It didn’t take long for Ankit Gulati (36) and his wife Beena (36) to decide that Ireland would be their forever home.
“When we landed here and came out of the airport, we just felt that this is the positivity that we’re looking for. This is the warmth we are looking for,” Gulati says.
Gulati, Beena and their one-year-old son, Darsh, moved from their native Delhi, India, to Dublin in 2021. This was not the first time that Gulati had decided to pack up his life and move halfway across the world, as he had previously moved to London in 2015.
“I was in the UK for two years and that’s where I met my wife. We were working in the same company.”
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He felt called to move abroad after experiencing a personal tragedy.
“In 2014, my dad passed away. He was 52 and going through kidney failure, and we were looking for a donor but we couldn’t find one in time. The doctors told us that at that stage there was no point of finding a donor as his one kidney had failed and the other one was not in a position that we can even replace it. It was really hard for me to see him go through that.”
Gulati’s father’s untimely death prompted him to completely re-evaluate his own life.
“I was looking for an escape from the usual stuff that was happening around me. I realised that there was something better that I could do with my life. That’s the moment when it hit me, that I need to maybe try something and see how it goes.”
Gulati and Beena are both chartered accountants and met through their work in London. Beena is also from Delhi. Their relationship initially did not work out, and she ended up moving back to India while he stayed on in London.
However, everything changed when Gulati heard through mutual friends that she had fallen very sick in 2017.
“When I heard the news that she had been hospitalised, without any commitment from her side I just flew from London to Delhi. She couldn’t open her eyes for 24 hours and when she woke up and saw me, she started crying.”
The couple have been together ever since.
Gulati handed in his notice in London to be with her and they lived in Delhi for a few years. In 2019 Gulati was offered a job in the US and the couple moved to California.
“I never felt welcome in the US,” Gulati says.
The couple returned to Delhi the same year. They got married in January 2020 and Darsh was born in December of that year. In early 2021, the family was looking to move abroad again. Though they both had good jobs in India, India’s corporate culture made life difficult, Gulati says.
“In Ireland or even the UK, if you come to the office at nine and leave at six and you’re able to deliver what’s needed than you’re good to go. But in India or other developing countries it’s something that people frown upon. If you come in early and leave late, they get acknowledged for that, which I don’t think is a nice or long-term thought process.”
One of Gulati’s colleagues suggested they look at Ireland.
“She was asking me, why the UK? Why not Ireland? I said, I don’t know anything about Ireland, to be honest. A lot of people don’t as it’s a small population.”
His colleague explained that Ireland was experiencing exponential growth, that it’s English speaking and it’s essentially in the ‘middle’ of the world, being around seven flying hours to the US and approximately seven to the Middle East.
Gulati was convinced, and decided to apply for jobs in Ireland.
“I applied to a job on a Wednesday afternoon. I had my first interview on a Thursday afternoon and my second interview on the Friday afternoon. I got my offer letter on the Monday morning. It was like it was meant to be.”
The family then moved to Ireland. Within two months they had secured somewhere to live and Beena had been offered a job too. They quickly found community through people they knew from back home who added them to WhatsApp groups with other families living in Ireland.
While Gulati praises Irish people for how they have welcomed and embraced him and his family, they have not escaped the rise in racially aggravated attacks against members of the Indian community over the past few years.
“My wife had one of those incidents on the Luas in 2023. There was a guy who was drunk, and he just got in her face and said ‘go back to your country, you don’t belong here’. This was literally 4pm, it was sunny outside. She was shaken by that. But then she was supported by three Irish ladies who came and told that man to go away and then made my wife realise that she belongs here.”
One of the couple’s close friends decided to move back to India last year after he was assaulted, unprovoked, by a group of teenagers.
However, on balance, Gulati feels that the number of people who hold such racist views and would act on them is minuscule, and that they don’t represent the Ireland he has come to love.
After saving for two years the couple recently bought a house in Kildare.
“We don’t call India our home; we call Ireland our home because that’s where our home is.”
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
