In these twenty days in Abu Dhabi I have not seen
anything except the airport and the roads leading to Electra Street where my
office and my accommodation in its proximity. I been planning a few sightseeing
trips on Friday holidays but my diffidence and lethargy kept pushing it to the
next. This week I promise to visit the Corniche – supposed to be a beautiful
walk close to the Persian Gulf and greenery – and improve my self-image. There
are malls everywhere but what shopping will I do when my base is Besant nagar?
I stay in Al Naeem Building which houses LLH Hospital
staff of which my advertising agency is a group company. It is a five storey
building and in a rectangular part of the city where residential apartments
abound. Here there are miles of 20 storied buildings and each almost kissing
the other where even a human being cannot stretch his arms on either side at
the shoulders, like that heroine’s pose in Titanic movie, without hitting on
either side. So the eye only sees acres
of building in different paints and geometrical shapes. I particularly love a
building that has a sphere at the top on the Abu Dhabi skyline and a chopped
out sphere of the Etisalat towers. In the nights there is a bulb at the top
that glitters from these sky rises and sparkles every other second. Each side
of the road is three lanes and the cars zip and halt at the traffic signals
almost every 500 metres away. Even as a pedestrian you wait for the signal for
couple of minutes with a timer countdown of seconds that changes to green before
you can cross. Jay walking would attract a fine and in this city of expats, the
public does fall in line. Away from your home country, every individual is a
law-abiding citizen I feel. There is no percentage in getting involved with the
authorities!
I get up at 5:30 in the morning and straight away sit for
half an hour of pranayama breathing exercises after brushing teeth. At home I
would prepare Nescafe coffee while here I found doing a few stretches, I found,
induces the morning ablutions. I am a firm believer that suryanamaskaram is
good for a mind recovering from blues, so at least four rounds gets endorphins
to the mind. I have a single room to myself which is a luxury in Abu Dhabi
where four executives staying in a room is very common. It is called “bed
space” and, believe it or not, the
market rate is 800 dirhams (multiply by 17 for Indian rupee conversion). “Bed space”
is for South Asians immigrants and you find advertisement stuck on notice
boards in hotels or even on the electricity boxes at road crossings. The rental
for a single room is as expensive as 40,000 rupees in Indian currency. So this
accommodation from my company is huge saving. By now the time is 7:00 after a
bath and washing the essentials it is time to deck up in the day’s formals. The
clothes have to be hung on the terrace as I hit the elevator from the first
floor to the fifth. There is a lot of sunshine and a chill breeze as I attach the
colorful plastic clips on the underwear, socks, and kerchief of a cable
clothesline. That reminds me of the weather; first two weeks I was wearing a
jerkin as the scales climbed 12 and even 10 degree Celsius. This week the
temperature is a good five degrees hotter and there’s no need for warm
adornments. As soon as you open the elevator and step into the fifth floor my
nostrils is drowned in a draught of mutton odour. I go back to my room saying
my day’s prayers while putting my sneakers on.
As the time on the watch shows 7:30 I step into the
streets. There entire one kilometer square is sandwiched between two busy roads
in Central region of Abu Dhabi or as an American would say, downtown. So you
find a lot of parked cars amidst giant stores. Each building is 15-18 storied
and you invariably find a restaurant on the ground floor. Being a vegetarian is
expensive and quite a ten minute walk to Eldorado cinema which takes you past
Emirates General Market, a convenience store, then a landmark five star Sand’s
hotel, and at Greenhouse another convenience store where you wait for the
pedestrian signal to turn green. There is small restaurant run by a Gujarati
that serves Idly/Vada and tea – small to the extent of just 8 tables and
swarming with 5-6 boys in white uniforms and a surgeon’s skull cap (to prevent
hair follicles from falling into the serving plates). There is Sachin here and
he’s smart as he takes the orders and entrusted with the cash box. He wears a
Brazil national flag imprint on the T-shirt under the white uniform and must be
in early 20s. There is a Tamil cook who greets me and I wish him “good morning,
Elango” with a wave and a fading smile. Here in the restaurants they provide
tissue papers at the wash basin; you crumple them to dry your hands and drop
then in bin underneath.
Back to the room and pop a tablet. I lie down for a while
and wait for the watch to grow to 8:40. Office is just a 7 minute walk and a
pedestrian subway to cross Electra Street which has been renamed as Zayed the
First Street. My office is a rotund building – spherical for a 360 degree -
with Al Ibrahim restaurant at the ground floor. My agency is on the mezzanine
floor and the day brings me in contact with four colleagues: Safeek, Sabeesh,
Haider and the boss. We have a lot of banter and fun in the course of over 9
hours in the day.
At 1:00 pm I walk to Sangeetha for lunch and only
occasion in a day where I find rice and my sambars and rasams even if it is
garlic and the curry, curd, appalam. In these twenty days I have befriended
Shanker or Dinesh who take orders and they come dressed in a smart trouser and
a dark green tie. I eat like a hog for I am ravenously hungry that a Idly
breakfast does not entirely fill the stomach. Eating thrice a day is not
something my Chennai stomach is used to, I would squeeze in tiffin somewhere. I
like the ten minute walk from office to Sangeetha where I cross the traffic
lights near LLH Hospital which must be 25 storied and golden tinted windows.
The afternoon sun is just right with the sun in mid twenties scale and the
winter chill a sneaking companion. Abu Dhabi for all practical purposes is full
of people from Kerala. If you don’t see this opulence of three way lanes,
foreign cars, skyscrapers you may as well mistake the place to be Kochi and
Ernakulam. Arabs would be around 20% of the population and you spot Indians
everywhere. In the mornings I see a lot of Filipino women at the bus stops in tight
jeans with asses struggle to breathe and perfume so strong as to linger after
they have trodden past especially as I breeze down the stair cases of the
pedestrian subway. I have seen so many white skinned, glossy, smooth texture
and lip stick painted women here and they don’t make any impression on the
mind. I am growing old and wiser.
There is a beauty that stems from fortitude in the people
I meet in the day. There is Basit, the office boy who has a cherubic smile on
his plumb face. These are people who sleep eight to a room and scrimp to send
something back home. You will find Mercedes taxis but they are driven by impoverished
men from South East Asia. They bemoan having to leave their wives behind in
their country while earning here. They have to up and running the whole day and
not park anywhere whether engaged or not. All these for an earning less than
100 dirhams a day (say Rs.1500). Abu Dhabi is a rich city with one of the
highest per capita incomes in the world. All the newspapers add a dash of spice
on bollywood gossip and splashed pictures of western models in their Caucasian complexion
baring and daring more than the thighs and cleavage splitting gowns.
I wait as late as Haider and Shafeek’s work to end as we
close the shutters at the office. By 7:00 the day at work is over and another
trek to Sangeetha for fried rice or vegetable noodles. Sometimes I vary it with
a Punjabi Aloo mutter and naans. This week I was reading a Harry Potter tale,
my first and it serves as an aimless time-filler. 9:00 or 9:30 in the night and
I slip under the mattress. Actually each day resembles the other to a Xerox
copy. I am planning to join a library and must learn some shopping. For
starters I could be well served with a haircut and a hair dye. Maybe this Friday
holiday.
Am I happy? This office gives me more company than I had
in the second half of 2013 at Besant nagar. It is still one day at a time kind
of mind frame and praying for it to gather strength and swagger. Another
insight: ten years back I was jumping out of my skin in Bahrain. Now older,
tottering, and cautious as age boxes us all in.