Jiva’s search for a flat had ended here in a suburb of Sydney, one the most expensive cities in the world — that’s also one of the world’s most multicultural urban areas.

As the incense burned and prayers were chanted, Jiva threw flower petals in offering to the goddess.

Looking around the room I was struck by the eclectic mix of people, a reflection of Jiva’s history as well as Australia’s.

For one thing, a lot of us had been refugees from civil wars who resettled here, back in the days when the country’s refugee policy was not so hard-line: Iraq, Bosnia, Sri Lanka — where Jiva and his family hailed from — and Vietnam, in my family’s case.

The rest were different kinds of migrants, like Anglo-Australians a few generations in and people like Sonal from the United Kingdom — though her Gujarati family had fled Uganda under Idi Amin.