Still single in the city

New Year Resolutions (or is it New Year’s Resolutions?)

2009-01-04T07:18:00Z

It's a brand new year, and this time around, I will do something that I have never, ever done in my life: make a few New Year Resolutions. And I hope to live by them!

But first, a teeny-weeny bit about New Year's Eve in Dubai. Shakira was the Big Thing in the UAE capital and the neighbouring emirate of Abu Dhabi. Just 150-odd kilometres away, Dubai was relatively quiet and subdued. There was a reason: the Gaza crisis has been the biggest news here for the past few days, and on New Year's Eve, the ruler of Dubai announced that, in a show of solidarity with the Palestinians, Dubai would scrap all celebrations.

I had a quiet Chinese dinner with a friend - who, incidentally, wore a Palestinian scarf to show her support. We were in deep discussion -- about Israel and Palestine (it's a subject I'm not on top of and my friend was doing most of the talking, and me the asking) -- when our Filipina waitress walked up to us and said, "Happy New Year madam."

The restaurant was walking distance from my apartment and my friend's, and when we walked back home at 12.30 am, 1 January, 2009, the streets were full of people celebrating with friends and families, and wishing whoever they chanced upon.

Sreekanth, my Malayali friend in office who is a page designer and who looks like a big squirrel with his bushy hair tied up in a short, fat ponytail, wagged his tail and said his New Year resolution was that he would ‘pause' smoking. "What on earth is ‘pause' smoking?" I asked.

"It means that I will stop for a while - maybe six months or so."

"And start again thereafter?"

"Well, that's a definite possibility."

Another designer, and yet another Malayali, wants to pass his driving test so that he gets his UAE licence once and for all. A few weeks ago, I saw dressed him in formals (he usually dresses in chunky T-shirts - that camouflages his considerable girth -- and weather-beaten jeans), with even a tie on. When everyone looked at him strangely, he informed that he had gone for his seventh driving test (in the last six months) in the morning, right before getting into work. He'd failed again. "I was trying to create a good impression with my clothes, but it didn't work," he said miserably. This year, he plans to clear that road block. I wish him well.

Here's a tentative list of New Year resolutions that I have formed. There are only five, I could do with some more, maybe 10 - but I will form them along the way.

1) I will visit Delhi once every two months, even if it's for a weekend. I miss it terribly, and I'm sure it's going to be worth the price of the frequent air tickets. Plus, that way I can enrol on to the frequent flyer programme - so I may actually get a couple of free tickets now and then! (For that I have to fight my laziness and ask someone for the form that enables one to claim all the free miles.)

2) I will email my friends more frequently - and I will be in touch with them, and not be rude with him. Some of my friends go out of their way to call me when I don't reply to their emails, just to be in touch, and I'm ashamed to say many of my friendships have been reduced to a one-way traffic. I blame my schedule partly, but where there's a will, there should always be a way.

I have a confession to make. At times, I've been pretty hideous, and I've played games to avoid some of my friends. For instance, an old acquaintance was in town once (this was in Delhi), and wanted to meet me. I always found him a crashing bore, but since he'd made the effort of tracking me down, I grudgingly went over to the Defence Colony market one pleasant evening to have a coffee. I was keen to make a move the moment I'd drained the last trace of cappuccino, but he was enjoying himself, and to my horror, suggested dinner.

So I SMS-ed a very wicked friend of mine, and asked him to call me back pretending to be my mother, summoning me back home AT ONCE. My wicked friend did that with alacrity, and I conducted a fake conversation -- with him on the other side, pretending to me my haranguing mother, wanting me home for dinner pronto.

"Oh dear, your mother is in town?" my boring friend asked me worriedly. "You should have told me earlier... Listen, please go home then."

"I hate to do this to you," I said solemnly. "Next time you're here, we will definitely do an extended dinner." I scooted after that.

This year, I resolve to put an end to such unbecoming behaviour.

3) I will call up my grandmother - who is 85 and lives in Calcutta - once in a while. I've not called her even once since I came to Dubai, mostly because it's kind of depressing to talk to her - since she keeps saying that "please pray that God calls me up there". If you guys can give me a few tips on how to negotiate a conversation with my grandmom, I'd be very grateful.

4) I will start working out and get into shape (my new benchmark is Shakira J), but at the same time I will continue to eat triangular parathas, every now and then. My other mainstay, the peace smoothie, I think I will cut down on even though I love it terribly. I have found a low-fat alternative: strawberry yoghurt, that has only 21 calories per helping: and even though it's frightfully expensive (almost works out to Rs 160 for a tiny little cup), I am thinking I should allow myself this luxury (maybe I should also stop converting dirhams into Indian rupees every time I purchase something - but more on that some other time). I have started clearing my refrigerator of all kinds of greed food. I just threw away some delectable sheekh kababs and some really yummy (but really oily) karahi baigan that I had been zealously hoarding for the last few days.

5) I will perfect the art of becoming a good homemaker. Living here alone, without the luxury of any domestic help, has worked wonders with my housekeeping skills. My kitchen looks spanking clean, and I'm always mopping and hoovering the rest of the apartment to. That day, a friend's sister dropped by, it was the first time that she'd visited my place, and she said, "Oh my God, what a nice place, it's so neat and clean. I wish my apartment was as clean as this." Obviously, I didn't tell her that there are days when it looks as though a hurricane had stormed through.

I want to know what your resolutions are. I am hoping to steal some of yours - so please let me know. Have a cracker of a year!

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My Alternate Lifestyle and the Triangular Parathas

2008-12-28T09:58:00Z

I think I now know what the word ‘alternate' means - when used in the context of lifestyle. As in ‘alternate lifestyle'. Totally. Because I'm living it. I remember when I came to Dubai (it's been more than three months now - at times, it's difficult to believe how quickly time flies by), everyone told me that my life henceforth would be that of a party animal's. "That's the Dubai lifestyle - party, party, party," I was told. Most people I knew have friends/family members/former colleagues/ex-neighbours living in Party Town, and everyone, it seems, has a wild time here.

Well, I don't. One reason is, of course, the fact that I don't drive here -- which leaves me at the mercy of extremely unreliable taxis. I don't even meet friends at a common point (unless the friend is coming over to pick me up, and then drops me back) because I'm scared I won't get a cab to return home in. The other reason is that I don't really feel the need to party. And I'm not saying this because I'm some half-witted anti-social, who thinks partying is a Very Bad Thing. I'm just kind of content to watch movies on DVD, to read and to catch up with friends who live around the area where I live -- Bur Dubai -- for a meal or a coffee. (A regular reader of ‘Single in the City' Mohit Kapur landed up in Dubai and contacted me... He too is in Bur Dubai, and a couple of weeks ago, I finally managed to meet for a beer and Chinese dinner!)

Some evenings, when I have the time, I walk around the streets of Bur Dubai and end up in some supermarket. Bur Dubai is home to a great many South Asians (Indians, Pakistanis and Filipinos), other than having a sizeable population from other parts of the world. After sundown, young and old Indian men sit on elevated ledges atop sidewalks, mostly staring blankly into the space ahead of them. They peer hard at passing women (obviously they can't misbehave - else, they'll be behind bars), and they basically look at life passing them by.

In Calcutta, there was a term for the elevated ledges. They were called rocks, pronounced ‘rwocks'. I always assumed it was because a bunch of people would sit on a ‘rock-like' structure that used to be enjoined to most old Calcutta houses. These structures were perhaps created with a social setting in mind. I'm not entirely sure: maybe my better-informed Bengali readers - or those who have Calcutta links - will be able to tell me about ‘rwocks'. I missed that social setting in Delhi, but it's so funny that I get to see it here all the time.

So am I enjoying the alternate lifestyle? I think so. Let me give you one reason why. I stumbled upon it on Friday evening. It's like this. I'm a sucker for parathas. I love them like nobody's business. I'm probably a very bad Bong - because I've always preferred the solid paratha over the more light-headed luchi. But for the life of me, I cannot "create" or make a paratha (or a roti/chapatti for that matter) although I'd like to think of myself as being a good cook (at least I used to be when I lived in Delhi!). And of course, I hated the tandoor parathas; loved the tawa ones. In Delhi, you'd mostly get the tandoor variety, unless you went to Bengali Market and managed to find a place to sit in either Nathu's or Bengali Sweets. (My erstwhile colony used to have Mithaas, but they would normally baulk at the idea of serving you tawa parathas and would delightedly feed you the tandoor ones.) I used to constantly gobble up parathas from my colleagues who'd get home-made tawa parathas for lunch in tiffin-boxes. Many of them invited me over to their place - after observing the enthusiasm with which I finished the last paratha scrap.

My landlady knew that I loved parathas. Every Sunday, Manoj, her Man Friday, would ring the bell around noon, and hand me over a multi-storied tiffin carrier, that I'd snatch from his hand eagerly, barely managing to say thank you. I would then open the tiffin carrier and take out the piping hot, triangular parathas and eat them as fast as I could. Whenever I had a lunch outing on Sundays, I would make it a point to first get my Sunday repast, carefully store it (so that I could have it for dinner), and then go out.

In Dubai, you get frozen parathas, particularly in Bur Dubai. I buy them frequently, and they are not half bad. But of course, they are not a patch on the ones my landlady sent me. Also, the frozen parathas are all rounded ones, and although you have wholewheat, paneer, aloo, gobhi and what have you, there was something about the gently-layered triangular ones that seemed to cry out ‘ghar ka khaana'.

On Friday evening (Fridays and Saturdays are my off-days - and it's the time when people seriously get into the party groove), I sauntered across to Citimart (which even has a section called ‘Kerala vegetables') and, since I had all the time in the world, rifled through the ‘frozen breads' section. I chanced upon a packet that claimed it housed ‘original Indian parathas'. What caught my eye was that the shape of the parathas (the pictures on the packet that is) was triangular. There was a picture of Juhi Chawla (if I remember correctly) eating a paratha and looking as though she was lovin' it.

Well, I immediately bought a packet. And the moment I reached home, I tore open the packet and took one sample out (yes, dear Lord, the shape was indeed triangular), put in on a pre-heated pan and watched it sizzle to life.

Then, I ate it. Guess what? It was the real thing. It reminded me of Sunday afternoons in Delhi. I have to get more of the stuff.

Would I have made this discovery if I had been a party animal checking out the hot-spots and the watering holes? No way. I'm beginning to love my alternate lifestyle.

Guys, one more thing. 2008 has been a bad year: there were terror strikes, an economic downturn, and a lot of personal unhappiness for a lot of people I know and care for. Let's put the year firmly behind us. And let us welcome 2009 and hope and pray it brings us all love, luck, happiness -- and peace all around.

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Blurring the Lines of Control

2008-12-21T13:41:00Z

I happened to read a story by Sharmishta Koushik in The Times of India today: on Pakistani women who married Indian men, and the kind of problems they face at times even as they try and integrate with mainstream society. ‘You Look Like One Of Us' said the headline, while the strapline announced "Pakistani women married to Indians find barely disguised social mistrust here, though they share common cultural roots with the country". Intrigued, I clicked on the ePaper and read the entire story.

Definitely not the stuff that went into the making of Veer-Zaara (in the movie, even though the Pakistani state and the judicial system were villains, relatives, friends and an unknown lawyer came to the rescue of the lovers finally).

The Times of India story talks about how as "Pakistanis married to Indians, they [the women] had to tread carefully even before the Mumbai attacks. The married Indian woman typically tries to adjust to her husband's family, but women like Shazman [one of the women quoted in the story] have had to blend into an entire nation. That too, a nation that has had an uneasy relationship with the country of their birth."

Right after the Mumbai terror attack last month, one of the Pakistani women, for instance, was extremely frightened, and was talking about all the time. Her husband "felt I should change the subject. He advised me to avoid such discussions on the phone, and better still, to avoid calls from Karachi to ensure that I don't get sucked into a political mess," she recounts.

Another Pakistani woman (again, married to an Indian) Zainab "recalls watching the television news about Delhi's September 13 blasts with her family. Her father-in-law turned to her husband and said, ‘Look what these people do. You get upset when I blame Pakistanis but look at what they do.' The result: Upset at the implied insult to his wife's countrymen, Zainab's husband refused to speak to his father for a week."

We've all come across this ‘Us and Them' phenomenon. At times, the Indians-Pakistanis banter is light-hearted. Most times, it's nasty. I remember one of my family friends - who owned a couple of apartments in Delhi, and gave them out on rent mostly to expats -- proclaiming very loudly at a Diwali dinner how he would never, ever have a Pakistani tenant. I asked him what if these hypothetical Pakistanis happened to be people "just like us". "How can they ever be like us?" he ranted. Thankfully, the matter ended right there: the subject was changed with someone else piping up, "Let's not spoil Diwali by talking about Pakistanis."

When I lived and worked in Delhi, there were friends and colleagues who had travelled to Pakistan. Most said that there was a great deal of large-heartedness on the other side of the border; a lot of invitations to "have a meal at home" would come their way; and the moment people in Pakistan figured out that one was from India, the hospitality seemed to step up in display and depth.

The first Pakistani I personally made friends with was Barbara Breheret. She is a French Tourism official, who married a Frenchman, and is settled in the lovely skiing resort of Chamonix, wedged in the middle of the Alpine valley. She was a Pakistani Christian - but a Pakistani nonetheless - and I felt that I'd known her for ages. Whenever she spoke about Karachi and her life there, it felt so much like India: the madness, the chaos - and, of course, the warmth, and the goodness and the closeness.

I've been working in Dubai for just about three months now - and one of the best things that has happened to me here has been the multi-cultural crossing of paths. Every day, I bump into people from all over the world - and a great many of them are from across the Line of Control.

The setting is a tad different, so it's not the same as someone meeting Pakistanis in their own country and being meted out generous doses of hospitality. I am getting to know people who, like me, are displaced. They don't have the comfort of home and hearth, and that's probably why they defy all notions stereotypes -- wrong, right or half-baked.

Many of my Pakistani friends are single in the city, and we don't even thrash out a common agenda when we hang out: it comes so naturally and takes such a logical course. There are the same concerns (diets, family, friends, career choices, marriage, etc), the same frustrations (from why is there a market meltdown to why is it that we can't wake up early enough to go to the gym), the same set of needs (the most acute one: it's a lonely city - and at the end of the day, we really need a hug) and even the same table-top menu! Everybody balks at the idea of cooking, more so if you are living alone, but there are times without number when I go to a supermarket with a Pakistani friend, and we end up buying exactly the same food for dinner.

Most significantly, when 26/11 happened, EVERYONE from both sides of the border was horrified. There was no finger-pointing, no raging debates, only a lot of genuine anger - and grief -- at the perversity of it all.

I guess a lot of it has to do with the fact that we are occupying neutral grounds in Dubai. When you don't occupy either side of the Line of Control, there's not even an iota of struggle about having to cut across established identities.

Friendships, unlike nations, are borderless.

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Nostalgia and Longing in Hong Kong

2008-12-14T09:31:00Z

I've discovered an express delivery outlet (food obviously, what else?) near the Khaleej Times office called Indian Tadka. You have to order lunch by 11.30 (that's the outer limit), and the food comes by 1 - and it's really, really yummy. There are soft ghee-smeared chapattis, rice, a dal (at times rajma or kadi pakora), and two subzis, and raita, and when the Indian Tadka people are feeling particularly generous, they also pack in some halwa or a gulab jamun. It's heaven, bang in the middle of the arid industrial area (called Al Quoz) where the KT office is.

While I was in Hong Kong a few weeks ago, I sorely missed Indian Tadka. I was getting really fed up with Chinese food. It's very strange. Most Indians I know love Chinese khaana. But in India, even "authentic" Chinese is so very, very Indianised - you realise this each time you visit places in the Far East, and, of course, China. In Hong Kong, for instance, the smell of cooking on the roads made me want to gag - there is an eternal bland-and-sickly-sweet monotonousness to it. And it's the same smell everywhere.

Otherwise, Hong Kong is pretty, very pretty. There are sublime skyscrapers, pretty blue mountains you can drive up through, a sparkling harbour, pristine beaches, great shopping places, spectacular views - and one of the best public transport systems in the world. I got into a tram after years, and it had a kind of a soppy association for me. When I went to school in Calcutta, I used to catch a tram that went right in front of my school. The bus station used to be a bit of a walk - so even though trams were slower, I preferred them. If I caught the one at 7.25 am, I'd reach school by 7.50, and classes started at 8, so I had a 10-minute breather. My brother, on the other hand, used to walk it to school (it was a good 4 kms away) because he wanted to save the ticket money and buy himself junk food.

But while in Calcutta, a genial, uniformed conductor used to come and sell tickets (they still do), in Hong Kong you have to drop 2 HK dollars into a turnstile-like thing that gobbles up the change. And yes, it's a flat rate, wherever you go, however long the journey is.

For those of you who want to know more about HK - as seen through the eyes of a tourist, I am adding a couple of paras from the travel piece that I did in Khaleej Times. Those of you who have already read this, please bear with me, it's only a couple of little paras!

"The Victoria Peak, the highest point in Hong Kong, that is absolutely stunning, encompassing in one sweep the staggered skyline, the sunlight-spangled blue sea, and the blue mountains in the background. There's the charming Cafe Deco right up there, where you can tuck in to a seafood lunch and drink in the breathtaking skyline. It is propagated that a trip to Hong Kong is incomplete without soaking in the Symphony of Lights, the nocturnal multimedia show named the "World's Largest Permanent Light & Sound Show" by The Guinness Book of World Records. So, we dutifully went on a cruise while the show was on, basking in the sights and sounds. Then, there is the Avenue of Stars, where there are handprints of Jackie Chan and Chow Yun Fat, and a life-size statue of The Boss of kung-fu Bruce Lee. And, of course, there is Disneyland, from where my most significant takeaway was a massive, stuffed Pluto who I thought I'd get for my niece, but have changed my mind since. He's staying with me, no two ways about it - that's probably what Disneyland does to you." (By the way, there's also Ocean Park - where we didn't go to.)

Pluto (he's oh-so-adorable) has a pink tongue hanging out, and he wears a perpetually excited look on his face. When I bought him, Brian, my British friend - with who I struck up a firm friendship on the trip -- looked at me suspiciously. "I'm buying him for my niece, she's three months old," I muttered defensively. "There's no way you're giving Pluto away - your face says it all," he stated. He was so right.

Oh, I loved this story that I heard. I wrote about it in my KT piece, but here goes again. The prefix to this is that Hong Kong rents are exorbitant (but probably not as much as Dubai!), and space is at a premium. The city grows vertically - there's no lateral space - and you'd be really lucky to get a 600 sq feet apartment. Families live in single rooms. Even so, HSBC cocks a snook at the space crunch. I was told that the bank's headquarters, that overlooks the harbour front with the mountains behind, has an empty ground floor. It is widely believed, even by hard-headed bankers, that the dragon, who lives up in the mountains, passes through the empty first floor (with not a single telling machine getting in his way), and struts out to the harbour - where he has a drink of water, and goes back to the mountains, quenched and happy. And as long as the dragon's happy, HSBC doesn't have to worry about the market meltdown.

Wow, I thought, that was so cool!

One of the great things about Dubai is that it's so much like India - and I'm not talking about the food here (although that counts too). Plus, it's so close to Delhi. I mean, it's almost as close (or far) as Calcutta is to Delhi. This time, when I was on the flight to Delhi, the announcer said that the total journey time is 2 hours 40 minutes. It's a comforting thought, the closeness.

I have a friend in Hong Kong, who lives without his family there. His wife and son are in Calcutta, and visit him occasionally. I met him this time, and, over strong cuppas at a Pacific Coffee outlet close to the hotel where I was putting up, he told me that he spends his weekends cooking for himself, and cleaning the house. Weekdays go by somehow because there is office to attend. "I have no friends in the city - although I hear there is an Indian expats community somewhere - and although my colleagues are extremely nice, no one really hangs out after work." On weekends, when he's through with cooking and cleaning, and there's more time on hand to kill, he takes the ferry that shuttles between Hong Kong (the island) and Kowloon (the peninsula). I thought it was a particularly poignant picture: standing on a boat, looking at the breathtaking skyline (at nights, it's even more gorgeous) with no one to turn to and exclaim in delight, going from point A to point B because you want to kill time... "Being alone in a city" must be a horrible thing. My friend says that he'll probably return home next year: it's been three years for him in HK. When I spoke to him the last time from Hong Kong (the night I was leaving), there was a lot of static on the line. "Where are you?" I asked him. "On the ferry to Kowloon," he said. Oh yeah, I remembered, it was a weekend, and he probably had lots of time to kill.

When we came back to Dubai, we flew first class - and I have to admit here, that it's the FIRST TIME that I flew first class. The person next to me was an Indian, and while I kept fumbling with the snazzy headphones (I had no clue where to plug them in) and the seating mechanism, he instructed me grandly how to go about things. "I know the ropes, you see... I usually fly first-class whenever I'm travelling," he announced grandly, while I squirmed.

It's quite something: the fact that you can get drunk on endless flutes of champagne while being miles high in the sky. I, of course, had a few swigs of the divine fluid and made a face - I hate champagne. To make matters worse, I also hate caviar. So I was the only person who gave it a go-by, while everyone else went "ooooh" and "aaaah". A flight attendant, who insisted on calling me "Ms Bose" all through the course of the journey (she first wanted to know how I pronounce my surname, and whether it rhymed with Jose, as in San Jose; no, I said, it's like Bose speakers), insisted that I convert my seat into a bed; then she handed me a "comforter" (a rezai), covered me up and stopped short of singing me a lullaby. I think I've figured out why. It's a far better idea to let passengers sleep it off, than them demanding champagne and then more champagne (especially now, with the recession and all that).

So what did I do after my wonderful HK sojourn? I landed in the middle of the night, grabbed some sleep, and hared off to office first thing in the morning. Once there, I ordered food from Indian Tadka!

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Random Thoughts From A Delhi Tour

2008-12-07T14:08:00Z

I returned to Dubai today afternoon - after a little under five days in Delhi. I had a huge backlog of work back home, that had to be tackled on a war footing, but I did manage to wriggle out time to observe a few things. These are just random thoughts, but I hope they make sense in the altogether.

Barely six days after Mumbai was rocked by India's worst terror strikes, it was (perhaps) telling that on my flight to Delhi - on Tuesday afternoon - there was a family from South Africa visiting India for the first time. It was an Indian-origin family, but since they hadn't had occasion to visit the country earlier, they were hoping to make up on lost time. How did I know all of this? Because I eavesdropped on a conversation that the husband-and-wife were having with the gentleman sitting next to me, whose pen I borrowed to fill up the immigration papers onboard.

"India has changed so much," my neighbour enthusiastically informed them. "For better or worse?" I asked myself and couldn't come up with a split-second answer sitting in my corner -- but assumed that my neighbour meant for the better (going by his tenor). "Even if you'd come here (and at that point the plane was hovering precisely over Delhi) five years ago, you wouldn't recognise the place now - so much has happened so fast in India." Obviously for the better.

Later, I saw the family from South Africa again, next to the conveyor belt: they were looking frazzled and very confused because after waiting for luggage at a specified conveyer belt for over half an hour, we had just been told that the belt was not working, so could we all rush to another belt at the other end to claim our belongings?

And then, I couldn't help noticing now thinly spread-security was at the arrival terminal. I am not saying that I was surrounded by suspicious-looking characters who needed body searches, but if anyone was looking for assurance and a sense of security, there was none whatsoever. Maybe I was expecting too much, maybe I was already pre-disposed, so I decided to ask the pre-paid taxi operator (I was taking a cab from the airport to go to Gurgaon to visit my brother).

He ACTUALLY laughed. "Madam, you know what things are like here," he was sounding amused. He leaned over to hand me the taxi slip: "Nobody cares in this country. Only yesterday, after an email was circulated saying Delhi may be the next terror target and that the airport could be a likely hub, there was madness. Today, it's back to normal."

Interestingly, the cabbie who drove me down NH8, in turn asked me if security was tight inside. No, I said. That's what a lot of people are complaining about, he told me. To be fair, the cabbie pointed out that it was off-peak hour, and not many international flights land at that time in that afternoon. But surely that's no excuse? (Today, when I left Delhi, security was very tight at the airport, I noted with considerable satisfaction.)

Like India, my niece (who I was seeing after more than three months) has changed too: she's bubbly, noisy, happy, attention-seeking - all at once. She had a blast cooing and smiling while my brother and sister-in-law talked about how right after the terror strikes in Mumbai, one of our young leaders was seen partying all night since his friend was getting married. "Isn't that shameful? What is this country coming to? You should be happy you are away from all this mess."

At night, I discovered to my horror, that the private taxi guy who drove me from Gurgaon to Delhi had too much alcohol in his system. He slurred into his cellphone, love-talking with his girlfriend (because he kept asking her to not be scared of her ‘bhaisaheb'), and I realised that he planned to talk into his mobile all through the course of the journey. I tried to catch his attention, but he wasn't in any state to even register what I was trying to tell him. I briefly toyed with the idea of calling the police, but was too tired - and was plain grateful to be alive at the end of the 45 minute car-ride.

The next few days were a whirr of assignments. One of my lowest points was when I was told that my apartment - that was supposed to have been handed over to me post-completion in November-December - would only be ready around June. "It's the downturn that's adding to the slowdown in construction," the builder's agent explained gravely.

So, what was my takeaway from my Delhi trip? Lots and lots of things... and feelings. The warmth despite the evening chill. Old friends, my new niece, my half-finished apartment - that gave me a sense of home -- standing tall against the Indirapuram skyline, shoes from Khan Market (even though people think I am insane that I prefer footwear shopping in Delhi over Dubai), driving on the mad streets of Delhi (I can't drive in Dubai since I haven't applied for the local licence - which, I hear, is a time-consuming and energy-sapping process). And yes, the fact that most readers of my blog are from the same city. I was overwhelmed at the spontaneity with which comments poured in for my last blog post. I was touched by Sahil Verma's admission that he cried like a baby even though he's a denizen of this ‘insensitive' city AND I was touched by Pawandeep's invitation to join the rallies and candle-lit marches organised after the Mumbai attacks. I was grateful that AN flagged me about the terror alert in Delhi, a couple of days before I reached there. I could go on.

I had to tear myself away from all of this, it was painful coming back.

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India’s 9/11 and the story of Harish Iyer

2008-11-29T06:48:00Z

I heard about the Mumbai terror attacks at 11.45 pm, Wednesday, Dubai time -- 1.15 am, Thursday, IST. I'd come back early from work, and crashed at 10 pm. A friend from Delhi called up and gave me the news. The weather here has gotten chilly -- maybe that was why I shivered as I picked up the remote and switched on CNN and watched in horror Mumbai being brought down to its knees - yet again.

On Friday, my off day, I was glued in front of the television, watching CNN and BBC alternately. That was when I happened to spot Harish Iyer on CNN, where he was being interviewed. Harish is from Mumbai, and a self-professed ‘blog activist'. Since terror broke out in his city, he has been on his blog and on his mobile phone fielding mails and calls from distraught friends and family members of those caught in the crossfire. They were people who were not based in India and had no way of finding out if their loved ones were safe - or whether they had fallen prey to the terrorists' evil machinations.

I called up my editor and told him about Harish, and suggested we do a piece on him. He agreed, and I was put on the job. I got in touch with Harish, and below is the story that appeared on Khaleej Times' page one on Saturday, 29 November (you can also see it on the KT ePaper):

Even as Mumbai reels under terror, Harish Iyer, a 29-year-old Mumbai-ite, has been reaching out to all those whose family members and friends were suspected victims in the attacks. "I was near the Taj Mahal hotel when the blasts went off," an emotional Harish, a creative professional with event management firm Showbiz, told Khaleej Times from Mumbai. "I couldn't do a thing as the whole place had been cordoned off. My friends, from all over the world, were calling me, asking me to find out if their relatives were safe. I had to something - so I came back home and set up mumbaiterrorhelpline.blogspot.com."

More importantly, he put his mobile number on the blog. His first call came in exactly 45 minutes after that, and his phone hasn't stopped ringing, He's lost count of the number of calls and SMS-es he's received so far.

One caller from the US wanted Harish to trace a friend. "He said he wanted to say sorry to his friend - something must have happened between the two of them. I tried to reassure him by saying that his friend didn't figure in the list of the dead that had been put out. But later, he called back to say that his friend was no more."

There are also happier stories. Like the one about the Singapore-based man who wanted Harish to track down his father. "I took his dad's number, and after repeated efforts, finally managed to get in touch with him." He then called up the son and gave him the good news. "He was absolutely silent for five minutes, I thought I'd lost him, but then he came back and simply said ‘Thank you so much, thank you so much'."

Harish will start a protest through his blog because "Mumbai's resilient spirit is being taken for granted". And then, he will call people from all over the city to gather at one place - and scream. "It's time the authorities took us seriously. The Mumbai Police has done a great job - after the damage has been done." It's time someone made a noise. Harish Iyer plans to walk the talk. And yes, he'll only start bothering about the innumerable ISD calls he's made when the phone bill comes.

That's where my newspaper story ended.

What I couldn't include in it (due to space constraints) was the bit where Harish told me there were times when all he wanted to do was switch off his mobile phone, shut down his computer - and cry. All through the time, he was living out the sorrow of others, and needed time to mourn. But he couldn't. "I had to put up a brave face because there were people out there who needed me," he said.

He also happened to mention that two media college students volunteered to help him man his site - and he could finally take a much-needed break because he had back-up.

Guys, let us give Harish our full support, let's all visit his website mumbaiterrorhelpline.blogspot.com (you'll find fabulous life-affirming stories and ones that make you want to weep) and offer whatever little support that we can. And please pass the word around to all your friends, especially if you have friends and family members in Mumbai. It's time the people of India stood up and made themselves heard.

Harish's email ID is people.n.nature@gmail.com. We need more and more people like him in our country. God bless him.

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Midweek ruminations – all for a reason

2008-11-20T11:47:00Z

People, I am going to be out of town (and by that I mean, out of Dubai) for the next few days. I leave tomorrow, and am back only on Tuesday, so I won't be able to provide the Sunday dose. I'm going to now try and serve you a mix of midweek fare.

It's getting cold in Dubai. I had no idea this place had such serious winters. Since I hadn't carried any warm clothes with me, I had to go shopping to Burjuman Mall for woollies and a nice red-and-blue checked jacket. Some friends have been telling me that the downturn has hit the glitzy markets here too - and in a bad way. Somehow it's tough to imagine Dubai without the shopping mania. There <were> quite a few people hanging out at the Burjuman Mall, I noticed. Maybe they were just window-shopping, and I wondered how much the footfalls:sales ratio would be.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend and his wife were passing via Dubai, on their way back from Egypt. The first place they visited was the Carrefour store at the Deira City Centre, another popular mall. Discount stores zindabad! They always seem to flourish, downturn or no downturn. My friend and his significant other spent more than a half-a-day at Carrefour: HE ambling along with disjointed body movements, a resigned look haunting his bespectacled eyes, SHE a bundle of excitement as she flung zillions Scotch-Brite sponges and scouring pads, Olay night creams, and Sunsilk shampoos into the shopping trolley. And soaps. Lots of Doves: green, pink, white (do they have any more colours? If they do, they should get in touch with my friend's wife).

"Why are you buying stuff that you get in India?" I wondered. "Why don't you get dates or camel impersonations - or serious designer labels -- instead?"

"Suzy," my friend tsk-ed (I don't know why a few people still insist on calling me Suzy - how I hate it, although I used to have mail ID that was suzyprincess!), "I've spent half my life with this woman - and I haven't been able to convince her that she is, at times, you know, irrational. You think you'll be able to? By the way, I want to take home a belly dancer," he hadn't clearly lost his sense of inane humour.

"The Sunsilk shampoo is for falling hair," his wife said almost angrily. "My hair's falling. The Dove soaps are for the domestic helps. You know, they also ‘expect' gifts."

"But you can get them Dove soaps from the shop next to your place."

"It's NOT the same thing," this time, she glared at me. "THESE are from Dubai. When I tell them they are from phoren, just imagine how happy they will be."

What about the Scotch-Brites and the jars of Olay, I persisted weakly. "Oh, just shut up, will you?" she hollered. I did.

At the end of the shopping expedition, my friend slapped his credit card on to the counter. "She buys, I pay," he winked at me, looking really happy that the ordeal was over. "Story of my life."

Like my friend's wife who could barely contain her excitement in Carrefour, I too am in a similar state. For entirely different reasons. I am going to Delhi in the beginning of December. I've never been so thrilled about going to Delhi. It's only for a couple of days, but I'M GOING HOME. HOORAY!

So I had this little tiff with my father on the subject of homes and hometowns. Even before I came to Dubai on 17^th September, one of the forms that had been emailed to me (for me to fill up and send back) was all about penning down the name of my ‘hometown'. "I hope you are putting down Calcutta," my father told me officiously.

"Certainly not," I said. "I'm putting down Delhi."

"What nonsense," he snarled. "Calcutta is home."

"No way," I snarled back. "Delhi is home. I've even bought an apartment there." Oh alright, the apartment is not really housed in Delhi, it's just across the border, around the corner.

My father looked gloomy, but at least there was no more argument over hometown definitions after that.

Folks, I'm off now, the taxi's waiting downstairs.

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The Vacuum In My Life

2008-11-15T11:41:00Z

I'm beginning to dread Fridays. It's my off day. Technically, Saturdays are also off, but I've been working a 6-day week. So Friday is the only day when I have time to take my apartment to the washers and the cleaners. Literally.

I absolutely HATE washing machines. They drive me nuts. I don't even know how to operate one. There's a washing machine at home (it was part of the ‘furnishings'), but I have been studiously maintaining a safe distance from it. I wash clothes in the bathtub, like a dhobi, and hang them to dry on the tiny dining table that's fitted into my kitchen. I've spotted a number of laundries just off the road where I live. One of these days, I have to stop being lazy and figure out a washing-ironing arrangement with them.

I'd have gladly been a bai on Fridays, hunched over, swabbing floors. And I swear I would have bucked the trend and NOT bought a vacuum cleaner. But my apartment is carpeted, so I had to, like everyone here, buy one. A vacuum cleaner, alas, was not part of the furnishings.

A few Fridays ago, I went in search of a vacuum cleaner. First, I asked a friend how much the cheapest one would cost. "Well, I bought the cheapest one possible," she said, "that was around AED 200. You go for that too."

I spotted a specialised home appliances store in a shopping centre, and strolled in. The place was marvellously empty, and my heels made staccato noises on the tiled floors loudly. In one corner, there were a few vacuum cleaners stacked. A silver-grey one caught my eye, and I ran my fingers across the box. An Indian salesman emerged out of nowhere, and nodded his head approvingly. "You have good choice madam - you picked out the best model." It's also "cheap", he added, and carried a three years' warranty to boot.

"Really? But I don't know how to operate a vacuum cleaner - do you think I can handle this one?"

"That's what I'm here for - to show you how it works," he declared grandly (though I couldn't figure out which part of India he's from - he had such a neutral accent). "It's the easiest thing in the whole world. It's very user friendly, German technology and all." I don't think he quite knew what he was in for - he soon stopped smiling as I made him assemble the contraption, take out all the plugs and perform a dry run.

"I can't read the manual," I suddenly realised. "It's all in German."

"No, no, there's a section in English too... See?" he pointed out.

I did.

It cost me AED 330. The salesman gave me a discount; the "original" price, he told me, was AED 375. I asked him to keep it with him for five minutes while I went down the road to Choithram's to buy my quota of smoothies. There, peeping out of one corner, were many, many vacuum cleaners. Nervously, I inched across to the stash. The first price tag I saw was AED 138. Alright, it was smaller than the one I'd just bought. But damn! I'd spend much more than double on something I wasn't even looking forward to using.

I rushed back to the Indian salesman in the specialised home appliances store. "Can I return the vacuum cleaner? You see, I've just seen one at the supermarket that's selling for less than half the price."

"But you made me go through the entire demonstration, you can't do this to me now," the guy looked as though he was going to burst into tears. Of course, I couldn't, I sighed to myself, there was no way I could make a fellow Indian cry. I lugged the little thing that weighed a ton back home, my stupefied arms feeling as though they would give way any moment.

Today, even as I was writing this, there was major excitement all around me. There was a sand storm in Dubai. I ran to the office balcony to see light-coffee coloured swathes rise out of the ground and envelop the landscape. I remembered I didn't close my apartment windows. I'm probably going to go back to a dusty home. To think I had cleared all the dust away exactly 24 hours ago.

Anyways, like I said, I now have a vacuum in my life.

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IKEA and Obama... AND the Omani Sheikh

2008-11-10T09:34:00Z

I've been playing hooky. Instead of blogging on Sunday - that I'm supposed to do unflaggingly on the day even God rested - I was romping around IKEA at the Dubai Festival centre.

Yes, I finally paid obeisance to the home of all things homesy. I'd first heard about IKEA from a friend who lived in Long Island, New York, a homebody-type. He'd tell me how he used to spend his weekends at the IKEA store there. "What is this IKEA all about?" I'd ask impatiently. In my hard head, I somehow couldn't accommodate the thought of a man spending so much time staring at home fittings, kitchen appliances, lampshades and futons.

"Oh, well, wait till YOU visit an IKEA store - you'll find out," he'd say. "It's Swedish, by the way, but nothing like the massage."

When he heard I was moving to Dubai, the first thing he said was: "Finally, you will get to visit the IKEA store - Dubai has one."

All this while, I couldn't visit IKEA because getting a taxi here is a real chore (okay, I know that's a lame excuse). But yesterday, a nice, Malayali cabbie came to my rescue as I was frantically trying to flag down cabs and failing miserably, and ferried me across to the IKEA store in Festival City.

I spent more than half a day there. I even bought two money plants -- other than a host of stuff that's giving my apartment a brand-new look altogether. By the time I returned, I didn't have the energy to blog. Forgive me, everyone.

And now, the talking point. Obama is President Elect! I knew it! Let me tell you a little bit about all I underwent. I am actually parroting a part of what I wrote in my Friday column for Khaleej Times. I realise that my friend Pawandeep (I know he's a man) has probably seen this coz I just saw a posting about how I had time to do my column for KT, but not to blog.

With apologies to Pawandeep, this is how it went - the second half of my column:

On election eve, I was in my building's elevator, and had just pressed the 4th floor button to go up to my apartment when a middle-aged gent hopped in to the cage with me. He was beside himself with excitement. "I plan to stay awake all of tomorrow night and follow the voting," he was addressing me, I realised, since there was there was no one else around.

"The US elections?" I asked politely.

"YES! We'll find out Wednesday morning who the President will be."

We'd reached the third floor - where he got out. "Are you rooting for Obama?" I couldn't help calling out to him.

"You bet lady," he looked back. "I'm an American, and he's our man."

"Hey, you know what? I'm rooting for Obama too."

He flashed a smile and a thumbs-up as the elevator doors slid shut.

The next evening, I switched channels for the first time since I've moved into my new apartment in Dubai: from Zee Aflam (the channel I am addicted to these days; I devour little-known and long-forgotten Hindi films that are shown back to back) to CNN. Of course, I didn't watch it through the night like my American housemate above me probably did. But I was back to CNN at the crack of dawn. And though I didn't quite break into muffled sobs when Obama unleashed his spectacular victory speech from Grant Park in Chicago, my eyes couldn't help misting over when I heard him say, "And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world -- our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand."

And I thought of Simon and Garfunkel singing ‘Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together/ I've got some real estate here in my bag/ So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs Wagner pies/ And we walked off to look for America' and how the moon rose over an open field after they boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh.

For the life of me, I don't know why I haven't stopped smiling ever since Barack Obama won.

And now, can Michael Douglas and Harrison Ford kindly step aside? It's time Denzel Washington played the American President on celluloid.'

Okay guys, I was seriously hoping to end this right here. But Pawandeep has me in a fix. I think I HAVE TO write about Omani Sheikh. So, here goes, and please, please thank me for this eclectic mix.

The day after I posted ‘My Misadventure at the Serviced Apartment' account, a friend SMS-ed me worriedly: "Are you alright? I just found out that you had a bad experience in your apartment, and have moved back to the hotel."

Well, actually, I moved into the serviced apartment BEFORE I found my apartment. In less than 24 hours, I was back in the hotel like a shot - from where I, subsequently, moved to my place, which is wonderful and lovely. All of this happened almost a month ago, therefore the confusion.

Omani Sheikh came into my life while I was playing my second innings at the hotel (after the misadventure). It was a Friday - which is Sunday for most people out here. The housekeeping chap - a sweet Nepali boy with who I'd become fast friends with - was in my room, doing his stuff, and chatting with me about life back home, right outside Kathmandu. The door was open, and he was moving in and out - his trolley, full of cleaning things, was outside - while I reclined regally on the sofa.

Oh yes, I wasn't wearing my contact lenses and was semi-blind, not blind as a bat, but I had my Nepali pal all figured out.

So at first, when Omani Sheikh stood at my door, all I could do was figure out a figure in white. I thought it was a woman in a white sari. Oh God, this couldn't be a re-run of Woh Kaun Thi, could it? "Excuse me, are you with someone?" The baritone was almost apologetic. And it was a MAN'S gravelly voice.

I peered as best as I could. Again, all I could see was a blur, so I had no idea whether he was like one of the occasional Mills & Boon heroes (there used to be quite a few Middles Eastern ones), under whose hawk-like gaze delicate English heroines would wilt like flowers did under white heat. And I didn't want to make a dash for my glasses, which were lying somewhere on the bedside table, trip and fall and make a fool of myself.

"Nooooo, I'm not," I stated. Had he too forgotten to wear his contacts? Couldn't he see I was alone? "But what is this about?"

"I was wondering if you wanted to be friends with me," he offered evenly.

"Uhhh, I don't think so," I said. Damn! Why couldn't I see his face?

"Why not?" he persisted.

"I'm not interested. Really."

"How about a coffee?"

"I have to go to work," that was quick thinking on my part. "I have some important meetings to attend today - so what that it's Friday?"

Even the sweet Nepali boy was getting worried. Of course, I couldn't see if he was LOOKING worried. "I think madam is trying to tell you that she doesn't know you and doesn't want to be friends with you," he said his part.

"Alright," said Omani Sheikh. "But in case you change your mind, I'm in room number so-and-so." Then, he added that he was from Oman, and that he had seen me in the lobby the evening before. Fat chance of my recognising YOU in case I bump into YOU, I thought to myself as the blurred white form walked away from my door.

I went and grabbed my glasses from the bedside table just in time to see the Nepali boy looking as mystified as Humph, the Camel, who runs away from the desert to visit Dubai. And then, the phone rang, and it was Omani Sheikh calling to say that he hoped he hadn't offended me by what he just said, and that, again, in case I changed my mind, I'd know where to find him. "Sure," I promised, and hung up.

I HAD to call up a few friends. "Guess what? I think I just missed out on my first shot at harem-hood."

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Food for thought

2008-11-02T08:34:00Z

I know I'd promised that I'll write about The Omani Sheikh sauntering into my hotel room, but, before that, I want to take you on a gastronomic tour. Omani Sheikh will have to wait till next Sunday. You see, I need to tell you, first, about how I am hooked to the strawberry smoothies - AND the peach ones, glugging down the creamy contents, generously spiked with chunky strawberry and peach pulp, every day. Two 400 ml bottles a day. The people manning the ‘cold' foods counter at the friendly neighbourhood supermarket look up hopefully whenever I put in an appearance. Which is every evening. That counter makes a killing.

"At least this is something [and I mean it in the qualitative sense] I would never get in Delhi," I think as I smack my lips after draining a smoothie bottle every morning, and then one every night. So maybe it was worth coming to Dubai after all. That way, I feel ever so better, instead of being morose for hours on end at times like when a friend in Delhi SMS-ed me to say she couldn't take my call since she was watching Bharatnatyam at the Qutub Minar (or was it Humanyan's Tomb?) .

Or when someone calls to say that the weather is turning mellow and there's a sharp nip in the air - one that makes you wrap the shawl tighter around your frame, and hug yourself closer - that he felt when he went on his morning walk in Lodhi Gardens. Here, central air-conditioning takes care of all mercurial inconsistencies. Only fools venture out on the roads: on rare occasions when I've been foolish enough to do so, I was perilously close to suffering a sun stroke. "This is nothing, madam," boasts Aruna (who's now been rechristened Arun). "Wait till you encounter summers, THIS is very pleasant - by equatorial desert standards."

Okay, I am digressing. I was talking about strawberry and peach smoothies. My mother has this irritating habit of asking me whenever we talk on the phone, "I so hope you are eating properly and not neglecting your health... Health is wealth, you know... and you are ALL ALONE in a foreign city - if something happens to you..." Her voice trails off at this point. I can picture her shaking her head. She used to parrot the same lines while I was in Delhi too (other than the ‘phoren' city bit), but there at least I had a semblance of support system: friends like Tiger; cousins like Black Sheep; bro and sis-in-law in Gurgaon; kindly landlord and landlady and the ever tail-wagging Chhoti; and uncle and aunt who I saw once in six months even though I lived seven houses away from them.

In Dubai, eating - not just eating out -- is the second-best that you can do. Shopping and mall-crawling - together -- occupy the number one slot. I haven't really had the time to explore the eateries out here (there are loads and loads, I am told, and most of them very, very good), but the supermarkets are the most food-friendly in the world. True to my calling, I've singled out an Indian chain, five minutes walking distance from my place. It's called Choithram's - and you even get cooked meals that you can buy by the metric scale, other than tons and tons, and shelves and shelves, of processed food (the likes of two/three/four-minute noodles, soups in cups, miracle biryanis, vacuum-packed dal maknis).

On the first day at Choithram's, I gaped at the array of Indian food on display inside the glass cabinets: dal, subzi (at least 10 different kinds), paneer curry, chicken curry, mutton curry, fish curry, all kinds of rotis and parathas. After that, I gawked at the ‘Indian' Chinese spread: fried rice and noodles, chilli chicken, sweet and sour paneer and so on. Fast food like kathi rolls, burgers, pizzas, pasta etc. ‘Nature fresh' stuff like salads and fruit salads. AND frozen food; I immediately bought an icy packet of methi parathas (that had 50 per cent less weight-inducing substance than the fresh off-off-the-stove variety) and a nine-grain offshoot that promised vital nutrients and vitamins. Later that night, I was to prepare a couple of parathas (one methi and one nine-grained) and gobble them up while watching Feroz Khan and Mumtaz romance on a channel called Zee Aflam.

In office, I ordered in a salad one afternoon and realised that a small serving of a Greek Salad (there's nothing Grecian about the salad, let me hasten to add: there were diced Amul cheese cubes instead of Feta cheese, and carrots instead of lettuce) costs more than a chicken burger, that comes with a well-endowed fleshy patty, and a goodly smattering of fries. It's no wonder that everyone tends to get fat here.

"Watch what you eat," a few spoilsports have already started sounding the alarm bell. "Usually people pile on at least five kilos in the first month of their Dubai stint." Sporadically, I try and go on a salad (and fruit salad) diet, but sustaining that steely resolve, alas, is a bit much for me. Even without going restaurant hopping, there's just too much to eat here. So help me dear Lord as I down another sugary strawberry smoothie.

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Misadventure in the Serviced Apartment

2008-10-25T12:34:00Z

I am up to my neck with serviced apartments. Almost every big building I see in Dubai (and you mostly see big buildings on the main roads) houses serviced apartments. The synonym is hotel apartments. It's a convivial marriage between two sectors: hospitality and housing. You're supposed to feel you are endowed with all the trappings that come with a hotel stay (furnishings, room service, housekeeping, swimming pool, sauna etc etc). Yet you have the luxury of feeling a bit like a chef once in a while: you can stock up the fridge with stuff you buy from the supermarket (there's a BIIIIG refrigerator to take in the load), you can cook (there's fully-fitted kitchen), and you can eat a full meal (or host a candle-lit dinner) that can be laid out all propah (there is cutlery/crockery AND a dining table set).

I don't know why I am giving you a lecture on serviced apartments. Yon find them in India too. Only, it's a nascent trend, and the few that are around cater only to the premium end. In Dubai, serviced apartments are all over the place -- and meant for everyone.

Whatever happened to me probably won't happen to most people - so please, please don't take this as a benchmark. It was an aberration. And it all happened because I was looking for a bit of culinary adventure: dying to cook some of the prettily laid-out veggies and meats in the supermarkets that pop out of every conceivable corner in Dubai. I fantasised about rustling up a broccoli and spinach soup, peppered with mozzarella, sprinkling it with croutons and wolfing it down. "Just you wait," I promised everyone who cared to listen in office. "Once I have MY OWN KITCHEN, I will get sandwiches for all of you."

I checked out of my nice but boring hotel, and checked in to a serviced apartment, a few paces down the road. I had to go to work early, so I dumped my luggage in the lobby and told the helpful-looking faces there to take my bags to the room; I would come by in the evening. "AFTER a groceries-and-garden-fresh-veggies shopping spree," I thought to myself gleefully.

I DID happen to notice that the lobby was overrun by Malayalis (Keralites; I've been asked here by people whether Malayalis have anything to do with Malaysians, or Malays -- no they don't!). I have nothing against Malayalis, many of my really good friends are Malayalis. Hell, Tiger is a Malayali. But it was strange to see so many of them at the same place: bellboy, receptionist, cashier, even the general manager who came rushing out to meet me, assuring me of the best service. For two minutes, I thought I was in Calicut or Kochi or Kottayam, and that green fields and coconut trees were right outside the lobby door. But of course, it was only the office car waiting for me outside the lobby door.

It was a bad day at work, and I finished rather late. So I came back straight to the serviced apartment. Dubai is not like Delhi that shuts down at 9 pm, I told myself excitedly (I've been talking to myself a lot lately), so once I have a shower and freshen up, I'd be ready for my shopping expedition.

In the lobby, I saw new Malayali faces. Change of shift. "Your luggage madam," one of the front office chaps said, "is in your room." Having said that, he burst out laughing. Oh, alright, a man with a sunny disposition, I thought to myself and walked towards the elevator, images of sun-soaked Kerala beaches floating in my head.

The elevator took an awfully long time getting down to my level. The doors creaked open, and the sound reminded me of ‘Shhhhhh... Koi Hain'. Then, it took an awfully long time to climb up to the third floor where my serviced apartment waited for me.

I had to use brute force to get the door to open. It was a mostly ungainly sight, me trying to push open the door using my body frame. Luckily, no one saw me, and I entered my new home.

In five minutes, I had a few facts under my belt: the curtains (of the long window) wouldn't close so everyone in the buildings opposite mine would be able to see me if the lights were on; the kitchen looked unusable; the bedside light didn't work; the bed linen looked dirty as hell.

I sat down on the bed that was covered with a dank sheet, and felt miserable. Let me try and make the best of a bad situation, I decided, fingering three misshapen spoons (three different sizes). I tried to plug in the electric cooker to check if it was in working condition. The power tripped and the room plunged into darkness. Using my cellphone as a torch, I groped my way through the room, and found the door. Much heaving and yanking followed. When the door finally opened, I ran to the elevator. It was stuck on the sixth floor, and came down after 4 minutes precisely. The doors creaked open.

There was a bunch of young men -- seven of them -- in drag, standing inside. Well, okay, it wasn't as if they were clad in saris or skirts -- but they were wearing floral printed pyjamas, chintzy tops, had full make-up on and hair done to death. "Going up or down?" I managed to croak rhetorically. I mean, obviously it was going down. "Going down," one of the boys giggled.

I stood in the centre of seven dolled-up men, all of who smelled like Eau de Parfum factories -- so the intense combined effect was that of Chanel‘s Pour Monsieur Concentrée -- while the lift creaked its way downwards. From time to time, the gang of seven went nudge-nudge-wink-wink and giggled hysterically, and I desperately wanted the earth to open up and swallow me.

Fighting back tears bravely, I flounced up to the front-office chap, the same one who had the habit of laughing. "The power has tripped in my room," I said as authoritatively as I could. "Can you send someone up please?"

He burst out laughing. "It happens all the time."

"So? You won't send someone to look into the matter?"

"Okay, I'll come myself."

Both of us took the creaky elevator upstairs, where I huffed and puffed and finally opened the door to my room. He fixed the fuse and power was restored. "Any chance of this happening again?" I asked. He burst out laughing again. "You know where to find us."

"Er, the bedside light doesn't work too," I edged in. "Can you fix it?"

He laughed, and then checked it out. "Sorry," he said cheerfully, "this can't be fixed right now... I'll try and do it tomorrow." Another hoot of laughter, and he was gone.

I was teetering on the brink of a tearful breakdown. I SMS-ed the Boss (God bless him) at 11 in the night: "I can't stay in the serviced apartment: it's a weird place, nothing works, and there are strange people around. I want to go back to Delhi."

Five minutes later, the Boss called. "You stupid woman, I told you to hang in there in the hotel," he scolded. "Move back to the hotel: do you want to move rightaway?" I might be able to spend the night somehow, I blabbered defensively. "I'll move tomorrow morning."

The next day, I was back in the hotel. And when I went to office, there were no sandwiches for anyone.

Ah, yes, an Omani sheikh sauntered into my hotel room one day, soon after my Misadventure in the Serviced Apartment and tried to befriend me.

Always on a Sunday

2008-10-20T12:57:00Z

Pawandeep, this is the second post that has been triggered off by a comment made by you (remember your earlier one about how I've gotten serious post my Delhi departure?). Posting a blog every Sunday (or Saturday night) is a thought that I have been toying with for a while now. So, this evening, as I was (a tad) guiltily (since I have not posted for over a week) going through the comments section, I came across Pawandeep's suggestion and was pleased as punch that great minds think alike. She too feels that I should post every Sunday morning. That's the way it's gonna be from now on -- unless, of course, I have something terribly important to tell you.

It's déjà vu, but here goes again: The reason why I have not been blogging for the past one week is that I finally managed to shift to an apartment -- a giant step that was preceded by days and days of SERIOUSLY irritating stuff like applying for a local bank account (a procedure that has the longest gestation period ever), getting a cheque book issued (second-longest gestation period), hassling the Boss for a salary advance, calling up brokers, paying them truckloads of money by way of commission, wallowing in the awfully depressing feeling of being flat broke (even though I've never invested in the stock markets) and what-have-you.

My 'studio apartment' is housed in an area called Bur Dubai, which is nowhere as posh as Jumeirah or Marina, and doesn't have a sea-facing view. For the life of me, I cannot figure how the hotel facing my building is called Sea View. There's not even a beach close by. No skimpily-clad frolicking global citizens making out near the sea as the waves lap up on to the sandy shore (there was a big debate in Dubai over an incident where a British couple were caught necking -- and more -- by the local police and ticked off; then of course, everything went flew off the handle, and the couple were put behind bars).

Bur Dubai is an honest-to-God ‘family' area: supermarkets, hypermarts (there's a thin line of difference between super and hyper, I've discovered, other than the hypers being more hyper), dry cleaners, Iranian restaurants, an Andhra cafe, ‘Amreekan' fast food joints, photo studios, travel agencies...

‘Family' is the reassuring epithet that is used to indicate that, you know, things aren't SHADY. You see, after sunset, if you are walking down the promenade, cars slow by, and inquisitive (and hopeful) glances are cast your way. There are murmurs that everyone wants to have ‘fun' here, and it's not sand-dune bashing or desert safaris or gold souk trails that they have in mind. Anyways, as a friend of my mine told me (she's been in Dubai for the past couple of years now), as long as you don't make ‘expressive' eye contact, it's the safest place to be in.

Getting back to my just-shifted-in apartment, it is, in retrospect, strictly not a studio since the kitchen is separate from the bedroom. I've learnt a new word here: en suite. Studios come with an en suite kitchen -- you basically cook at the place your bed ends. My place isn't quite that and the kitchen is separate, although it was advertised as a studio. For my part, I'm happy that cooking smells -- or pots and pans -- won't become a bedtime ritual.

A Pakistani colleague from work had gone looking for flats in an area called Deira, where rents are a wee bit cheaper, but he got seriously put off when he discovered notices in buildings stating that if there are couples wanting entry into any of the pads, then they better produce a marriage certificate.

I've not stopped telling people that, by way of rent, I'm paying more every month in Dubai than I did every year in Delhi. I spoke to Black Sheep -- who's scurried off to Amsterdam to arm himself with an MBA degree -- a few days ago, and he suggested that I record this bit (about the Dubai-Delhi rentals difference) and play it back to whoever next I was speaking with.

See you Sunday!

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About Aruna: A True Story

2008-10-11T12:53:00Z

I have many stories to tell from Dubai - including the one about my Misadventure in the Serviced Apartment, that almost saw me taking the first flight out of here and go back home to Delhi. But let me save that for another time.

I must, first, tell you the story of Aruna, a colleague and a friend. Here, where one tends to spend almost 80 per cent of one's waking hours (at least the wide-awake ones) at work, co-workers (the ones you get along with that is) become an important part of life.

"You must meet Aruna," the Boss ordered on my second day at work (the first day, I only met the HR/admin guys), "the head of research."

It was a bit like someone saying, meet Abhilasha or Sunita or Prema, and you turn your head, expecting to see a woman, and you see a man. You keep wondering why is HE called ‘Abhilasha' or ‘Sunita' or ‘Prema', and NOT Abhilash or Sunit or Prem. That's exactly what went through my mind when Aruna walked in to the Boss's chamber: why on earth is HE, that man, called Aruna, and not Arun?

Maybe I needed hearing aids. Or maybe this wasn't Aruna actually.

"Hi," he thrust his paw into mine, "I'm Aruna." I cocked my ears and listened very carefully: there was a distinct ‘a' after Arun, it added up to Aruna alright. "Hello, hello," I said. "I'm Sushmita." Not Sushmit. I didn't say that of course.

I was dying to, but couldn't ask him why he has a woman's name. Not right then anyhow. So I waited for a couple of hours, and walked up to him on the pretext of some research-based number crunching, and chatted with him for a few minutes. Then, I just had to pop the question: "Why do you have a girl's name?"

Aruna in Sanskrit means the colour crimson, he explained hotly, his face a flush of crimson tide. Somebody in his family is a Sanskrit scholar. Therefore.

That STILL doesn't explain why you have a girl's name, I giggled.

He stomped off.

Aruna is a highly qualified economist (his team members call him a ‘genius'), and has lived in various parts of the world, the Asia-Pacific region mostly: New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, East Timor. India obviously (where he grew up). And now Dubai. But at the end of it all, he wants to get himself a PhD in economics and then become a farmer. His family owns agricultural land near Mysore. "I hail from a royal family, madam," he boasts. ‘Madam' is his favourite form of address to any woman - irrespective of rank, seniority, age etc.

Why do you want to do a PhD in economics if you plan to get into the hands-on agriculture sector?

Madam, he said solemnly, "it's for my personal satisfaction. In an age of instant gratification, my pleasures are studied and doctoral in nature."

Aruna's got an enhanced sensibility - or sensitivities if you please - of a man who's lived by himself. I was particularly impressed when he told me that he tops his Mysore-based parents' cell phone account through his credit card so that it's actually he who pays when they call him (even though he's clearly using his economist's brain and doing himself a favour: it's about four times more expensive to make ISD calls from Dubai than from India).

Then, he keeps a stockpile of stuff that is free-for-all: plastic spoons (two different sizes) in one of his drawers (just in case somebody needs to shovel food into his/her mouth - and people in office need to, all the time), along with toothpaste (in case someone feels like to getting his/her breath freshened), biscuits and cupcakes (for whenever hunger strikes anyone).

Hmmmm, you are really organised, I observed archly one day.

"Madam, it's because I've lived alone for almost 10 years now - I know what it takes to survive."

He shops for things like ironing board covers and pre-heated packaged milk (that has a long shelf life) for his morning coffee that he has along with cornflakes whenever he is eating at his bachelor's pad.

Aruna's always at work - even on his off days - because he says he "has nothing to do". But don't feel sorry for him: he plans to get married soon, he confessed one evening after a couple of beers had loosened him up considerably. His girlfriend lives in Delhi. He hates Delhi, by the way; she loves it, but is also alright with living in an agricultural space, as she will with Aruna, the Future Farmer.

A couple of days ago, Aruna offered to place the lunch order for a few of us from Amaravathi, an Andhra takeaway that delivers food to office ALWAYS sans spoons (that's where Aruna's copious collection of plastic spoons is hugely useful). After he rattled off the wish-list, the person on the other side wanted to know who he was speaking with.

"This is Arun," said Aruna, and hung up.

"WHAT WAS THAT?" I asked.

"Madam, I've realised it's easier to call myself Arun when I'm interacting with the service sector - especially the ones manned by Indians. When I say Aruna, they keep asking me to repeat the name - because they can't believe that they HADN'T been talking to a man."

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Very, very short take

2008-10-08T14:00:00Z

Sorry guys, I've been very out of sorts, and have been missing in action for a while now. It's mostly because I don't have a place to stay, and I won't be able to get one till my permanent visa comes through. "It's on its way," promises the bespectacled HR chappie, who's from Bangalore, solemnly. "Tomorrow, before you get in to work, it'll be there." I don't believe a word of what he says. He's been parroting the same line for the last few days now. Sigh. Till I get my visa, I can't get my bank account. Till I get the bank account, I don't get my cheque book. Till I get the cheque book, I won't be able to sign post-dated cheques, hand them over, with a flourish, to one of the many beady-eyed brokers, and move into my own little set-up.

It's my 21st day in the hotel. In between, I tried living in a serviced apartment. I was back like a shot in the hotel in the morning -- will explain why in one of my coming posts.

Three weeks of star hospitality is giving me a phobia. I wake up early in the morning and run and hang out the 'DO NOT DISTURB, HAVING A SNOOZE' sign (which is usually a euphemism for 'I'm Having Sex' - not in my case though) on my door; if I don't, a long line of people troop in: housekeeping, the guy who comes to refill the coffee/tea bar, the chap who comes to water the plants etc etc. I need to wash my clothes, but I dare not: the ‘laundry' tariff says getting a 'hanky' washed and ironed will set you back by 35 dirhams, which is almost Rs 500. Since I don't particularly want to give a handkerchief for washing, I shudder to think how much a pair of trousers will set me back by. (Laundry bills are not being picked up the company.) And yes, yes, yes, I still convert EVERYTHING I buy (or even eye hopefully) into INR.

So here I am feeling homeless and homesick. I could go on and on with my long list of ‘relocation blues', but I have to go and check out a few apartments now. I was out house-hunting yesterday evening too. The broker promised to show me a cosy studio "right opposite, madam" the snazzy Burjaman Mall (it's a gorgeous slice of incredibly high-life consumerism carved out of Dubai's skyline, where you can - and I mean, people like me -- look, maybe even touch gingerly, but almost never, ever buy); I ended up in some building opposite a graveyard, in a terribly depressing neighbourhood, several kilometres away from the mall.

I'm not looking forward to some more house-hunting...

A longer post is just round the corner.

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Sushmita Sen and feeling a wee bit homesick

2008-09-30T10:07:00Z

So Pawandeep wants to know why I've gotten so "serious" about life, and feels I have changed greatly since I left Delhi.

Ummmm... Let me think. Have I changed?

Well, er, no. But I'm in transition, having to find the ground beneath my feet all over again and, at times, feeling utterly sorry for myself. Being in a new city does that to me. I spent weeks moping and fretting in Delhi when I moved from Calcutta, and wanted to catch the next day's Rajdhani back to Howrah Station. I would gratuitously tell everyone (even though they mostly weren't interested to listen to me), just you wait and see, I'll be out of Delhi in a year's time.

I stayed on for seven years.

So there.

Back in Dubai, we keep reading about figures like how only 17 per cent of the population are locals. The rest are all from all over the world, and in that sense it's quite a melting pot. Indians have hogged a substantial chunk of pot space, and Al-Karama is where lots and lots of desis live in. There's a Saravana Bhavan in Karama, and I can't wait to get there and dip my paws into sambhar and rasam and dig into a crisp dosa . I'm planning to go there sometime this week.

On my first day in Dubai, I managed to conduct a full-fledged conversation in Bengali. The office driver who came to pick me up from my hotel is a Bangladeshi, and we chatted enthusiastically about ' Sonar Bangla '. He's been in Dubai for 18 years, has lived alone all this while, and goes back home once every two years.

Does he miss home? You bet, he said.

Thanks to Bollywood, my name is suddenly very, very hot. Everyone asks me: "Sushmita? As in Sushmita Sen?" Every time, I have to nod my head coyly, and tell them how I hated my name till Sushmita became Miss Universe.

A Filipino fellow journo I bumped into here told me that he had covered the 1994 Miss Universe in Manila for the magazine he worked for then. He managed to talk to Sush after the crown was won. "Real pleasure to meet you now!"

And then, one evening, I was trying to cross the road in front of my hotel, without realising traffic moves the other way; a Mazda came pelting down the corner, and I scurried back in fright even as the vehicle came to a screeching halt.

The nice gent behind the wheel insisted I cross anyway.

You first, I smiled, grateful I was still alive.

No way, he hollered back cheerfully.

It's called right of way. Of course, you have no right to abuse it... I giggled a bit to myself, standing atop the road divider, trying to imagine a similar scene in Delhi. I sobered down when people started looking at me strangely.

One more observation. Staying in a hotel for a looooong time is utterly chic – or so I thought. But now I realise there's a certain monotony to the organised architecture that greets me when I get back 'home' from work. It's alright to be holed up in a hotel when you are on holiday; it's a different ballgame altogether when a suite becomes temporary digs, all in a day's work.

In the evenings, when I return to the hotel, I tend to wear a hangdog look on my face. "Are you feeling okay, madam?" the friendly usher in the lobby asks me from time to time, with a lovely singsong lilt in his voice.

"Yes, absolutely, thank you so much," I have to flash a smile.

There's way out actually, when you are down and a wee bit homesick: just rush in to a mall or a supermarket or a hypermarket; you are never, ever far from one in Dubai.

Even during Ramadan (it's over now: it's Eid today), when everyone said that the city was on sedatives, the moment I entered the hallowed portals I felt as though I was on steroids.

PS: I have no idea what it is like to be on steroids, I can only guess: must be an incredible high!
PPS: I am moving to a serviced apartment in a couple of days' time, and looking forward to cooking my first meal in a new city.

Watch this space. Ciao.

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