fly buy nostalgia dubai

33 years is a long time. Especially when you are 42.

When we left Dubai for Mumbai it was such a harrowing experience. From a large well protected cocoon to a crazy place of nothing. I wondered if I would ever go back and if ever on what terms. Would I get a job to live back there or visit as a tourist or for any other reason? I remember air travel was such a luxury and the cost of the tickets extremely prohibitive. We never again went by air travel within the country itself, forget going out of the country. It was something that never happened.

Over the years, definitely air travel became more affordable. If I remember right, the prices have fundamentally remained at the same absolute rate even after twenty-thirty years making the trip very affordable, but somehow Dubai always eluded me. With the markets doing well and I am back at my old broking company, when the offsite was announced for Dubai, I smiled to myself. I going home after 33 years. Wow. I was a little 9 year old boy when left Dubai for India. Now I would be going back on official business as a senior executive. Hah!

I am not going to talk about how Dubai has changed. Of course it has. It’s got shit load of wealth and it’s a city that decided to make its income from tourism and construction. Of course it a mad place. Its got some crazy large structures with massive buildings. In fact it’s got the tallest building in the world on top a massive mall. Dubai super sizes everything. Of course it’s changed and I couldn’t recognize anything on the way to the hotel till I saw the World trade Centre building. It was the building that was the tallest at its time. I remember going there with family just to see the building and having an outing around it. We posed for photos around the place. It was 30 odd stories high. Now that building looks like a pygmy with 60 storied buildings everywhere, making me lose a sense of perspective.

We shopped and hopped around Dubai till we had a chance to do a desert safari in the big Toyota SUVs. Those guys took us on the dunes, or as they say, bashing the dunes and skid on them etc. It was fun till one of the cars had a bit of tyre trouble and all the cars just had to park around to help him, in the idle of the desert. That’s when eth real fun started. People climbed on top of the dunes to pose for photos and jump around. That’s when I remembered my childhood. I was on top and the guys were climbing up when I saw this sweet round colleague of mine trying to climb up. I ran down towards him and took him to the ground. Then I ran after another and threw him down. Ad they posed for photos I threw a few more. Soon a few more joined in and it was complete chaos and I felt like a 6 year old all over again. Going up the sand dunes and rolling down with someone. We were full of sand and it was crazy ass fun. The guys who joined in had a whale of a time as well. I grew up to this – playing with gay abandon in the sand or rush into the water in the beach. That’s awesome fun.

Before coming back, I got a chance to catch with an old friend from Dubai. Our families were the best of friends and we grew up together while we were there. I asked him, if he could take me to my old house in Diera. He asked his dad for the exact directions and as we were reaching there, we were just looking around my building. It was a distinctive building as I remember that we had a long corner balcony connecting all the rooms. As my friend showed me the police station which I knew was nearby, I told him take a right here and there – that’s it. That’s my building.

After 33 years you get to see your home which gave you so much joy and fun and pride. It was a nice sweet quiet emotional moment for me. It was a large house with two bedrooms, a dining room, two halls and a kitchen. And the long balcony. We were on the third floor and seeing it was something special. Who knew under what circumstances one would have seen the house. It looked smaller than what I had memories of and the distances across the road seemed small. It’s because I was only a tiny boy of 9 and everything in perspective would have been big. Now it looks smaller.

As we were there all the memories kept flooding back. Three kids in our bedroom. In our respective beds jumping and playing. Running in the hall and balcony. Dad vacuuming the carpet on Sundays. Keeping the AC on every day and running around. Playing cricket in the car parking lot and playing cricket eth Pakistani boys who made a ball out of wrapping an induction tape around itself. I so wanted to go up and see the place. It’s a good thing we didn’t have time.

BTW – Jispa asked for stroop waffles and Pofaki from Dubai. She never asks for much and so for her I got 72 Stroopwaffles and 25 packs of Pofaki. Jasmine thought that I was over doing it. Hah! Of course. I am  dad. It’s my job to over do it.

what next

It’s funny how I am seeing myself age. Life priorities change. Your vision for the future changes. You start thinking about surviving peacefully as opposed to do lots of crazy things. It’s amusing for me to see how my mental model is changing as I grow older. When I shifted into this current house 10 years ago I had limited budget and lots of dreams and a world view that said – we will figure. Right now let’s focus on what’s important and build that.

So thanks to the small family that we were (we still are, I guess), we created a small house. We had almost no furniture and two cupboards and one bed. We spent the most, 60 thousand bucks, on the kitchen and made a small house for the small aspirations that we had. The idea was simple, we will figure as we go along the way. Slowly as we progressed as family, we did more renovations in the house. We got it painted, we added a dining table, a TV, we extended the house a bit, we got arm chairs and more cupboards. It was a lovely beautiful experience in building the home over ten years. I would give that up for anything. I really remember how small and cute and minimal the house was.

When we had money we bought a gymkhana membership. That too was bought with a sole intention of growing up with the gymkhana life with Jispa. She would do something, like swimming or badminton or tennis or something. It was an important and significant purchase for us.

Now after 11 years, as old as this blog, we have decided to move to our new Chembur house. This is a two bedroom kitchen and this is being done with a different mindset. Now we are doing up the house with a lot of focus on how it will be the same for a long time to come. We don’t have the attitude that we will figure. Let’s move into a nice home with all the amenities and the furniture sorted. So let’s have all cupboards, let’s have Jispa’s room sorted, let’s have the hall sorted, lets buy the right appliances, everything. Now the focus is not on the journey but to be that the destination has arrived.

I realize that at 42, possibly, just possibly, this is the house that I am likely to retire in and die in. I will not be able to remodel this again and again. Most of what we want should be done and made. So we are using good carpentry and good material for the home. Things that should last us for a long time. Now is the time that we are not looking for change but for permanence. So now what all can I invest in so that it will last a long time.

Next to the Chembur house is a gymkhana – Chembur Gymkahana. Jasmine and I were discussing the gymkhana membership and I urged her to come with me and see it. We liked what we saw and we saw that this looked affordable. But we have one membership, didn’t we? My argument to her is simple. We are likely to retire here as empty nesters when Jispa goes away. We are going to be oldies with little to do and lots of time and less income generating capacity. What will you do then? You will go to the gym and walk, go for swim, try and play a game or two and sit with your friends in a gymkhana. I am not even sure as we grow older if we will have the ability to drive up to Matunga gym and worse, you don’t want to waste money going there. I don’t know. But when you have this gymkhana sitting right here waiting for you to just hop inside, then that’s the ideal thing for the idle oldie.

Possibly when you are retired gymkhana politics or service, handling the affairs of the gymkhana is also something that you can do. Retired people work best as secretaries of housing societies and Gymkhanas where they spend their time doing honorary service, feel important and spend their time. It requires experience tact and time, which is what an old person would have. Hah. So we are now considering buying the membership for no other reason except – old age.

It’s a far cry from the action oriented unbrindled optimism of ten years back. Want to do something, want to live for the present, want to figure things out as they come. Now it’s a way to do least harm. I play with my knee in mind, with my back in mind, with a simple thing that tells me to manage myself or I going to be in trouble. I remember that my dad was only 45 years old when he got his first heart attack. I am 42. My immediate next goal – survive the next 3 years without too many issues. The fun bit of marrying early is that by the time I am 45, my daughter will be 18. I was 10 when my dad got his first attack. Hopefully first milestone will pass soon enough, without too much stress.

So that’s my ikigai for now – I am trying to create my ikigai when I won’t have any ikigais. That’s an interesting new time for me. Lets see.

joy

When we joined the gymkhana first we wanted Jispa to learn a sport properly. The one we honed in thanks to the timings etc was badminton. We also put her in swimming just to get her to learn it as a life skill. She was doing well in badminton as well when she got promoted first in the swimming batch and that decided her (till now) sports career.

But that’s not the point I am making. I remember one of the things that they made Jispa do was run up and run backwards on the court. Just run up and back. Simple. Get on your toes and run up and backwards. That’s a drill. Drills are important in sport training. They help you develop specific muscles and the build muscle memory. Then on the court it’s a second nature and replication of the same.

I have been playing badminton for long and all of it is self-taught. Looking at what the others do and thinking and trying to improve my game. It has reached a reasonable level but is now obviously plateauing. You end up playing with the same people again and again and then you aren’t able to develop your game. You have to play with multiple players in multiple settings to get an all-round feel to your game.

On the side of the court is a poster with the Indian legend Gopichand with different poses and explaining how to hit different shots. For the overhead smash one thing that I noticed that it required you to get behind the shuttle in a way that the shuttle is just ahead of you and you can then smash it right. It was interesting. I started trying to do that and it’s right, the shuttle then just flew off the racket in a powerful hard smash. That’s when I knew what I was doing wrong. I was being lazy. I was just getting back enough to get to the shuttle to hit it back not enough to get behind it. Just a step more… or possibly half a step more. That was the difficult one. It didn’t come naturally. That’s when I remembered Jispa’s drills- run up and run back. That’s the trick. Keep running back. I forced myself to run back a little more than normal. Again and again. And again. The smashes started going. It’s just a simple thing.

That’s the great thing about drills. Drills help you get the muscle memory right and get you to do the right thing immediately without effort in the match. I am amazed how simple it really is and with a little extra effort the game becomes much more enjoyable. Lovely.

These small efforts give me tons of meaning. I think these are cute things that help me get past what otherwise would be a mundane life. Our experiences around us make us who we are. We can go by thinking about the same old routine and get bored and exasperated by the predictability of it or we can get small joys in knowing that they can be improved or there is joy in the repeatability of it all.

Will I be a cynic with a mid-life crises when I tell you that don’t chase some great joy in life? Great joys are few and far in your life. My child being born was a great freaking joy. Falling in love with jasmine was a great freaking joy. Seeing my daughter win a race was great freaking joy. Seeing her lead the sports day oath was great freaking joy. But these come a few times in a life time. Rest are all small joys. Talking to her on various topics. Ganging up with her and making fun of Jasmine. Making the world’s best Paneer bhurji for breakfast for Jispa along with a coffee cup with oodles of cream is a cute joy. Running like crazy across the court and picking up the shuttle inches from the ground to take it across the net for a winner is acute joy. Giving a tough fight to the opponents in spite of being a weak team is a cute joy. Solving a puzzle with Jasmine or figuring out a product with her is a cute joy. Going to starbucks and ordering a pour over with milk and then asking for extra cup and some soy milk so as to get two for the price of one is cute joy. Writing this blog and posting it is cute joy. Buying a new pair of shoes is cute joy. Having a whack a mole fight with Jasmine with me being eth beaten mole is cute joy. Giving Jispa my old night suit t-shirt and then getting her ear lobe to kiss is cute joy. Fighting with Jispa over who gives the cutest nose kiss to Jasmine while she struggles to cover her nose in protest is cute joy. Talking to the trainee sitting next to you in office and giving gyan is cute joy. Rolling a tissue paper into a pointed rocket so that you stuff it inside your ear to get the last bit of water out of your ear after swimming is cute joy. Sharing your reading glasses with Jasmine while we oldies struggle to read a menu is cute joy. Putting cold cream on Jasmine’s legs or getting her to put cream on my back is cute joy. Giving Jispa a massage after a particularly tough works out in spite of you having a particularly bad day at work is cute joy. Giving a coworker a hug for no reason and not saying anything is cute joy. Peeling an apple without breaking the skin, in one straight flow is cute joy. Sitting in the pot and having one hell of a good download is cute joy. Finding a new restaurant that serves you awesome vegan dishes is cute joy. Meeting an old student who remembers you and tells you that you were the best is cute joy. Having a young friend tell you about their ups and downs and mental state just so that you know… is cute joy. Having a cool chat with your daughter’s class mates and just chilling around is cute joy. Connecting to a barista at Starbucks and hi fiving them when you go the next time, is a cute joy.

Beat all these bare cuteness of life.

who is to blame?

Yesterday as an eventful day.

I got up reluctantly to go play badminton. I like playing but I also realsie that if I don’t get enough seep I should be sleeping nd not playing sport. I think sacrificing sleep and going for fitness is a recepie for disaster. So I always try and get my sleep first and play later. But hell, Jispa also takes the opportunity to go to the gym when I go for badminton. Those are the alternate days on which they don’thave their swim and so it works out really well.

I took her to the gymkhana and suddenly while stepping out of the car she was in severe pain. What happened? She jammed the door on herself. Huh? Ya. Only Jispa can do that. She jammed the car close on her own finger. Oh dear, it was bad and the finger was blue. We ran up to the ice machine and got her finger in a glass full of ice. Now the eternal question – should I fuss over her and take her home or should I play the game while she waits on the sidelines with her finger.

The father in me wanted to play the gaem but the husband in me knew, that would be trouble when I get home. Jasmine would have fired me for letting her daughter hang around in pain while I played badminton. I told Jispa that we can go home. She was ok to let me play but still, I have been more years a husband than a father. I have been trained well on what to do. I went back.

In the afternoon another incident happened. I got free lunch at the restaurant SodaBottleOpenerwala. Yup. That is a name of restaurant. It serves Parsi cuisine. I called up Jasmine and told her – “you know there is good news. I got free lunch today”. “Why” she asked. Err… “That’s the bad news.”. She then guessed “they served you lactose food”. “no, Because they served me prawn curry”. “and you ate it?”. “Yes” I replied. “I ordered for the veg Parsi curry and the waiter got the curry. I started eating it and I was thinking about the fact that it has no vegetables but only chewy soya bullets. (I am still cringing). I even offered it to my friend who is also a vegetarian and she also ate it thinking its soya. Then I saw the distinctive shape of the prawn and I asked the waiter – what is this? He looked at it and pat came the reply – its prawns. And then he freezes for a second and looks at me and says – you ordered veg. Then he runs into the kitchen and comes back and tells me that I had ordered veg but the cook screwed up and he is getting the manager. The manager came and apologized.”

Ok. I ate what I thought was an ugly prawn dish. I was holding my head in my hand. What would my reaction be? Should I scream and shout? Should I break his head, should I demand a free meal... for life? Should I throw a fit? I just looked at my friend and we looked at each other and were wondering what to do. I simply told him, that go away for a minute and I just took stock of all the thoughts that were racing in my mind. Ok. I had the prawns. It’s not that I have a huge issue with non veg. I have no religion that went kaput, I had no belief that were altered. It’s ok. It’s a human mistake. It’s just that prawns look yucky and they feel yucky to eat. It’s a full body that went inside my mouth and I can feel the crunchy chewy feeling.

So I simply called the guy and asked him to take the food away. He wanted to replace the food. I was in no mood to eat anything else. I asked for fresh lime to wash the feeling. Hahah… now that I say it, fresh lime juice, sweet and salty, less sweet is my ganga jal which washed away the sins of eating it. Haha. What to do with the waiter. Its human error. Can really fault him for this. That’s why some of my friends and their parents who have huge issues eating non veg even accidently don’t go to the places that serve non veg. that’s why they go to vegetarian only restaurants.

In Mumbai there is a huge market for veg only places and the same is replicated across India. Veg only is a big thing that is extremely important to the vegetarians. Such risks are something they are not happy taking. So now when I look at them and wonder and ask them – why… I know the answer. It’s a question of risk which is unacceptable. Like I was explaining to my friends in office. Its ok to get this once in a while. I go to non veg joints and order veg food. I get the pleasure of eating at different places. In all these years it’s only normal and very very statistically probable that I would get one instance of non veg in error. The world doesn’t work with six sigma efficiency, which also allows of 3.4 defects per million. And with India having 1.3 billion people and also many trying to be vegetarian and a subset of them eating veg at non veg places, the odds are that you will get prawns in your lifetime. Now that I got it and the waiter and the manager as well the cook skipped a heartbeat, they will be more careful the next time – the follow up odds of them screwing up are lesser and then will have to wait for one more million people to eat from their hands for another 3.4 errros to creep in – that is if they are at 6 sigma.

If they are working at less then, more will happen. So why get angry at them. They were only trying to do their job. Possibly the cook needs glasses and is not rich enough or educated enough to get them. Possibly the waiter should be trained for checking the food against the order. Possibly the manager must make checklist of the food every time. The management must constantly train for this and every time this happens a root cause analysis must be done and the process must be fixed. Possibly all of this must happen and I am 100% sure that none of this happens and yet I eat… continue to eat here. And hence IT IS ME WHO IS TO BLAME FOR THE CONSEQUENCES. Why should I then scold the guy? Why?

what we align to

Religion is always an interesting subject. I have had a lot of time to think about this. It is a contentious topic. And if you have followed the blog in past years you would have realized that I have recently turned a complete atheist. But it difficult for me to completely be a 100% atheist as I grew up fairly religious and I can’t say that I have had a life untested by faith. Jispa is unique in that way is that she is going to grow up untested till she decides from her own free will to test faith.

By questioning religion openly I am sure I will rub a lot of people the wrong way. It is not the right thing to do in parties, conversations and discussions. People see atheists as anarchists that are dangerous. If you add the ability to have a cool well thought of and articulate debate to this, you have a really potent and combustible mixture. In India for sure, we don’t have this ability in a lot of people. We see faith as omnipresent and absence of which as unhuman. And if I don’t see you as human, possibly then the rights of mankind don’t apply in dealing with you and hence… I know, this is dramatic but this is in many ways a reaction that is immediate and predictable (predictably irrational) and is something I have seen again and again. But I can understand this. Religion is much more to others than what I see it for.

Ever since I have started questioning my faith, I have started questioning (or pondering about) the need for faith. It’s easy to say that faith is a useless emotion that pervades the mind of the weak. Even if I take that stand it is not correct for me to think of the same for people who have started religion. There is knowledge, philosophy and life lessons in religion. That cannot be discounted. Those who have founded religions or even set the path for propagating it are extremely intelligent and enlightened beings. Some who benefit from it are also smart and extremely manipulative people. So it is not a kingdom of foolishness founded by fools. There is some truth and merit in the institution of religion which must be seen and the surface scratched to gleam some insight.

After much thought I have come to this world view for now - Religion in my view now is not about God and his ability to run you but is about the ability for civil society to organize itself around a set of shared values. Wow that sounds pretty deep. Even I am impressed by own analysis. I think a lot of intellectuals in the past tried their hand at creating a civil society. They must have realized that society can only work in harmony if there are a bunch of rules coded that everyone follows. Rules can be enforced to a limit. There are so many invisible rules that work as a general understanding as opposed to an enforced by rule of law. Being kind and benevolent can only be a general understanding not enforced by law.

SO the elder would have figured that this order to be maintained has to be in a manner that is ingrained from birth. A simple set of guidelines duly imbibed in the population. These guidelines have be met even when no one is looking or in a situation where no one can prove ones act of moral departure. These rules can work only when they are enforced by a centrail all knowing allpowerful, omnipresent authority – GOD. He who can see all that no one can, he who instills fear into your hearts when you do wrong, he who has the power to forgive you or the power over your destiny. It can only be enforced by HIM. That’s why even forms of religion that don’t really have a central God, like Jainism or Buddhism, the central characters are given the status of Gods opposed to what they really are – enlightened humans who have searched and found truth for living harmoniously.

We take them and start praying to them as opposed to following their path and teachings and looking inward. We are scared of what is not known to us and hence we pray for a force to redeem us. Much like eth small pox goddess which was in favor till we found and eliminated the virus. Religion I think was therefore invented to create a moral fabric that binds people even when they are dark to everyone around. This moral fabric is important for civil society to function properly. It allows for people to trust each other – you often see people helping other people of a similar cast / religion etc. People may not donate normally but are happy to give copious sums of money for religious reasons.

So religion is important, or should I say was important when it started. It created a set of shared values and an ecosystem that was necessary for trust and society to flourish. It created a culture. In today’s day and age, is it required? Can democracy, a vibrant media, an era of information sharing, do we need religion? I don’t know. If we realize that society requires people to be together, celebrate together. Play together, would we need religion? Corporate houses don’t require religion o bind and hence they create a culture and they have various events around which the employees congregate and share their lives. These shared lives are a type of religion. Only difference is that in religion you are born into it and you can really get out. The others are indoctrinated into it and then it becomes a cult.

But why am I talking this religious mumbo jumbo? Over the last weekend we went to this place near Ahmednagar called Meherabad. My brother and his wife are believers and have a couple of bunglows there and spend a lot of time there. I am ok with that except when it comes to going to the Samidhi and the taking into many teachings from there. Nothing I saw there as Meher baba’s teachings are something that I can find fault with. It seemed to be simple and straight forward and it seemed to foster brotherhood. But I saw people believing in him as an avatar (he called himself that as well, I am led to believe). It made no sense to me as if I don’t believe in God then his avatar seems even more ridiculous. We quietly ignored that bit. As a family they took us to the Samadhi and we just went along. I was too polite to get in to acts of rebellion or debate. We played along. We went to the Samadhi (I think where his last rites were held) and folded hands.

I had a chance to talk to Jispa there as well. She too was polite. She and I looked at each other knowing, we don’t believe and that we don’t really approve of this. I was telling her that she is lucky to have a life untested by faith and that is something I can never have.

I often wonder if religion is a necessity that I have deprived a child of or have I given her something greater. The ability to choose to have a moral principle or like I tell anyone – I don’t discuss morals with anyone. I don’t want to create, impose or advise people to have moral principles. You have your own, I have my own. They are personal. Just because I am Jain does not mean I will not eat onions. My reasons to be vegetarian are not because of my religion but choice. Same is for anyone around me. I rather focus on logic and the ability to live harmoniously for everyone’s benefit and whatever it takes for it is good. This too is selfish as a set of shared principles are good for the society at large.

That’s why I was telling that I am happy that festivals are celebrated in the building. It creates a common code for meeting and binding people. It’s like a cricket match as well. Same principles ally.  That’s why politicians promote sport and so do corporates. Bind over shared systems. In a hyper connected environment millions of loose connections will replace strongly held connections like religions or family ties. Religions will find themselves out of favor soon enough in any case. It will be interesting to see their reduction of preeminence. It will be replaced by loyalties to cities (sport teams in leagues – see), nations, hobbies (photography, dancing, exercise) and stuff like that.

The faster we see this the better it will be for us, after all a binding that is fun and chosen into as opposed to be born into will always be better and more connected. A well-crafted secular constitution with broad set of rules and leaves everything else to imagination will replace religious texts for framing our behavioral paradigms. This is my vison for the future but of course, it will have to fight a history of religion, hatred, brotherhood, family ties etc. So all the sporting leagues that use cities as a base are actually slowly denting the strangle hold of religion and giving people greater causes to bind themselves with. For the hell of me, I have never understood why we want to watch the matches of the cities we live in and support – we should be watching the sport for the love of it. But then….