Ruhani Kaur
A VISUAL STORYTELLER
Nowhere to Call Home
Under a Different Sky
Taslima, Refugee from Myanmar and her daughter Mizan look back at how life was and has changed once they left Myanmar.- Ruhani Kaur/ UNHCR
Songs of Remembrance
Refugees from Myanmar in New Delhi sing in remembrance of a life they left behind in Myanmar.- Ruhani Kaur/ UNHCR
Stateless , unwanted
Just last month, at a time when plans for a trilateral highway linking India, Myanmar and Thailand were being chalked out, an elderly woman, who had spent the past few months hiding in the jungles of Myanmar’s Rakhine state, risked her life to cross over to India through Bangladesh. In the narrow lanes of New Delhi’s Kalindi Kunj slums, she reunited with her eldest son, Abdul Karim. They are from the Rohingya community—a long-persecuted Muslim minority in Myanmar. The members of this ethnic group are not recognized as citizens by the Myanmar government and continue to suffer vicious attacks and systematic abuse at the hands of the junta. Over the years, many Rohingyas have fled Myanmar, and some have sought refuge in India.
Karim is one of them. According to the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), the Capital has around 9,000 Rohingyas. India, though a relatively safe haven for refugees from neighbouring countries like Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, does not really have any laws in place to offer permanent asylum to people who have no place to call home.
Life in the Kalindi Kunj tents, made of bamboo and tarpaulin sheets, where 150 Rohingya families reside is hard. During the monsoon, the residents have to scoop out water from the agricultural plot given to them by the Zakat Foundation of India, a non-governmental organization (NGO).
Mohammed Hussain Johar’s brother works at a private school in Vikaspuri, in the other end of the city. He is enrolled in the same school as a student—he hopes this will change his life.
Abdul Karim’s mother crossed over from Myanmar to Bangladesh and made her way to India last month.
The refugees here insist that this shouldn’t be misunderstood as settling down—each of them nurses the hope of settling, but in a place meant for them.
Most of the women from the community work as ragpickers, and the men as construction labourers. Mohammed Farooq, a construction worker, says he has repeatedly asked his former employer to hand over his pending wages, only to be shooed away. “Our employers know we are outsiders and the police wouldn’t help us,” he laments.
This photoessay was published in the Mint Newspaper.
Behind the Common Stealth Games
When the Commonwealth Games’ tourists came to Delhi, they found a swanky city that had exterminated it’s poor. In this Delhi, more than 3 million people were rendered homeless by the end of the Commonwealth Games; these include 1.2–1.5 million migrant workers upon whose feeble shoulders rested the city’s astounding makeover and the 100,000 families whose hopes were bulldozed to create a bridge or parking lot.
While these parallel realities have been coexisting for the past two years, there is not an iota of doubt about which one will win in the end
Text by Avantika Bhuyan, Photos by Ruhani Kaur/Open Magazine
As the cranes droned away, people furiously sifted through the rubble trying to find doors, wires, pieces of wood, anything that would help them cling on to the memories of a better life.
A desolate Nauamma sits on the tracks of the Nizamuddin station with the few belongings that she could salvage from the demolition drive to make way for the Barapullah Nullah bridge. The bridge will go above what use to be her home to connect the games village to venues in central Delhi in a matter of minutes.
Alimuddin and his wife sit in shock as everything they owned including their identity (I cards and ration cards) was lost in the fire that gutted the ghazipur slum just 2 kms away from the posh commonwealth games village.
“Dilli sarkaar garibi ko nahin, garibon ko hata rahi hai (Delhi government is not removing poverty, it is removing the poor),” says Kamala. Kamla devi, a lone widow with only a street dog for security, has been forced to live on the pavement as she bides time before she is edged out yet again to make way for ornate yellow and red brick.
The migrant labourers who are building a games ready city, themselves live in harsh conditions with no drainage, with human beings co-existing with flies and mosquitoes in a tiny little space. They will be shunned out as soon as their work is done, the fate that the city's poor share.
According to the Modified Relocation Policy that was released earlier this month, nearly 7,900 flats are being created in Bawana for the displaced. Located on the outskirts of Northwest Delhi, nearly two hours away from the heart of the city, this dusty relocation camp offers little scope for livelihood.
Shifters by the Sea
This photo-essay is my testimony to a return after a gap of seven years to Kanhupur, a coastal village in Odisha, India that once was.
This photoessay was published in Outlook Magazine
Hurricane Hudhud: Six months later
As I went further into the suave soon-to-be smart city in early 2015, it exposed its recent duel with nature. Cyclone Hudhud had pierced through it at 195 kmph. and left behind the fractured lanes of the fishing community of Jalariyendada village. Acutely aware of how vulnerable and exposed they are, they still continued to reshape their lives at the banks of the same waters that overwhelmed them. Their only hope is that like the unscathed Hanuman statue, next time they too will be lucky.
Fifty-year-old Mesala heads to work so that he can rebuild his house from the rubble; Danamma has begun to mend the only standing portion of her house, the toilet. Whether it’s the 10-year-old Saravani sitting on a broken ledge or Kuruwara Paedma peeping from behind her feeble-looking bamboo fence, they all seem to be transfixed by the sea. Acutely aware of how vulnerable, how exposed they are, they still continue to reshape their lives at its doorstep. They hope that like the unscathed Hanuman statue, next time they too will be lucky.
Only the bathroom in Danamma's house was left standing when the Cyclone Hudhud hit. She now stays at her neighbour’s house as she slowly rebuilds her pucca house.
50 year-old Kuruwara Paedma, works as a house maid while her husband works as a daily labourer. She has 4 girls and is repairing her house in bits and pieces whenever she can spare some of their earnings. They too didn’t get any government assistance for rehabilitation.
Sururni Yellamma ‘s belongings are now lying in a pile outside her broken down house with just a bare facade of a door where she cooks her food. She spends most of her time in this makeshift shack nearby, her five daughters have houses of their own. The Hanuman statue stayed unharmed during the cyclone in the village of Bheemlipatnam.
Though many are scarred by the memories of that night, they still continue to stay right next the sea. Families of fishermen don't want to be separated from their boats which in many cadses was the sole survivor amongst their belongings.
The gandhinagar slum under a flyover houses 50 odd families some of whom have been living there for 20-30 years.With little by way of rehabilitation and worsened financial conditions, they don't have the means to make their dwellings more secure for the next time nature strikes. Vishakapatnam. They have been sleeping under the few remaining trees with little in name of rehabilitation or donations.
This was photographed for UNDP and published in Hindustan Times.
Nepal Earthquake
38 year-old Gyanu Thapa cooks for her family of five amidst the rubble that was her home before the 7.8 magnitude Nepal earthquake struck on the 25 April'2015.
65-year old Ram Bahadur Thapa and his family of six were luckily all out when the earthquake reduced their house to rubble.
22 year-old Daal chini ale mager's first floor was on the verge of collapse after nepal's first 25th April 2015 earthquake of 7.8 magnitude. She stays in tent close to the cracked house in Paslang village to secure their belongings till they can tear it down and rebuild it.
This was photographed for Care and published in Paris Match
Migrant Workers during Covid
