KELLY MIDHA

“Victory belongs to the most persevering.” 

Napolean Bonaparte

THE JOURNEY
Located in northwest India at the foothills of the Shivalik Hills or Lesser Himalayas, Chandigarh was recently named one of the “perfect” cities of the world. Chandigarh is internationally renowned for its architecture and urban design. Less well known is the city’s proclivity for producing international athletes like Wisden’s “Cricketeer of the Century” Kapil Dev and Kelly Midha who was selected to represent the Indian archery team at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.

As the sole grand-daughter of an Oxford educated engineer and the sole grand-daughter of a bank builder, Kelly was born with, not one, but two silver spoons in her mouth: “When people talk to me and they think about India they think I am from a hard place or I must have a huge family. . . but both my grandfathers did very well and both my parents are only children.” However, Kelly refused to rely on her privileged pedigree to carry her through life. From an early age, she felt compelled to excel and prevail in competitions. Whether through her participation in school activities, Rotary Club performances or Youth Literary Club events, Kelly developed a flair for drawing accolades and amassing awards: “Every week, not every month but literally every week I used to bring home a medal or a certificate. People would call my house to congratulate my family because they saw my picture in the paper.”

In 1986, at 16 years of age, Kelly’s commitment to personal excellence transcended to the archery range. By the late 1980s, leading up to the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, India’s Archery team had established itself as a solid international contender. The advancement of archery at a national level provided fertile ground for Kelly’s competitive fireball spirit to flourish: “In grades 11 and 12 I played a lot of archery. One thing led to another and I won a lot of championships and stuff and I was selected for the ‘92 Barcelona Olympics. . . I ended up leaving home and going to live with the team at their stadium in New Delhi. . . we had Russian coaches and a whole big team to support us. . . at that level all you need is dreams, sleep and drink.”

In time, Kelly learned that reaching Barcelona required more than “dreams, sleep and drink”. For Kelly, competing in the Olympics was considered a natural progression of a life replete with achievement and triumph. For her parents, however, having their daughter compete in the Olympics was considered a harbinger of doom. The fear that Kelly learned to circumvent throughout her auspicious life was having its way with her parents, who saw their daughter’s success as a threat to the plan they had in mind for her: “ My independence and being away from home was scaring my parents. Guys would call my house and hang up or send cards to my house. So my parents started giving me pictures of guys to choose from to marry. . . my dad put it to me simply - ‘this (Olympics) is not happening you know, this girl is getting married.” According to relationship counselor Vishal Diwan, Indian marriage “usually a family drama” is highly influenced by society. Because of societal pressure, Indian parents don’t want to “feel bad” while listening to their neighbors and relatives. Diwan asserts, “Indian society believes in one nice word – settled, which means getting married. If a girl is not getting married, society creates a hell of a lot of pressure on her parents”.

In one portentous moment, tradition, cultural beliefs, and social propriety converged to deliver a severe blow to Kelly’s Olympic dream. Kelly countered with a proposal to forego the Olympics in return for the opportunity to pursue her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. She agreed to become engaged with the provision that she graduate before getting married. The strategy worked splendidly until the day she was consigned to an unsuspecting whirlwind of activity and ornamental pageantry by her family: “I did not understand what was happening because with all the jewelry and clothes it was so distracting. In a few short hours my wedding was done before my final exams.”

Shortly after the wedding, Kelly’s husband accepted an offer of employment from a company in the Silicon Valley. If India was the land where the seeds of Kelly’s determination and zeal were planted, America was the soil in which they were allowed to bloom. Within days of arriving in California, Kelly secured employment with a software consulting firm as a human resources manager. In due course, she received a call from her husband asking her to give him a ride to the airport because he was flying back to India. It was the last time she would see him. “I had decided that I never wanted to get married again. For the first time in my life I had control over my life. . . there were no barriers for me, there was no one that was going to stop me anymore – I love America because I feel that country gave me another life.”` America was also the country where Kelly found love – “on her own terms”. In 2000 while living in San Francisco, Kelly met the love of her life, Taoufik: She describes the tryst as “love at first site”, I was attracted to his energy and his exotic French accent.” In 2002, Kelly abandoned her pledge to “never get married again” and wedded Taoufik.

THE ARRIVAL
A year later, Kelly turned her sights to Canada: “One day I was sitting on my bed in the California sun and I said I’m going to apply for Canadian immigration. Within three months all the paper work was completed” Kelly worked for a year in Brampton before returning to San Fransisco for a two-month period when she received a job offer from Northern College in Timmins.

For her initial visit to Timmins, Kelly had planned to set out in a rental car from Niagara Falls, New York: “At first I didn’t know where Timmins was, I honestly thought it was part of the GTA. It was only when I was finalizing my travel plans that I searched for Timmins on MapQuest.com (we didn’t have GPS at that time) and it was showing me a red line. I went back to my emails to check the address and sure enough it was that little tiny place way up north nowhere near the GTA.”

Kelly arrived in Timmins, by airplane, on January 1st, 2004: “When the plane landed I thought we were landing in the middle of nowhere . . . when I picked up my rental car the clerk said ‘hi how are you and what are you here for’ and this and that. I was thinking why are you talking to me because I was so used to the big city life. If you make conversation like that in Washington DC people are going to dismiss you. But when I drove out of the airport and saw the “Welcome to Timmins” sign and something written in a native language I was very fascinated and had a good feeling.” 

THE SETTLEMENT

Kelly looks back on her 12 years in Timmins with fondness. The community has provided Kelly with a “slower-paced” environment to develop her career in human resources compared to the “corporate, cookie-cutter” business models of larger urban centers. Timmins has also provided Kelly and Taoufik a customer base and infrastructure for their thriving business. But with a son and two daughters, the greatest lesson Kelly and Taoufik have learned from their northern Ontario home is what it means to “have a family”:“This is the place where we first made our home together . . . we made our family here, we learned what family means here and I’m very proud of that. That to me is the most important thing.”

Kelly feels no cultural allegiance to any one culture. She contends that it is because of this cultural ‘disconnectedness’ that she has not faced the cultural adjustment challenges that are typically part of the immigrant experience:“I believe in the collection of cultures and I’m able to find a connection with any culture. I can talk to Pierre at a yoga center in Montreal and a conversation with him would make me feel connected with my culture.”

The “good feeling” inspired by the ‘Welcome to Timmins’ sign has been tainted somewhat in recent years as members of Kelly’s family have been subjected to racist acts and comments: “Our family is very diverse so we are pretty much colour blind. . . we didn’t even know what some of the racist terms meant. This is something we were completely oblivious too in the beginning but in the past 2-3 years we have learned that racism exists in this community.”

Despite being subjected to these incidents, Kelly still holds out a great deal of hope for the latest stop in her sojourn. To the question “knowing what you know now about Timmins, would you do it again” Kelly responds: “Yes I would – I consider this my home and I have that feeling only for this place”.

If “victory belongs to the most persevering”, the winner’s circle belongs to the little girl who buckled down when bringing home heaps of awards to her parents: it includes the teenager who went for broke on the archery range all the way to the Olympic training grounds in New Delhi: it holds the business woman who courageously carved out a new career in a foreign land two oceans away: and it embodies the wife and mother who dedicated herself to creating a secure and loving home for her family in a place halfway around the world from one of the most “perfect” cities in the world.