Driving license and more.....

I finally passed my driving test last Monday, in my third attempt, and am now the proud owner of a Dubai driving license. It is the talking point of my life these days - how I drove beautifully in those seven minutes of my test and how polite and patient the examiner was etc. It is all a matter of luck, I guess. The biggest challenge is to actually drive on a day to day basis and to gain confidence on the roads. Somehow my brains seem to go on a walk when I drive and I manage to get honked at even when there are only two cars on the road out of which I am one.

As I write this I am reminded of what my younger sister had said to me a couple of years ago. I don't remember what we were talking about - probably about learning swimming or some such thing and she said "Everything needs practice, except failure"

I hope to write another post soon on how much I am enjoying driving in Dubai. The traffic laws are strict and hence there is much more discipline on the roads here than I have witnessed back home in Mumbai or Pune. So this is probably the best time and place for me to perfect my driving skills.

So beware the roads/people of Dubai.....here I come!

A divine folly

The biggest challenge about learning Arabic is to practice it in day to day life. I hardly get the opportunity to do that, but I make sure that I don’t miss the chance, if I get one.
There’s a popular Lebanese bakery close to my house – Al Reef bakery. It has the world’s best Falafel sandwich, shorma’s, grilled chicken etc. Another incentive for going there is the eye candy that place offers. Most of the chaps working there are great looking and that makes a trip to Al Reef something to look forward to :)
We buy Arabic bread from there often and I asked my Arabic teacher what I could say while asking for two packets of bread or ‘khubs’, as said in Arabic. The next day I went to Al Reef wearing my most confident smile and asked for two packets of Khubs in Arabic. The good looking man on the other side of the counter was speechless for a minute and I felt my confidence melt away faster than ice cream. I quickly repeated my order in English, picked up the bread and went home wondering what I had said wrong.

We had a good laugh in my Arabic class the next day when my teacher told me that I had asked for ‘Two Gods of bread’ instead of two packets of bread. The word I used was Rabbatain while I should have said Rabbtatain instead.
Needless to say I make sure that I am nowhere close to Al Reef bakery these days :)

A blast from the past

I heard from an ex-colleague from Zee TV today and the call brought back memories of the wonderful years I spent there, from year 2000 to 2004. One of my best memories is of the time when I was the Executive Producer of a series known as 'Chausath Panne' which was a series of 64 episodic short stories. We launched the series with a successful story - Dil Naa Jaane Kyon, starring Kirron Kher, Ritu Chowdhury and Vikas Sethi.
Since I was working long hours on that project I developed a great rapport with the show producers Rupali and Pintoo Guha. They had submitted the proposal of this show to the Zee TV team a couple of months earlier and it came to my attention when I was in the Ideation team of Zee, then headed by Vinta Nanda. Eventually they bagged the contract and the show went on air.
It is amazing how people remember the tiny things you do for them. Rupali used to always tell me how much it meant to her to have a show on air. She and her husband went on to produce many more shows for the channel. I'm not in touch with them too often now, but I'm sure they're doing well for themselves.
Sometime in 2005, when I was with Zoom TV, I got a call from Rupali saying that I had to watch the episode of their second show on Zee - Tumhari Disha. Apparently in that night's episode they were introducing a key character - that of a lady police inspector and they had decided to name the character 'Kanchan Koppikar', as their way of showing me how much they appreciated what I had done for them! I was quite embarassed about the whole thing but it was too late to do anything about it - the episode was due to go on air in just a couple of hours.
As luck would have it I missed the episode that night, but my parents and sisters watched it and they said they were almost rolling on the floor with laughter when the show ended with the actress, playing the inspector, look straight into the camera and say "Mera naam hain Inspector Koppikar...Kanchan Koppikar" followed by three cuts of her close-up and highly dramatic background music. I wanted the earth to open up and swallow me when I heard that.
Many months later when I met my future husband, he said that in an idle moment he ran up a search on my name on Google and didn't know what to make of the results that read 'Kanchan Koppikar is an Inspector........'

Change

While we all know that change is the only constant in life I wonder how many of us stop and make note of the changes that happen in our life/routine/appearance/relationships in a very subtle manner but on an almost day-to-day basis.
The last few months have been hectic, to say the least, and the weekends are packed with household chores and social obligations. We attended two birthday parties (of two toddlers) over the last couple of months and realized that even the kind of social do’s we attend now are different from the kind of social commitments we had earlier. The demands on my time these days, due to the Arabic classes I attend after work, means that there is no time for exercise and I can feel the inches I am gaining, as much as I hate to admit it publicly.
I arrived in Dubai on May 16th last year and was totally lost in this city and was wondering if I would ever be comfortable here. But one year down the line this place feels like home.
We are expecting a new recruit to join our department today. She was made redundant, four months ago, from her earlier place of work and has been fortunate enough to get this job and today is a new beginning for her.
The point I’m trying to make is that circumstances change and the best thing to do is to go with the flow. Good things happen and then there are bad phases followed again by good times.
The last few evenings have been pleasant for this time of the year and I was telling my husband that I would give anything to have this weather stay and he said so casually that it must change, it is normal for the weather to change and that’s what got me thinking about how much changes around us constantly and we do not even realize it.