Make a circle.

This was the prompt for a competition I very desperately wanted to enter, but couldn’t because of my visa status.

First, this visa makes me pay three times the EU fees for the same bachelor’s degree. Then this visa only allows me to work 16 hours a week on a minimum wage part-time job to make rent for very expensive but tiny international student housing. Now, this root-cause-of-all-my-suffering visa is getting in the way of my creativity, travel plans, friendships, self-expression and mental health. I am stuck in this loop of getting rejected from jobs because they cannot sponsor my visa, and rejecting jobs because they cannot foster my individuality and creativity.

Integrate with the Dutch, hold on to your Indianness, go home to chaos, build a home here in this chaos. Sometimes I am going around in circles, sometimes I am stuck in the epicentre of it.

But you can decide on all this later, Jasmita, just make a circle for now.