A Student's Life in Canada

It is five minutes to nine in the night. It is dark and temperatures are frigid. Gary is standing outside an apparel store and he has his coffee to give him company. He is waiting for his shift to start. He works part-time with a company which does inventory for retail stores. Most of his shifts are either in the night after store is closed for customers or on the weekends. He is a student in Canada studying in a Brampton college  that’s known as College of Desis (locals from Punjab, Northern India) amongst Indians. As a student in Canada, he can work officially for 20 hours per week. However, in that time frame he does not earn much to cover his expenses that he is loaded with. 

He lives in a rented basement in Northern Brampton. He pays about $500 for that basement and has promised the owner to help with some chores. He cleans the snow from driveway during winters. He rakes leaves during fall. And doing such tasks is helping in keeping his rent low. His semester fees are around $7000. The first semester fees was paid by his parents but he did not have the heart to ask them again. He is now going to start his fourth semester and has never asked money from his family in India. With a car through mortgage from a bank, he drove with Uber for sometime before settling in his current job. 

This is not the only job that he does. He has also joined a factory making wooden frames. For eight hours, he cuts frames with a power saw which leaves him too tired to study pushing him to take a semester drop from college. This is a hack commonly used by students - take admission, attend one semester and then take a semester drop. This way you can earn for full 40 hours. And he’s an off-the-books employee in that company, earning most of his salary in cash. He avoids taxes and he is happy with that. 

He looks at the dark sky and takes a sip from his coffee. He remembers his folks living in a village in Northern India. It must be morning and they must be getting ready to go to their farms. If he was in India, he would have been helping them in cleaning cow sheds, watering crops and doing chores on the farm. But he chose this life as he saw some of his relatives immigrating to Canada and suddenly they became the epitome of prosperity in the village. Looking at them from the warmth of his home, he thought that life is easy on the other side. But he was awfully wrong. Life is tough. Silver lining is that there’s ample support amongst students to help each other in every possible way. They share rooms and cars and eat langar (from communal kitchen) together at Gurudwara (Sikh place of worship). In fact, Gurudwaras play a pivotal role in survival of majority student community. 

He looks at his watch and his shift is about to start. He takes last few sips of his coffee and steps inside the store to slog for next five hours. After all, this is the life he has chosen for himself. 

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Adesh Sidhu has recently moved to Canada and is spending time to explore it through its people and places. He’s also a Digital Marketer helping small businesses to increase their digital footprint. 

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