The Dubai Return

Warning: Long post. I am just writing spontaneously. I don't know why I am writing this. I am typing away like a maniac. Oh yes, this is a work of fiction and any resemblance to characters living or dead is purely accidental. However, I borrowed some of the characters and incidents from my personal experiences.

In the 80s there was god. And there was that guy who worked in Dubai. We lived a couple of years in Chennai after dad left for Delhi to study some agricultural statistics or something. We lived in a tenement in Teynampet. The tenement had nine houses ('portions') in the ground floor. Five on the left and four on the right; with a passage the split the two rows and ended at the well. A gaping balcony right above the middle of the passage gave the house owners that occupied the entire first floor, an excellent perch to bawl at tenants that strayed off the laws of the tenement. My grand ma lived there since when I remember seeing her for the first time. And she revered the house owners. She never missed sending her special dishes to the houseowner, a retired, old man who mistook himself to be the king of the milky way. She always sent a gallon of buttermilk to that old man everyday, and he accepted these niceties from my grand ma like a king would from the poor peasants of his country. Once in a while,something I mean once a year or something, he'd grunt an inarticulate appreciation for these favors. And my grand ma would turn ecstatic, as if she won the Academy award. We hated the houseowner and his wife. But we knew why grand ma was acting that way: she couldn't afford moving to another house. No, no. Not in Chennai. I was not bothered too much because I knew that I was getting back to Chittoor once my dad returned from Delhi.

One day god woke up and decided to send Mari, our neighbour— the frail, Chettinad lady's son—, to Dubai. Mari was probably hanging out with my younger uncles that were jobless. But all of a sudden, Mari was a big man. He got a job in Dubai. He stood a little over four feet, probably was around 30 and had a well-rounded paunch. We, the folk in the tenement, had already heard of this magical place called Dubai, from many a traveler that passed by the tenement. They told us how the roads of Dubai were paved with gold. About how a soap's fragrance refused to leave you for a week, even if you bathed with it only once. About all the heavenly perfumes. About all the chocolates. Listening to stories on Dubai itself made us forget our tough, unpredictable lives filled with the heat, dust, and grime of Chennai; add to it the water scarcity, No TV. So, off went Mari to the wonderland. Mari's mom, dad, and younger brother leapt, in one swift, single, clean move, to the next stratum of the society. Dubai. Boom.

Mari sent lot of money home. Once in a while, he sent gifts across through his Dubai colleagues that were visiting home. We kids used to hover around Mari's house, in a vain desperation to get a share, however miniscule, of the goodies. We never got it. Rumour had it that Mari's folks woke up in the middle of the night and ate those wonderful chocolates. Usually, the next day Mari's brother would be wearing a new t-shirt or a watch; or probably would be smelling like an Onion in Olive oil, thanks to the perfume. We debated in heated, passionate bursts on 'what kind of a job could Mari possibly get in Dubai?' I mean Mari never passed high school. His knowledge of English was as good as his French: nonexistent. So, how can a developed country like Dubai hire a school dropout and pay him truckloads of money? After much deliberation we initiated a talk with Mari's brother. You know, it is pretty delicate. We can't afford to piss Mari's brother off, for he would, when he occasionally suffered from conscience, give us a toffee or half-a-bar of soap to the big boys. We did not want him to stop those favors. We were told that Mari was a manager in some store. People were shocked. Manager was, still is I guess, a big word in those days. All Tamil movies showed the managers as rich guys. All rich guys were bad. And we all wanted to be bad. I mean you can't con a poor Brahmin family like ours into believing that 'it is the good heart of the poor, and the ethic of our worker brethren that would lead us to heaven.' Yeah, right. Where do you think they learnt to motivate the suicide bombers?
One day the postman delivered Mari's photographs. There he was clad in that Arabic dress, like a Bedouin, looking at us through his orange sunglasses. There he was leaning over a gleaming Sedan. Was that his? Oh my god! People gasped all day. The Aachies, ladies of the Chettiar families living the tenement, added a beautiful crescendo to the new buzz about Mari. 'Adi aathee, paatheegala? Imbuttu panam avanukku yedhu?' (gosh, did you notice? how did he get all the money?) Then on Mari's family became allies to the house owners. The houseowner who would mouth obscenities at Mari's brother, was now kissing him in public. So we said 'we poor have heart. The rich have only suffering', went to bed and cried all night.

So, it was thus decided by my grand ma that salvation = Dubai. She wanted all her sons (seven of them) to go to the 'Gulf'. And one day, Mari's brother told us that Mari was visiting home. [...to be contd]

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