I would if I could...

Another two weeks to go for me to be back home in India after more than six months, the longest I've stayed away from home ever. I was making a list of things I want to bring back with me and thought of the many other things I would carry back if I could. Like -

• Rickshaws and the (mostly) friendly rickshaw-wallas, especially those outside Andheri station. I know now what prompted Himesh-bhai to include them in that scene of Aap Kaa Suroor shot in Germany.
• The sound of the local train announcer at Andheri station - such a familiar and comforting one.
• The smell of the Raat Rani which instantly reminds me of Pune and lazy, long summer vacations spent reading, playing and drinking nimbu-paani.
• Wada-pav
• Twinkling stars I see shining above my parents house in Pune. I have not seen a single one in Dubai ever.
• Electricity cuts and the swearing thereafter, followed by the sounds of the hunt for a candle which later graduated to the hum of the inverter.
• Unexpected visitors dropping by to say hello. I used to hate it when it happened but now I don't even know my neighbours.
• Long and friendly chats with Suman - my erstwhile cook and Amlu - my domestic help with whom I have shared many a cup of coffee.
• The women in the ladies compartment of my favourite 9.46 to Churchgate. All those who asked me my age, marital status, family background, religion, caste and mother tongue in our first and only encounter.
• Stray dogs and the occasional lick or wag of tail.
• The racket the 12-odd cats at my mother's house make the moment Amma is out in the garden.
• A nice, hot cup of tea made by Amma
• Good friends and long therapeutic chats with them.
• Sunday as part of the weekend.
• That part of me which I've left behind in Mumbai which is probably roaming aimlessly between Andheri and Lower Parel.

The list is long and unending, but these are some of the things I would carry back with me if I could...

The Dubai pet show

This weekend was a wonderfully dog-filled one for me. On friday morning I volunteered for a garage sale organized by K9 friends, a non-profit dog rescue organization. The sale was held in a villa and my job was to be of help to the people who came there and to help with clearing up after the sale. This was my first garage sale ever and I was amazed at the things people donate and the things people buy. There was almost everything imaginable on sale and most of them got sold too. The rates were affordable and people went away with cartons full of stuff. We raised over two thousand dirhams that day and didn't go back home empty handed either. I bought two cassettes on 'how to learn arabic' and a book I've been wanting to read since long - Mark Haddon's - The curious incident of the dog in the night-time.

The next day I volunteered with the Pet show organized by K9 in association with Pedigree. I was supposed to help out at the judges ring but since a lot of volunteers did not turn up I was given duties at the entrance where I had to sell the entry passes. Luckily my friend Divya was also with me and we had a blast. The pet show was a great success with more than twenty thousand people attending and about 500 dogs participating in their various competitions and shows. There were dogs of all shapes, sizes and colour there. Since we were at the gate we missed most of the shows but managed to catch a few minutes of the Dubai police dog show and Abu Dhabi police dog show, both of which were very impressive. I was particularly taken in by the fancy dress competition and could not stop taking pictures of the poodle dressed up as a stewardess of the Emirates Airlines. There were other dogs dressed as angels, pirates, superman and one as slumdog :)

Divya and I realised that it takes a lot to volunteer. We were at the gates from 8.30 in the morning till 4 in the evening. People were coming in almost every minute and the bright sun wasn't making things any easier. There were moments when the temptation to forget the volunteering and enjoy the show as spectators was great, but then we thought that this was a choice we made and it is these things that make the difference so then why not? That kept us going and no regrets since. The perfect end to the day for me was to find out that Coco (one of the dogs I sponsor) has found a home now. What more could I have asked for?

Happy Thursday!

Happy Thursday! – These are the words that greeted me, as I walked in my office today. Claire, our receptionist greets every person in our building with these words every Thursday and we all marvel at her enthusiasm and cheer. I like to catch up with Claire when time permits and that girl does not fail to amaze me.
Claire is not an employee of my company. She is recruited by an agency, at a salary that really could be better than what it is now. She stays in Deira and takes the public bus to work, which means that she has a one hour commute to work one way, and on days of bad traffic (which is very often) she is stuck on the roads for more than two hours one way. She is required to put in twelve hours of work daily. So she is up at 5, at work by 7, leaves office at 7- a whole twelve hours later and gets home only by 9. She says that the only thing she manages to do after getting home is eat and iron her clothes for the next day. And yet, every morning she is at her desk, juggling between phone calls, visitors, courier guys and all of us and smiling through it all.
Friday and Saturday is the weekend in Dubai, so Thursdays are special days for Claire and us, so she makes sure she spreads the cheer of Thursday around. She amazed me yet again recently when I out that she works six days a week and is at work every Saturday. If I were her I am sure that would have diluted the pleasure of ‘Happy Thursday’ for me but then, if I were her I don’t think there would have been greetings of ‘Happy Thursday’.
So here’s to Happy Thursdays and to Claire and to how she finds pleasure in the simplest of things. And also to how that pleasure seems to only increase with every passing week.
Happy Thursday all!

The Williams sisters

The Barclay's Dubai World Tennis Championship is on these days and I got the opportunity to go for the player's party (women) today. It was a quiet affair and I was lucky to get pictures of Venus and Serena Williams. I was hoping to get to photograph Anna Ivanovic and Sania Mirza too but they had not come in till I left.
I am not much of a fan of the Williams sisters. Somehow I miss the grace that Steffi Graf brought to the game, something which I think Anna Ivanovic does now. Just an hour or so before the party Serena won a thrilling match against Italy's Sara Errani.
Although I did not recognize most of them, it was nice to see the players chill, get some henna applied and enjoy the belly dancing. Serena Williams left the venue at the same time as I did and I saw her dance to the music as she walked, a light-hearted side of her we don't get to watch too often.

My driving...the saga continues....

…so I am still struggling with my driving lessons. The latest is that I am waiting for my new instructor. I have asked for a male instructor now only because all the lady instructors seemed to get really nervous when I drove (I think I’m infamous in the driving school and can feel all eyes on me when I enter the yard and hunt for car no. 79). My last instructor resorted to chanting prayers loudly, with me sitting right next to her, especially after I bumped into the dustbin (which was very embarrassing because I was driving at a speed of 40, in the yard of the driving school, with no incoming traffic). I am hoping that my new instructor is the calm sort who keeps his cool in all manners of adversity. And I’m not being sexist or anti-feminist; I’m just following my instincts and feel that a male instructor might finally be able to do the trick.
Asking for a male instructor was quite a task in itself. I first needed a no-objection letter from my sponsor (my office in this case). Then my office came up with the assumption that no wannabe lady driver can get a male instructor even if she wants one. So then I had to tell them that I had checked with the driving school and all I needed was a no-objection letter, so surely they cannot object to my having a no-objection letter? Then they told me that since they do not issue letters of this kind often, they wanted me to write out the contents of the same. So then I wrote the letter and managed to get it from them on a letter head. Phew!
I went to the driving school all armed with the no-objection letter and was told that I needed another no-objection letter saying that I do not object to myself having a male instructor. Thinking that I imagined the conversation I clarified again whether I really needed to give that letter considering that I myself had asked for a male instructor for myself. But apparently you have to have something like that on record, especially for the road transport authorities, so I promptly wrote out that letter too. It’s been three weeks since the surreal experience of writing a no-objection letter for myself, and I’ve been told that I’ll be assigned a new instructor soon.
I’m hoping that he will be all that I hope and pray for! My husband, in the tender moments of our new marriage, after he sat in the car while I drove, told me that I drive like a brainless twit :)I wonder what kind of a reaction I will get from my new instructor.
On a more serious note I wish people would take me seriously when I say that I cannot move more than two body parts at the same time. I’ve known this all along, and using my eyes, hands, legs and brains while driving is too much for me to handle. I also believe that I was born to be driven around, but my husband just ignores me when I say that.
So, I am still struggling with my driving lessons…………….

The Dragon Boat Festival

I hadn’t even so much as heard of dragon boat racing all these years and in the last three months I’ve participated in a dragon boat race twice already. The most recent one was on Friday at the Dragon boat festival and it was only because of my office that I got to take part in a fun festival such as this. Dragon boat racing is a serious passion for many in this part of the world, and not everyone thinks of it as a fun sport. There are teams that are extremely dedicated and serious about it. They are also a delight to watch, an epitome of team work and co-ordination and one look at them made it clear to us that we were going to come last, which we did :)
Since we all work different hours we could not go for any training session and it is a miracle we managed to keep the boat afloat. However we did manage to stand out as a team all due to the mad streak in my colleagues. The motto of our team was Mission Sabotage; we wore pirate hats and went on the boat with huge supplies of water guns and water balloons :) and in true pirate-style we growled at other teams passing by, hoping to intimidate them.
On my way back home from the event I was thinking about how lucky I am to be with people who are so fun loving and young. Not only my colleagues, but also the other team members who simply laughed when we threw balloons at them or attacked them with our water guns. I thought we’d probably get beaten up for our behaviour but it was all taken in a sporting manner. Though secretly I would have loved for us to win I feel that we were the jesters who added the fun and lightness to a highly competitive sport, and I quite liked being on that side of the fence :)

The Chinese connection :))

My colleagues and I ordered lunch from a chinese restaurant today. I placed the order on phone. Look what they've done to my name :-)

Does every day have a motif?

Last night, on my way back home from work, I was thinking about what this week had been like and I came up with an interesting observation. Almost all days of this week seemed to have a motif.
On Sunday I found out that three of my friends were pregnant.
On Monday I made friends with two dogs, whom I bumped into accidentally. One does not come across dogs in Dubai the way one does in India. There are no stray dogs here and for some strange reason I have met very few people who have adopted dogs. So coming across two absolutely adorable dogs, in one day, was a treat for a dog lover like me.
On Tuesday, I witnessed a minor road accident on my way back home from work. A few hours later my husband came back home and said that he, too, witnessed an accident on his way home. (And we were not talking about the same one)
On Wednesday, my day began with a very happy mail from my sister, who had to still get over the fact that she actually saw Andy Roddick and Pete Sampras in action. They were playing at the SAP Open, the annual tennis tournament held in the Bay area. And in the evening two of my colleagues were extremely thrilled to get a photograph with Shaggy, who had come to our radio station for an interview. Shaggy is performing in Dubai this evening. Celebrities, and the excitement they bring to the lives of some people seemed to be the motif yesterday.
This made me wonder – does each day have a motif or is all of this just a random coincidence? Maybe there are days when the motif is subtle – maybe in the form of an emotion or a thought form and hence we do not even realize that it’s there, and then there are days like this week’s where things happen and you go – I just heard of something like this a few hours ago and here it is again.

The things people do for a living!

Over the weekend I was at the Burjuman mall and saw this display of dresses, accessories and a range of fashionable items designed by Nikolas Fric. What was different about them was that they were all made of balloons. Apparently Nikolas Fric is a well-known balloon artist and his technique is known as the Nikoloon System.
The things people do for a living! Took some pictures on my cell phone, the designs are worth a dekko.

Funny, or not funny: that is the question

Every thursday morning we have a meeting in office to discuss new programming ideas for the breakfast show, which is the flagship show of any radio station. I was asked to think of ideas that would pull in Asian listeners, mainly Indians, since there is a large Asian population in Dubai. Our station is a classic english hits station and we tend to get very 'English' at times so we need to do something to give us a more universal appeal. I thought of doing a quiz on bollywood songs that are copied from or based on english one's. Mainly play a part of the bollywood copy (like Mere rang mein rangane walli), ask listeners to guess the original and then play the original song (The final countdown - Europe). Since music is a universal language anyone can participate in this quiz, regardless of their nationality.

While our programming head liked the idea he was concerned about how this would go down with our Indian listeners, both in Dubai as well as our online listeners abroad. What if they are sensitive and what if this hurts their sentiments? This was a tough one to answer considering the frequency and ease with which the sentiments of some sections of our society gets hurt these days. Someone might take offence to our questioning the creative genius of some of our bollywood personalities. I find the ease with which some music directors and film-makers get 'inspired by' other works extremely funny and I'm hoping that atleast some of my fellow countrymen see the humour in it too. Time will tell....

Incidentally I'm trying hard to recollect the hindi song based on Neil Sedaka's 'Oh Caroll, I'm so in love with you'. Please help anybody....

And also many thanks to Shakespeare, he was my 'inspiration' for the title of this post. Couldn't think of a more fitting one than this!