but equally important - things. Things such as ‘What food items can I bring to Australia?’, ‘What’s the best way to transfer money to/from a bank account in India?’, ‘Which is the best private health insurance?’, ‘Passport expiring soon, what to do now?’, ‘Which centre is best to clear driving test?’ and so on.

There was one post that even talked about how toilet paper doesn’t offer the same kind of, er, satisfaction as water. While many said they found the post utterly relatable, others quickly pointed to many options - jet sprays, bidets, and ‘lota by the railway tracks!’

All about helping fellow members

But whether the topic is lofty or lowly, help is always around the corner. For someone who has arrived in Australia, leaving their comfort zone, social circle and family behind, the group is the new family and safety net. Which is the point of the whole group, its credo, says Nadeem Ahmed, the group’s founder.

An IT professional, he moved to Australia in 2006 and found that there was no one to answer questions about where to find apartments, look for jobs, what documents to carry to get a driver’s licence and many other issues. “I spent a lot of time looking for that kind of information but it was hard to come by. I realised there must be many people in a similar situation. So I thought of forming this group to help members share information and knowledge,” he says. Ahmed added that the group had grown steadily over the years, but the last three years have seen a rapid increase.

“The main aim is to help our fellow Indians. We have all come here to >

> Australia, away from our comfort zone, and have each other to rely on. That’s what binds us together,” he says, adding that helping others ‘feels great.’

In fact, studies show that online interactions have positive outcomes for real-life, place-based communities, but the intersection between online communication and the offline world also forms two halves of a support mechanism for communities.

A report by Illinois News Bureau quotes a research by Caroline Haythornthwaite and Lori Kendall, professors in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Illinois, says, “From social networking, to civic participation, to community support during emergencies, to providing on-theground information in disaster areas, the professors say that the rapid development and widespread use of online technologies - for communicating and networking, for contributing and distributing content, and for storing, sharing and retrieving files - are creating ties that bind for offline communities.”

Concerted action for Vikramjeet

Which brings us back to Vikramjeet Singh’s case. The group’s conversation has been dominated by it ever since Vikramjeet’s first appeal for help on 28 November.

The group’s action has been a model of concerted action, with many members making the cause their own. “Irrespective of faith, background, language, we all came together to support him,” Ahmed says.

One such member was Gagan Bindra, who tweeted about Vikramjeet’s case and tagged India’s Ministry of External Affairs and its minister Sushma Swaraj.

A firefighter, Bindra is no stranger to helping people out. “When I saw Vikramjeet’s post, I knew I had to do something,” he says, adding that he started by creating his Twitter account for the first time and tweeting to Swaraj because she is a ‘good lady whose ministry helps Indians in dire situations overseas.’

He says he was moved to act because ‘it could have been my mum.’ “Hundreds of parents come to visit their children here and take Indian insurance, but if the company doesn’t pay, then it’s no use. So, I also wrote to Religare, whose insurance Vikramjeet’s mother had,” Bindra said.

The company later tweeted, saying that it had ‘noted the concern’ and was looking into the case. The Indian consulate also responded with a message.

Bindra said he was glad his tweet had worked and was glad that the community had come together for a common cause. “Most