‘We are learning the Cork accent and able to comprehend what people are saying’

In February 2018, Ruchi Agrawal arrived in Ireland for the first time. It was also the first time in her life she had seen snow. “We arrived on the day of the Beast from the East. The red alert was issued when we started flying from India, so it was all snowy and there were piles of snow at Dublin Airport. We were lucky enough to be able to land,” she says. “I really liked the snow. Everything was white. I never saw snow before.”

Originally from Pithora, a small village in Chhattisgarh, a state in central India, Agrawal describes herself as being from a well-to-do family. “But the interests of children are not good there [in Pithora]. There was only one school, and that school was not very good. You didn’t have stools, or benches, or tables,” she says. “It was just a floor, and I would bring my mat with myself to sit in the school. There was no other option for you to go to another school either; you go to what you have, or you stay at home.”

I was not happy initially to be in Cork. But then I started to go out with my son, and I really like the people of Cork. I think because of their friendliness, that means I can stay here and I don’t have to go back to India

Despite the limitations, she continued to work hard in school and completed the equivalent of the Leaving Cert. Her mother really believed in her, she says, and inspired her to continue to pursue her education after she finished school. “She really encouraged me, and my father took out a loan for me to do my graduation and go to college. I did a four-year engineering degree,” she says.

After graduation, she worked near her hometown for three years. She then got married to her husband, Devesh, in what was, she says, a traditional arranged marriage. “My family they met first, my father liked my husband ... Next February we will be 10 years married.”

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After the wedding, the couple moved to Pune, a bigger city in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. “My husband supported me to do my master’s in energy studies at the University of Pune. And then I scored top position for the entrance exam for my master’s degree,” she says. “There’s a certification exam for energy auditors that is organised by the government of India. I passed that exam during the master’s. Obtaining the certification in my first attempt was my biggest achievement.”

Upon completion of her master’s, she worked as an energy auditor for a start-up in Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore). But when she became pregnant, she decided to take a break “to spend some time with my baby”. She moved to Ireland a year and a half later, aged 30, because her husband was offered a job here working for Apple.

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Though arriving in the middle of a blizzard was a surprise, it showed her the friendliness of Irish people, she says. “It was snowing really heavily. My son was just 1½. I knocked on the door of one of the sports clubs, Macau. It was closed, but I knocked on the door asking if they could give me shelter for a few minutes, until my husband gets the luggage out from the bus,” she says.

“They saw my baby and said okay. I’d say the people of Cork are very helpful and very friendly. They provided me shelter for an hour, and then our friends came. We stayed with one of our friends for three days, and then when the taxi service resumed and the snow from the road was cleaned, we were able to properly move to the home we intended to stay in.”

The first few months, Agrawal says, were very difficult, partly due to the change in climate, but also because of the loneliness. “When my husband started going to the office, I used to stay at home and it was really cold for us. I was not happy initially to be in Cork. I wanted to go back [to India],” she says. “But then I started to go out with my son, and I really like the people of Cork. They were really helpful; they were really friendly. I think because of their friendliness, that means I can stay here and I don’t have to go back.”

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When her son Arjun was three years old, Agrawal decided to return to work outside the home. “When my son was young, he really needed my time all the time. He needed support for everything. But when he was potty trained and able to eat, I was spending my time doing nothing at home sometimes,” she says, adding that she felt lost at the time. “If the weather was good, it was okay, but if the weather was not good, you were really at home alone.”

Agrawal realised she “couldn’t lose hope”, and really likes going out to work. “It gives you a new area of thinking. It provides you a new horizon of thinking. You can interact with people and get to know about their culture and all those things,” she says.

She got a job at Tyndall National Institute, in the international energy research centre department. The work culture in Ireland, she says, is vastly different from that of India. “It’s more welcoming. They are really supportive of people from different backgrounds, different countries. And these projects are related to decarbonising SMEs and improving their energy efficiency,” she adds.

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Her village of origin is part of the reason why she enjoys her work so much. “I come from a part of India which has lots of thermal power plants that are fossil-fuel based. We’re in the most intense oil-based area in India. Because of those things, there is lots of pollution,” she says. “I was not happy to see all those things, so I wanted to contribute [to work on] how to reduce the load on those fossil-fuel power plants. The only way to do that is to improve your energy efficiency, to use your energy effectively. That was the thing that led me towards working in decarbonisation and all those things.”

And now that she’s been in Ireland for several years, Agrawal says she feels at home. She is happy with her family, her work, her local community. She says: “Now we are learning the Cork accent and we are able to comprehend what people are saying.”

We would like to hear from people who have moved to Ireland in the past 10 years. To get involved, email newtotheparish@irishtimes.com or tweet @newtotheparish