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.

whats worth more?

When we grew up we hardly had any swimming costumes to choose from. You just went to some sports store and picked yourself a costume. I used to swim regularly in Dubai, that is till the third standard. When we shifted to India we stopped swimming. No club, no pool. One big posh building (Avanti) in the locality had a swimming pool which was empty. They repaired it a few years later and started it, but it was out of bounds for outsiders. The only accessible pool was the municipal pool at Shivaji park, which was some distance away.

As a kid I went into the pool but I hadn’t really properly learnt swimming. So after a long time when I finally went swimming with my friend at the Avanti swimming pool, I realised I had completely forgotten to swim. I used to do some variation of the underwater stroke or something, which just about kept me afloat. So there was no swimming for me for many years. Till one day V-inu and I in the first year of college (F.Y.B.COM) decided to swim properly at the Shivaji Park pool. We figured out when the forms come out (once a year), got the forms, filled it in and started swimming. We saw what the coaches taught and learnt that one has to hold the sides of the pool and splash ones legs to learn to float. So we sat and splashed. Slowly we figured what we thought was free style and swam.

We also had started doing odd jobs as sales promoters. One assignment was at the defense canteen. So there we used our contact we had built up and I remember buying for myself a swimming costume. A defense canteen would have heavily discounted stuff, thanks to the non-applicability of taxes. I don’t remember the brand but it was some home grown, possibly Jalandar made brand. I don’t remember too well, but I think I couldn’t afford and hence did not even dream of buying swimming goggles or a swim cap. I did try and buy ear plugs but quickly released that they didn’t help a bit. Speedo was a brand that was not available in India and was something I could only drool over. OOO… Speedo swimming wear.

So when Jispa started swimming seriously we went and picked Speedo swimming costumes. They were an upgrade from her home grown ‘mad max’ or some brand like that swimming costume.Speedo. Wow. She had not one but three speedo swimming costumes. When you go for competitive swimming, you change your costumes after every race so that you can remain nice and dry while you await your race. Speedo costumes, cap, goggles. Not bad eh! Till recently we realised that even Speedo is not it. Now Jispa is a walking talking Arena billboard. She prefers that material over Speedo. Slowly we are seeing Arena  taking over. Speedo seems to only stock during the summers. Most sport shops are out of stock of Speedo or any decent swimwear the rest of the year. Whereas Arena is slowly building credence with the serious swimmers. This is a serious marketing lesson. In the last three four years, I have noticed suddenly Arena swim wear on the bodies of the athletes. This has an effect greater that what we can imagine. If the champions in the pool start wearing Arena, then the others will slowly see and realize that Arena is ‘real’ swim wear what champions wear. Even the casual swimmer will see this and slowly gravitate towards Arena. Speedo is in real danger in Mumbai at least of being the lower performing swimwear brand.

This emulation effect is larger than we realize. Big brands have understood this and that’s why you see the bad rush to pay obscene amounts of money to make champions wear your brand on the stage. But what Speedo is failing to see, is the fact that there are champions in every small nook and corner. The classic marketing case of Arena having really high end swimwear in stock, which probably doesn’t sell at all but defiantly has a strong rub off for the more boring models. They sponsor the Otter club meet where they have a stall. I glanced through the selection and quickly ran out of there when I saw my costumes for two thousand bucks. Hah! One other parent told me, forget that. There was a kid’s model for 12 thousand bucks. A high end costume which has to be worn in a particular manner. It probably took around 15 minutes just to wear it. Oh come on.

Then we got talking and I realized some kid champions were wearing real high end costumes, costing upwards of twenty thirty thousand rupees! Oh dam you. Some real special fast costumes. These costumes I had read reduce your drag and help you swim faster. The net effect would be something like one tenth of a second at best. One tenth! In these club meets and state meets, timings are taken by hand held stop watches. There are two time keepers for every race and then timings are taken at the end. One tenth of a second is the easily human error in the stop watch, it surely is not what the kid needs for now.

The most of the timing improvement at this age is not the equipment but strokes. The right strokes help you slash off seconds. Your improvement is measured in seconds. The coach works on this every day. For Jispa the coaching fees are around 900 bucks a month for 5 one hour evening turns and 3 one and a half hour morning turns. From which the gymkhana keeps a cut and shares the rest with the coach. For a coach that produces state and national champions, it’s hardly any fees. Jasmine and I find it really cheap.

The coach has a strict policy of not accepting any extra gifts or money. They refuse any attempt by the parents to give them anything.  They are extremely sweet. This year the club decided to honor them at a party (tomorrow) and the mothers are using this as an opportunity to collect and give a cash envelope with the felicitation. It interesting to see the reactions of the mothers and others while the hat gets passed around. For me the coach is paramount. I hold him in the highest esteem. It because of him that we are around. They make or break us. We did not know Jispa would swim so well. We had no dream about her swimming prowess. The coach has dreamt of her victory. We can only be grateful. I never had any sport coach. I value them immensely.

While we were have the discussion on expensive costumes I wryly remarked – ‘we can pay 30 thousand for a swimming costume that saves us one tenth of a second but we don’t pay much for the coach who helped our kid cut 20 seconds to start with’. It’s embarrassing for me to have Jispa’s swim bag contain equipment that is worth almost twice as much as what the coach makes from teaching Jispa in a year. Whats worth more?

wake up ball

It’s always a struggle to wake Jispa in the morning. Not because she is reluctant to wake up, that is definitely the case, but more so as she is a nice warm cuddly that I want to cuddle along and use to wake me up. It’s such a sin to wake up someone so beautifully asleep. Which heartless creature would want to disturb an angel, warm and asleep?
But on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, when you have to wake up at 5 and leave home at 5.30 am, all the warm fluffy feelings go for a toss. You just literally drag her from the bed. HI Jispa wake up time and pop, I have to pick her up. This is something that Jasmine invented. It takes a mother to invent something like this. Before jispa knows what is happening she is half way to the bathroom. And while she opens her eyes, she is in front of her mirror ready to brush. There is little time or scope for negotiation. I found it cruel at first but it is the right way. If I allow her to gain senses, she starts negotiating. And when she negotiates with her arm around you and says, “Dad one minute please. It won’t make a difference”, then I just melt and it’s time for us to get scolding form mom. GET UP NOW. YOU ARE GETTING LATE!
So it’s a yank and pull wake up three days of the week. No fluffy teddy for me. But on Tuesdays and Thursdays it’s the return of the teddy! I max these two days. I get into her bed and then cuddle up and then begin the process of waking her up. So I have to hunt for new things to wake her up. Because merely cuddling is not enough. She can then sleep for hours like that. And while the pressure is lower, it is still not absent. I still have to get her up and ready in time. So I start talking to her. Start asking her questions and other stuff. That lasted a couple of times till one day she said, ‘dad, don’t irritate me and ask me questions nah. Don’t do that in the morning”. So now that is effectively ruled out as an option. Her highness the teddy refuses to talk rubbish in the morning.
A few days back I hit on a new thing. I get into her warm mattress and start talking about my life. Nothing big or dramatic but simple stories that I find most amusing or talkable at 6 am. The last story I told her was about the games we played during the break at school. I was in Dubai till the third grade and moved into the fourth grade here. My first memory of the first break is when my new found friends said, ‘chal, join in, we all play aaba-dubee. What you mean Abu Dhabi, I corrected him. You see I was fresh from Dubai and the capital city for UAE is Abu Dhabi. No no. It’s not Abu Dhabi, its aaba-dubee.
This conversation today reminds me of the little prince where everyone told him, it’s a hat and he corrected them.. no no it’s a boa constrictor who swallowed an elephant.
Forget that. So my friend, if I am not mistaken Amardeep it was, says, its aaba-dubee we are playing. he had a rubber ball in his hand so I figured that’s got something to do with it. It was the first time I had seen a rubber ball, popularly called rubdy ball in Mumbai. In Dubai a ball was always a tennis ball. I soon learnt that tennis balls were really expensive– pre reform era, remember? – and this ball at 2.5 bucks was IT. So how do we play the game. We take this ball and hit other people with it. Ok. I was waiting. It sounds like kings. We used to play kings where in, there is the denner and his job is to hit someone with the ball, then they both together get the third one and so on till we are all out. You can’t run with the ball. That’s the only other rule in kings.Amardeep then explain aba-dubee to me. You only hit anyone else with the ball. And yes you can’t run with the ball. So, ‘who is the denner’ I asked. There is no denner in aba-dubee. You just throw the ball high in the air to start it. Then whoever gets the ball has can throw it to hit someone and then whoever picks it then throws it at someone with an aim to hit him and so on. It’s not a sport; it’s not a game, its mindless action. It has no end. You just keep throwing the ball. The playground has no boundaries, no one to judge, nothing. IT WAS AWESOME.i remember playing it forever. You rush out at the bell and throw the ball into the air and you start and continue till the bell rings to get us back in. short break, long break, you just play like crazy.
i never understood we boys would just rush in and try our hand at getting the ball. That is always a high risk high reward strategy. To get the ball you always compete with one or two other guys and then if you get it first then you have two really close targets. If not, then you are one of the two really close targets. Also the trick if you miss it is to get really really close to the guy with the ball. He can’t really throw a hard ball at you if you are an inch away. At around three to four feet distance, you are a sitting duck. So it’s a stick or run early strategy. So in a game where there are 20 to 30 kids playing you are not likely to get hit more than twice. Aim has to be right and you have to be stupid. I remember only once a guy called Ashish Kaul got hit five times in one session. I remember singing happy birthday along with the others. It was his aba-dubee birthday.
So I explained the brain dead game to Jispa one morning while waking her up. She found it most amusing. A game with no real point and that doesn’t end. She soon woke up. Now to think of more stories from my life to tell her. Some from college, some from school, some from Dubai, and possibly some stories will be hers, things that she would have done as a younger kid. It’s like a talking blog every morning. A Tog?

school blues

Jispa had been a bit under the weather on Monday. Jasmine was called into school to take Jispa back as she had fever. As she realized that she was going to miss more than one day at school, Jispa was in tears. She loves going to school every day. We always dread when she gets unwell as we don’t know how we are going to get her to stay back at home. Wow. I wish I had her schooling. I went to what was at the time a decent school. It surely had a large play ground. But I guess I never did very well adjust to schooling. We satyed in Dubai till third standard and then moved into Mumbai post the fourth. It was quite a cultural shock. Dubai being Dubai was rich, opulent and full of all eth lovely things in the world such as Pepsi, Chewing gum and amazing chocolates. India was a poor country in 1984. With only Doordarshan channel one, Bata shoes, kissme toffee bars and Cadbury chocolates. It was far too disturbing for us kids than we could handle. 1984 was no where near what we have today.
Whenever we came in from Dubai for a vacation to India, we were royalty. We were aliens wearing foreign clothe eating foreign goods. It was amazing that India was so insular at the time. Every Indian would stare at us looking at all the stuff denied to him. There was practically nothing available here for any kind of consumption. Our shoes and jackets were objects of desire. The only chips I remember eating here was something called Simba chipnicks which were packed in flimsy transparent plastic pouches. Coming back to stay in India was one hell of a cultural shock.
From a school (Indian high School) which had 30 students in a classroom with two air conditioners and four fans to a school (Don Bosco) that had 60 plus students with four fans, no air-conditioning and a very wet monsoon to herald the new year. Yes it was tough adjusting. We siblings shifted in 84 with our parents coming in a year later after winding up our home there. We got in tons of goods in what was popularly known as TR (transfer of residence). In this scheme you could get in tons of foreign goodies into India, including tape recorders, foodstuff, a car, clothes, assorted electronics etc. I remember mom and dad tying to the get the consignment passed at the customs. We sold some and kept some.
So we were still living the foreign dream for a few years after (till stocks last or you outgrow them). We did not lose anything to obsolescence. Partly because things weren’t improving at a fast pace and what we had was so bloody modern by India’s standards that it took a while for India to catch up to that level. So we lived in the shadow of Dubai being no land’s children.
My dad was awesome. I never seen him complain or make a fuss about it. We never felt him to be unhappy about the shift. In Dubai he drove around a Toyota crown, in India he was happy to roam around in our brand new Bajaj Chetak scooter with a side car attached. That he had got delivery of the much in demand scooter by paying foreign exchange. Else you get it after an obscene waiting time. I think it was a year or two for a scooter and up to 5 to 7 years for a car. Chetak was not even given out easily I think. You could only buy the humble Bajaj Super. I think Bajaj might have been doing a public service or charity of sorts by advertising. With a wait list like that who needs advertising.
Schooling was stressful for me for sure. Every monsoon I would fall ill and I never did adjust to the change in weather. This continued well into college where I finally developed some resistance of any sort. The favorite illness was sore throat.
Add to that the really irritating bunch of teachers who didn’t care too much for the students. It’s unfair to say all were bad. Some were awesome and really stood apart from the crowd. I remember Ms Beatrice, Ms Marina, Ms Clare being really sweet and some nasty ones that did not think twice before slapping us. The slap was bad. That was humiliating and irritating. It created more anger than anything else. Patel sir, the PT sir once got the whole class to stand still while he went about given one whack on the bum to each and everyone of us with a hockey stick. I remember that hurting a lot but I remember that as fun. It’s the slap that was hit that hurt. The hockey stick was for some reason bearable. Years after while I was doing my summers I met a senior guy who was from my school as well. He too remembered the teachers slapping and hated it.
I was telling Jispa that my teachers used to hit us and slap us. She was listening in all amazement. She has been living a fairy tale for now.
All in all school was not happening for me. I finally figured it around the 9th and 10th standard. I guess by then we were truly Indians in all sense. We might have run out of our Dubai security blankets/ blings and I think I was getting some of my confidence back. Hell in 10th standard I was even made monitor of the class. But my crowning moment was actually in the 9th when I won the ‘second best actor award’. I knew I was good at acting and I did not mind losing first place as I believed it was partiality at play. Who knows who cares? I loved it and my play was a really funny play titled ‘the watermelon cure’. I used to take part in all extra-curriculars as it meant bunking class for practice. Awesome!
But today as I look back, I don’t really miss school nor do I blame them. That was the best school around at the time. Just that we hadn’t as a nation removed our blinkers and opened ourselves to the changes happening around. We too were guilty of being in a time warp. I am happy that I was baler to balance the equation before I hit college. Hence actually between the school and college, for some reason I prefer my college life. That I met my life there and went through five years with her by my side must have been an important factor. That was an era of India opening up. 91 to 96… but then that is another story or should I say another blog entry.