The 7-member family is seeking to legalise their status in the country.

A destitute Indian family of seven - parents and their five grown-up children - are seeking to legalise their status in the UAE after spending more than two decades of their lives in Sharjah, fearing arrest and deportation.

Keralite expat Madhusudhanan, 60, and his Sri Lankan wife Rohini, 55, said they are desperate to give a normal life to their children who have never been to school in their lifetime.

"I could not enrol my five children in school because of our illegal status. They did not even have their passports for a long time. They haven't travelled outside the UAE even once. They have suffered for a lifetime. I want them to have a decent life," Madhusudhanan told Khaleej Times.

The couple's four daughters - Ashwathy, 29, Sangeetha, 25, Shanthi, 23, Gauri ,22 - and one son, Mithun, 21, are all unemployed and live with their parents in a dilapidated two-bedroom villa in Sharjah.

"We do not even have enough to eat. There are days when we survive on a packet of quboos (Arabic bread). Children are afraid to go out. We are living like prisoners without knowing what our future would be. I have scarified 30 years of my life for my family. My children deserve better," said Rohini, their mother.

Illegal status

Madhusudhanan came to the UAE in 1979 as a blue-collar worker. He met Rohini in Al Ain and the couple got married in 1988. "Like any other Indian expat, I also dreamt of a better life and having a family of my own. But everything turned upside down when I lost my job after three years, ending up as an illegal resident."

Madhusudhanan said life became a rollercoaster journey when he lost his second job too, before he had his first daughter in 1989. "I could not apply for her passport because I was living illegally in the country. By the time I found another job and had a resident visa, my wife lost her job as a sales girl in a studio in 1992 - the same year we had our second child. And because of the mother's illegal status, applying for a child's passport was not possible."

Later, the couple had three more children between 1992 and 1998. None of them have residential status.

But the couple said they managed to take passports for their four children, except for the eldest one, with the help of community organisations.

"My wife is well-educated and she has home-schooled all the children. All of them can read and write though they have not been to school. That is a big relief," said the father.

Living in fear

Madhusudhanan claims he was working as a heavy vehicle operator in Sharjah from 1998 till 2017, and was earning Dh4,000 plus as monthly salary to support his family. "Now I don't have that job anymore and we are struggling to keep the pot boiling. I have not paid my rent for the last eight months and I am afraid we will be kicked out."

When asked why he did not want to leave the country by availing the general amnesty declared in 2003, 2007 and 2013, Madhusudhanan claimed he did not want to split his family. "How could I go to India leaving my wife behind? She is a Sri Lankan and does not have an Indian passport. My children are attached to their mother and they cannot live without her. I had to stay to keep my family together."

The children are not keen to leave the UAE either. "This has been our home. We have only travelled once or twice outside Sharjah, that too to Ajman and Dubai. We are like the stray cats and birds in the neighbourhood. They are our only friends," the couple's eldest daughter Ashwathi said.

Madhusudhanan-Rohini couple said they hope to turn a new leaf by legalising their status, and enrolling children in some vocational courses.

"That is our only hope. I have lived in the country for nearly four decades. I want to die here. This is my home."

anjana@khaleejtimes.com