A Kolhapur knockout

Writing wise September was a productive month for me. I posted 15 posts on Spiritualsathya and three in thinksathya. I can’t trace back to a time where I worked so determined and hard. I was racing to complete the Bhagavad Gita summaries of the last 7 chapters pending since 2009. Transcriptions are only a clerical chore, meaning hard physical labour, and my mind was feeling the pressure of idleness and lack of purpose. I feel the worthlessness of my dreadful existence. Continuing with my one Vipassana course each month resolve I signed on to a centre in Kolhapur as it was recommended by a co-meditator in Bangalore.

            I took the Dadar Superfast on 30^th September at 6:50 in the morning bound for Solapur and I found engaging conversation with an overzealous Christian girl. She was pursuing her PhD from IIT Madras and she was selling me the Jesus the Saviour line. Paradoxically that chance conversation got me a lot of clarity to my mind: we repose faith in God only when we feel our life a blessing and family is the only blessed thing we have on earth. A physical attraction between a man and woman grows on to embrace a family for bonding and care. Destiny has stripped me bare of this nature’s blessing. That conversation got me to realize how vacuous the forces of God had been in my life. A derelict feels no savior and no prayers ever answered.  By the time the train pulled in to Solapur at 10:20 in the night I was a confirmed atheist. The connecting train was at 11:35 and bound for Kolhapur.

            I reached Kolhapur at 6:00 in the morning, almost 24 hours of travel from Chennai. Dhammalaya is nestled among the mountains besides a huge Jain temple. The construction of the main Dhamma Hall and the pagoda to a circular design along a sloping terrain is some architectural feast for the eyes. There are lots of wild grasses and trees filling the circle. The men and women quarters come on either side of the circumference. 

            I saw others troop in the afternoon. There were 65 participants and I was more observant after expending my vocal chords on the train. Maharashtra is a huge state, there are distances of over 600-700 kms travel within cities. The weather was agreeable and a bit chill in the mornings, south west is in the last leg for slow downpours in the evenings and nights.

            They served from a Marathi menu and every dish was unknown to me. They don’t have a sambhar or rasam instead pack a lot of sweetness and blandness in food either in liquid or solid form. A couple of dishes seemed like rubber pieces to me. There is one red liquid that seems like thick blood without any vegetables but basically is North Indian menu without spice. There were 70 people in all; 69 Maharashtrains and one idiot from Besant Nagar Chennai. The Marathis include jaggery, they mix turmeric powder and jaggery with milk for a drink that clear the throat. My creative mind had a free run; palak panneer looks like cow dung. And there is a dish in Kannada that looks like fried steamed horse prick with balls! In the evening we are given two glasses of lemon juice. 

            As in every meditation your face learns to observe those around. I saw an American with matted hair like Bob Marley’s strands, and then there was a very savvy fifty year old man who spelt opulence and grace even from a mile. They had put a list of meditators at the pagoda for the cell numbers and every name read a Patil, Suryavanshi. Chugle. Kimble, Kate, Manwadi, etc. This is rural Maharashtra and every name was from the Marathi gene pool. The Marathis are a very accommodating race. Everyone speaks Hindi as good as their mother tongue, even the alphabets of Hindi and Marathi are similar. In the evening discourse 60 people opted for Hindi language and just four for English.

            I loved this aspect of the centre; it is far way from a city. I feasted my eyes on the night skies for stars, planets, and the moon. I had forgotten all about the astral world since my schooldays and it was here I would stare at the skies and memorize a few star formations. In the meditations in the day my knees stood the test but somehow I felt my back sag so much. Since Kolhapur is the hometown of the Kalyani family, my very reliable friends, I thought about them in the initial days. Kolhapur from a Chennai eyes is pure air and wonderful weather and away from the maddening noise of a city.

            Each day went without stirring any new thought or strange emotion. If there is one relief I have expended all thoughts and energy of the Sindhi long time back - it was 10-90 relation, I got 10% of bliss for 90% pain for an absolutely lose-lose transaction. Neither are there negative imprints of Panneer Chelvam nor Mohan, my last two bosses. If there is one aspect I felt I could improve is get my rooms at Besant Nagar swept and mopped more regularly (this house opens out to the main road where vehicular traffic is heavy and dust formation is daily nuisance). I also thought I should stock fruits, casual eats in the house. I also resolved to get a few carpentry works like fixing the cot and get a dining table replaced. In short get some aesthetic in. 

            On 11^th October the vow of silence came to an end. I restricted myself mainly to David the American and the suave man, later learnt that he runs a few management institutes in Pune. We were the only men attending the English discourse in the evenings. I wished a few pleasant faces that I happened to witness in these ten rigorous days of meditation. On 12^th October I accompanied Kusto, from Orissa to the famed Mahalaxmi temple. Visited Manisha’s uncle’s place and they treated me to an hour of discussion on politics (Maharashtra is going to the polls this week) and music. The uncle’s family’s hospitality and respect was standout. They came to pick me up in a car at the landmark “Victor Palace” and later dropped me at the bus stop for Pune. That was a five hour journey and I kept talking the whole time wearing myself out with Kusto. The bus reached “Svargate” (the bus terminus at Pune) and waited for an hour to be picked by my cousin. My father’s last brother has been a Pune resident for 30 years and they invited me warmly over the phone once they learnt from my sister that I was in Kolhapur.

            Meeting my uncle, his wife and two sons was a revelation. My uncle never earned much but he got fortunate marrying a virtuous woman who squeezed every penny to ensure the best quality education for her sons despite penury earnings. Now both the children are well placed. Rajesh is the campaign manager of a NCP candidate and he’s already making a mark in Maharashtra politics even at just 22. His elder brother Kishore is in a software firm and earns astronomically compared to his dad’s paltry. That family smelt close-bound and they treated me as royalty. Sankari Chitti made payasam and wadai and treated me to a feast. I was there just for two hours but I will carry the memories for long as Kishore dropped me at the Pune station at 11:30 for a midnight train to Chennai. All of them said,” Next time please come and stay for a week. Two hours won’t do.”  
            I came home and my mind kept playing the memories of Manisha’s uncle’s family and my own uncle’s family. Both were a good spectacle and advertisement of a good family. I came home to an empty house and felt miserable coming to an empty apartment. I don’t think I will give God a natural death. Earning money is the easy part but staying alone is not something a human being is programmed for. I have never felt a stronger death wish coming from a Vipassana course. Or is there any more turns in the script of my life? 
         Somehow this "27th April" syndrome scares me; sharing a birthday with Dr. Arunachalam Kumar my maternal cousin (he writes ten times better than me; he is a Scientist, Anatomist, Painter, Wildlife enthusiast and yet his suffering is of a colossal scale. Mine is greater for I suffer alone; what is worse I don't have his brains or energy). This is death layer by layer; agonisingly slow. Or is suffering the starting point for liberation? Why has nature chosen me; both my sisters have it easy in life and so does anyone I know. More questions and no answers yet only waiting has been my lot. 
          Bloody hell with waiting. I am always game for another fight, another battle even if it is against my destiny. I may bloody lose but I will stand my ground. I must love myself, trust myself, encourage myself, support myself even if the solar system and milky way is against me.  
        I will pour unconditional love to myself; I will be my only friend. What if I don't have a family, I have me and that's more than enough. I may be knocked down a thousand times but I will get up each time even as the count starts. Each time with more love and sympathy for myself. 

Ageing rockstar

I feel uneasy if I don’t get a blog post in, that’s my sign of living I guess. Lot of thoughts float in the mind before I zero in something. Who the hell cares if anyone does, I certainly read my old posts!

            Robin Williams death shook me; for a genius to commit suicide at 63 and then you realize that’s not a stupid at all. Maybe that’s nature of 2014 living. I have seen life change upside down in my own 45 years; the rules of the game that held society were jettisoned one by one as this feudal society turned insanely greedy, consumerist, and a bastard where only money and youth counts.

            I will show you how my naivety changed to callousness over the years.  As a young boy of 7 years old I shrank from fear when a man hung himself from a fat sturdy banyan tree near my school. There was a pool of blood that stained the road for days, we were scared stiff to tread anywhere near in the night. Our elders said that people who are so desperate and snap to end their lives end as ghosts. Of course four decades later I think it is normal business! 

            I was reading an article in an American paper on William’s death, it made some telling points. You never commit suicide (that’s such a terrible word, let me make it palatable with “self-deliverance”) in your 20s or 30s or 40s. Give life a chance and there is always a chance of life straightening itself out. But once you cross 60 then hope of getting ever better diminishes rapidly. What’s why geniuses like Hemingway, Kodak, Carnegie and now Williams reach out for the gun and blow their brains out. In my book that’s fair and square. By that reason I still have 15 years to get my life in order. Ample time.

            As things stand today I am mighty pleased where I am today. I had the worst possible start to life with a sick mother. She‘s so sick that my career as a writer only started when I was 38, thanks my sister’s charitable disposition. She offered to take care of my “mom” and since then I dug deep. I have grown both as a person and as a writer since almost to an unrecognizable measure. Some old friends shake their heads in disbelief,” Have you done a brain transplant or something? You sure have grown matured over time. It’s a devil turning saint”. Well almost! I love the devil side in me to let go fully.

            I don’t know whether music taste influenced my attitude to life or not but I am a rockstar, if there were was a natural rebel in creation then that’s me. What else do you expect of an individual growing in a family in which the mother was mighty sick and father simply out-of-depth? I ploughed my own furrow from the age 20 and after twenty five years I still stand on my feet and alive in one piece. Sufficiently miraculous for me to earn my own keep; that too as a content writer in bastard India!

            I was having an interesting conversation with my sister. I had to make a WILL of the apartment since I have no legal heirs and that got those death thoughts more to the surface. I was bitter lamenting,” Bloody hell I never got my career straight. I am a better writer than any Indian columnist on view and yet none have suffered half as much. I feel like jumping a noose.” She said,” Sathi, if a cat has nine lives you have already had eighteen lives. You always find something; even in a India Cements job you found stories for your blogs. So stay put.” She also adds,” You are a tough nut to crack. Even when you go to pieces, you know how to pick yourself up each time.” I enjoyed this rare vote of confidence from one who has seen me since the nurse yelled out that a jackal was born in 1969. (A writer's touch, you know!)

            So I ask myself this question: How would I like to be remembered? Sathya the writer, or Vipassana practitioner, or Vedanta follower or a lousy guitar player! 

            Couple of regrets intrude and the biggest being my writing career never took off even as a content writer. I loved Abu Dhabi but I am cursed with some planet in a terrible position that’s just as determined to topple my applecart. That fellow, that naughty planet, again did its mischief with my romance quotient. I fell in love with a woman whose morals were beneath a hooker. But let no one accuse me of pusillanimity, I have stayed alone in a two bedroom apartment on my own for over seven years. What’s more with honour and respect of my neighbours and friends at the Eliot’s.

            Consider my litany of angsts: I fuckin never seem to settle in a job; Abu Dhabi is a classic case. I loved every aspect there: food, housing, friends, social life, salary and yet I ran into a bulldozer of a boss who strangled our necks. 

            Adline Advertising, Abu Dhabi, is one company where “I loved my work, my boss appreciated my skills and contributions, colleagues felt I was a cool guy.”  What made the wheels come off where the daily warfare between Mohan and Sabeesh and I was trapped in a 8ft x 8 ft for a daily dose of two hours of verbal fury. Though the words of abuse and threat were not directed at me, there was still no solace. My heart simply caved under from those high decibels.

            I tell my sister” My problem is I have lived far too long after my heart surgery 16 years back.” Then I seem to hit the nail. My heart surgery got me disinterested in money and career, my spiritual education got me disinterested in women as an anchor to life and I just kept experimenting with what came my way in rockstar fashion. Now how do ageing rockstar die? I guess not in their beds but from gunshot wounds.

Or is there another twist to the plot? I would love going back to UAE, I would love to fall in love (never compromise on that; your every atom in the body and mind must scream with certainty: THIS IS THE ONE). But such dream scripts are a million-to-one odds against in the current flow. More likely I might end up like Robin Williams in fifteen years time. Pause to consider: a normal man is supposed to go into old age with caring sons and daughters and narrating tales of Tarzan and Rama to his grandchildren. For a man who is standing vigil alone, he makes his own rules. Yet you wish and demand a miracle from somewhere. No one wants to deny even a sadistic God his perverse pleasure of a natural death.

            I am simple chap really. I just wanted to write like PG Wodehouse, I would have settled me for a columnist in stupid neighbourhood magazine. Yet I scrounge and scrap, the devil is up too many tricks in my case. And you realize that more than money and status and creature comforts it's the love of a woman that gets the engine of the train moving. On that score I failed abysmal. And if my reminiscences were to ever read no better than just being a 2007 winter collection of a morally corrupt woman, for that shame alone I need to pull my holster! 

            Let no one mock my fortitude. I have been transcribing Swamiji’s talks on spiritualsathya. I did two Rudram commentaries, now Sandhyavandanam which is a ten part series long enough to fill a fortnight and more. But my mind is still far away for creative writing. I have in my drawing board so many things pending. I have in my mind a post on “Abu Dhabi memories” (I met some wonderful people there) and I also wanted to do a post on “Vivekananda” (I was reading a book that get my tear glands to open up times without count). I also wanted to give a final touch to a second manuscript that Writers Workshop promised to look at with respect (my first book “O my darling India” was published by them and they loved the feedback they got apart from few sales). I wanted to write humour pieces of my AUH manager on Damienbosses (I have more than 30 tales that can fetch a laugh anytime anywhere to even a morose person).

And when my suicide 15 years from now – I am that patient – it would read: Done in by India! None may be blamed but fuckin almighty who slept as my life kept slipping into the abyss. That asshole God did not lift a finger, lazy bag of bones. But seriously and soberly, waiting for the tide to change.

Life’s like that as August gets underway

There are some good blog posts and mostly also-rans. The best ones are those that are descriptive of a place or events while the also-rans are analysis. This one I am serving is unfortunately the latter.

            I am past the midway point of my earthly innings. I feel in my bones that death would suit me better in the present timelines. I would be mortified to be around to blow my fiftieth birthday candles in five years time. I have lived a whole life already.

            I started my life in the early seventies being an absolute moron born in an indifferent family where love and bonding came hard and miserly, not even drips of water of a faulty faucet. My mother is a prized idiot more to be pitied than censured. That meant I grew up on the sidewalks of life in a sewage pipe as it were. 

            The first twenty years of life were ignorant years. I was standing in front of a canon but I did not know it. Ignorance is such bliss! It was only when I slipped into adulthood I knew at once the damage the mind was steeped in. I knew my case needed a serious look over and I need to rely on myself and myself alone for rest of the trek. That requires a man’s heart and I had those in large quantities. Some glorious lessons unfolded as I learnt the virtues of patience, humility and forgiveness as the years filed past.

            This is a long somber and even morbid introduction to the things I had in mind when I started to pen. Let me waffle no further:  2014 has been one of those good years in which I find the life lessons served more congeniality rather than at gunpoint as most of my previous lessons were. 

Gratitude: First I owe my living to any person who cooks my food. For last seven years I am blessed with cooks of great characters: Meera was a friend who cared, Thangam is more an aunt who blesses. I feel privileged to have known both of them. I would even wish them to be my mothers and sisters in my next birth. I keep telling my eldest sister,” If I had such a mother, I would have done something meaningful in life than the wastrel I have turned out to be.” Both these humble souls are endowed with such a family orientation that they know how to build a family.  

Meera has a son and he probably earns more than me as a Vaidika bramin. Thangam has three daughters and all of them are either technologists or engineers. It is the sacrifice of the mothers that the family pyramid is built on. My mother had a good fertile ground to construct but she let it pass. Meera and Thangam got terrible odds but their children are engineers and graduates (they have single-handedly ensured that their family got into the next higher economic layer). Hence I sing their paeans all the more.

But if I were to be indebted to one person in the last 25 years then it is my dad. But for his largesse of this Besant Nagar flat I would croaked and died of penury a long while back. Having a rent free house, and such a beautiful one as this, has been one solid stabilizing factor. I can’t thank my father enough, someone I think more often these days. Ajit, a friend, said,” Home is where I am” but in my case it is “home is when I am at Besant nagar.” I have many things going here.

The third person I am grateful is my eldest sister. We fight like cats and dogs, I have my crosses to bear. She never taught her sons to respect me, she never invites me to festivals (these two aspects grate me) but she looks after me daily with a telephone call. She looked after my savings and the house when I was away in Abu Dhabi. We fight every other month promising not to bother with the other but each time after a week our hearts melt. I also realize that we live in such selfish times that one should not set his/her expectations high. Take any warmth that comes in the flow and that leads me to the next lesson.

Forgiveness: As the years flew past and as my body gets more ready for the grave – I heard it is better to arrive at the ghat worn out than fresh and I certainly am decrepit here – this forgiveness is a dimension I am proud to discover in me. Not many people have wronged me for I live alone and well. My last two bosses were from a circus band: Panneer Chelvam at India Cements took malicious pleasure running me down for no better reason than amusement. Then Mohan Natesan, Adline Advertising at Abu Dhabi was more a demon and asura than a human being. The way he went after Sabeesh Yemmay would give me pain in the coronary regions for days on end. I did not linger more than a second to forgive these sods.

At home Kaushik, my nephew, took a crack at me saying,” U idiot” in a sms over a forgettable trifle. I really took a fancy to this kid but after this chagrin my affections dried up. Now I do converse with him keeping arm’s length distance. He has already clocked two years at TCS, he’s preparing for go to US for higher studies and even spends weekends teaching English and Maths to slum kids for a NGO. Last month I told him,” I am getting to be so forgiving that I am even talking to you.” He has the grace to smile and say,” We can’t undo it now.” 

Writing: When I started creative writing as a career in 2007 I had dreamy visions of penning masterpieces and public acclaim. I was such an idiot that I would prepare acceptance speeches in my mind such was my optimism and belief in my skills. Now my mind is purged of any creative urges for writing. I have so many creative ideas that I don’t even develop for my blogs. I have taken an easy way out here, I am more a content writer for blogs, social media, newsletters etc. I am past the stage of marketing my writings or chasing newspaper and magazine editors. I finally realize that their daftness is more solid than rock.

Music gets me going, I still love my Campbell, Joel, U2, Springsteen, Carpenters, Dire Straits, Mercury, Jackson, Rodgers and the list is very long indeed. Of late I am beginning to enjoy the classics of a Beethoven or the virtuoso of a Izhak Perlman. In fact I love my music more than the written word. I strum my guitar more like a mad man but these are harmless pleasures.

My sense of people and events have never been better. T H Iyer is a friend of over 16 years, he has watched me grow over the years. I like the affection I get out of him. Dr. Rajaram is the one I meet rarely but each time he gets out my best humour (I am surprised at the frivolity that exists in the cranium). Ranga is one I count as a friend who'll dash down and get me admitted if I ever were to suffer a heart attack. Then Prabhakar who makes me discover my inner reservoir of humour. Then a good doctor in Saharanpur, another in Lajpat Nagar

I was telling Manisha, another reliable friend,” Didi, I have lived to the full with my stories, music and people around.” It would be nice for me to return to the gulf and maybe get my guitar going once again. That would be a complete cure and till then I can congratulate myself for keeping afloat.

What makes me heroic is I have been at it for over 7 years now. On my own as a writer in India. What can be worse than that! I barely managed to earn my expenses and stay in this place. Something of a world record on a Usnain Bolt scale you might say. 

 We learn our lessons not in the comforts of our drawing rooms but in the tumult when the heart churns in anger, fear, pains and more. And if I talk of death it's the fatigue of fighting too long. But the magic of living is such that you get hooked when your train slips back on rail. Waiting! As American civil rights activist Bernice Johnson Reagon says," Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they are supposed to help you discover who you are." That is the spin I give myself now. 

Goodbye AUH! I'll be back

May: I loved Abu Dhabi from day one. I loved the winter months of January to March before the sun began to feel a nuclear fusion. I loved the Corniche, Grand Mosque, and more. The roads were clean and orderly (spic and span from the eyesore that I see in India where any public place is reduced to a toilet and filth). Best of all are people there – I would befriend rank strangers from random encounters at the restaurants. The next best thing was a fantastic salary. The positives keep piling: guitar, friends, shopping, etc

            Five months in paradise but it had a villain too. My office manager was a thug, so gross as to sound as a construction contractor or a mason shouting at the indentured coolies. I would wake up each morning resolving: Shut up and put up, an earning of over Rs.6,000 a day is something I have never ever seen in my career. I am a writer and we are a penurious community who never earn enough to file an income tax. So a salary of over $3,000 here is something I would have cheerfully sold my wife to the first bidder (I can say this tongue-in-cheek for I am bachelor!). But daily emotional wear and tear of this monster boss was getting to a point of stretching my endurance no further. Once I started experiencing persistent pains in the coronary region, I knew I can’t afford to work up a heart attack even at such dream incomes. So I quietly exited.

            I have earned sufficient savings and at least next two years expenses from Besant Nagar base. So why put with this stubborn heart pains? Rather I thought: Destiny has taken me so far and it will open up somewhere. I have a tendency to take the road less travelled and I almost always find a new thread somewhere to join the thoroughfare. I must thank a few people here: Pandian at Sangeeta Restaurant who offered me even a month’s single room accommodation for free (here the rents are exorbitantly high for a single room grosses over Rs. 50 k) in AUH so that I could try for jobs. I had little appetite for that kind of frenzied search. Pandian is a waiter and he lives with 8 to a room. I felt so happy to have instilled such affection for me. Robert is my AUH's most favourite character who defines gentleman. His heart is large enough to help anyone in a spot of trouble. And Sabeesh for his warmth friendship. I’ll never forget our outing to the Bateen beach where we exchanged our life experiences for over three hours facing the sea, starry skies, and windy open. He exudes a charm under such dire that he wins my respect straightaway.

            I came to Chennai by end of May. June saw me absolutely drained till a Vipassana retreat put a lot of new thoughts and purpose. I promised myself more outdoor pursuits. I am so recluse and fixated to a computer and sleep that I am entirely comfortable going about my affairs without sighting any human beings for weeks. June got me thinking, Abu Dhabi showed I had some gumption for travel. You get to meet new places and new people; always of interest to the observer in me. I even thought: let me get a bike or something and motor to a Pondycherry or Yercaud or some such crazy thing. Arthritis too has improved but not to such an extent as to join a trekking expedition.

More outdoors would give a free run to my nature. More than a writer I have a mind to soak - there are so many stories and tales lying on the roadside that my mind gets drawn too. The more I mature as a person the less I feel an impulse to write. You want something to inspire you to an obsession that the mind can chew and get its adrenaline ticking. So any new situation or people would get freshness to the mind and possibly some insights to stumble upon. It’s a natural development of a mind. What writing did to me was “it opened up my mind”.

            There was another gain of Abu Dhabi on my mental imprints. I used to judge myself harshly on my ability to make new friends and prone to getting bored too quickly. AUH showed that I could walk into any room and people would hover around me. I realized I had a friend making ability that overrode my natural diffidence. So many people come to me and narrate their life stories almost helplessly. That’s a nerve I never gave credit till even the monster manager said,” Sathya, you have a way of attracting anyone around you.” Coming from that discredited source I knew I had to revise my self-assessment. I am now even veering to the view that I might even have some charisma left in the bank.

            I went to Hyderabad for a week in July and I found another side to me! I was volunteering for a Vipassana course there when my mind was floored by a woman (thunderbolt lightning of Godfather intensity). She was dainty - interesting how a dictionary furnishes the meaning. It says: delicately beautiful or charming, excessively genteel, delicious to taste and smell! - and my eyes kept straining to see. I can only think of three occasions in the last 5 years when my heart leapt to the sight of a woman. All three had one thing in common – there were feminine to a devastating degree. God, this girl’s gait, her clothes, her voice, her natural charm was something I devoured to the full. She was a tender little thing, probably less than 25. I didn’t wish to get entangled. From the look of things it did appear that she too found me arresting. Her eyes shone bright and her glances towards me had that faint sheepishness to it. But I thought: not one so young. Besides a Vipassana centre is a terrible place for self-introductions and make passes.

            I realized that I am NOT looking for a wise, intelligent, fair, beautiful, good skin texture, amazing dress sense or even an understanding partner. I want my women to have a feminine charm that could grace a royal court as a queen. They are very few in numbers and that’s way I should go in the future.

            I am 45 and having the best time of my life. I am glad of the lessons that come my way. My mind is still excited with the adventure of living. There are few dull moments but on the essentials I remain an incurable explorer.

            Life is a voyage in space and time and I have had more than my share.

Life’s like that, April times

this is my view! N my guitar! (living king-size)

It’s 8:40 on a Friday morning. I sit looking at the French window tinted glass from my chair. What I meant by French windows is that one side of the room is glass panes and I get a full length view of the road. Never mind I am sitting or standing, the outside is visible to the eye. The three lanes becoming five near the signal. In Abu Dhabi the road divider is fat in the middle with palms but as it approaches the signals at the crossroads it gets thinner to accommodate two additional lanes. One to turn left and another the free right on the outside. It’s gets engaging to spend at least an hour daily watching the flow of cars, pedestrians, municipal workers in yellow or pink jackets with a measuring tape, or a Lavajet person in green attire picking debris from the road with a fork. At times I get to watch school children engage a taxi (don’t forget, I am looking over them from the fifth floor of a glass tinted building) for a bird’s eye-view.

View from West End of the room, Fatima Bint Road

The Sheikha Fatima Bint road meets Hamdan road at a traffic signal and that’s were all these spice of life unfold. Further ahead I catch a sniff of the sand dunes as the roads end and the skies meet the desert. There is a stream too but those are too far for the eyes to be definite about. This is the centre of the town and as fine an observatory of the streets from inside a tall building and AC comforts for an idle armchair lounger.

I see the pavements more than 60 feet in width at the edge of my nose. I get to see the faces of pedestrians from my vantage height. Filipinos women in tight jeans and hair hung out. I usually see them with sunglasses, sometimes Indian women too in sarees, or early morning bikers on their way to deliver the day’s newspapers. Or the yellow school buses and the grey taxis and so many things that keep ticking in the day of a modern city.

I have an empty day in front and a blog post to fill, Fridays are a heaven compared to six days of work under a dog’s collar. Mine has been an unusual life, so many life’s lessons tumble down on me without asking.

Learning is not about knowledge gained from books or mouthing someone’s words, it is your own experiences as life dishes out. Lessons are always for the emotional mind and not the rational intellect. And the mind is so dynamic, a throbbing cauldron, few can claim a mastery over it. So when I serve these lessons it is with a humility and an awareness that I may not have the strength of will to follow all of them all the time but I have no doubt to their soundness. We take ourselves far too seriously for starters. Nothing is permanent and nor your troubles, you are passing by as the cars lining up behind one another outside my window.

Lesson one: MONEY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR HAPPINESS. Your happiness is not defined by the money in the wallet. I stumbled on this fortunately from my interactions with Balakanth in 1990. You need money to buy groceries, eat three times a day, have a roof to sleep and anything more is an excess. This money, property, shares and mutual funds never held the slightest attraction to me. There is an intuitive revulsion to a consumerist mindset. I have always seen MONEY as a dead-weight; that's more important is an investment of happiness and joy and it takes a lot of learning to get there. 

Lesson two: DEFINE YOUR OWN IDENTITY. My father’s death in 1989 served a powerful lesson that changed the way I run my life. Being a slave from 9 to 5 for 35 odd years, being married and nagging kids was a no-no to me. Instead I view living as an adventure. I allowed my writing to flower at its own pace, attending spiritual classes since I was 23 gives perspective, chanting classes I chanced on, Vipassana has been an efficacious medicine. What I'll do next is something I leave to the normal run of life. But no plans to remain in status-quo! 

Lesson three: DESTINY IS YOUR ALLY, you would be a fool to fight it. It is easier to shift mountains or change the course of a river then fighting, rebelling, resisting, cribbing about what’s happening to you at any point in time. Besides they don’t get you anywhere! A fool would rail, “why things are not happening my way.” Living is about uncertainty and I have healthy respect and appreciation of it. I would be suffocated if every event in my life is preset and planned; I would hate myself in a heaven with 24 hours of singing hosanas and bored with Ramba and Urvashi's company all of the time. 

Though my father’s death was tragic in 1989, it got me started on my inner growth, heart surgery liberated me from career expectations reinforcing my natural drive for a bohemian existence, and a solitary existence ensured I value people of culture. Destiny is invisible and its writ runs large. In fact it is the last word and knocks all your carefully laid plans. It does takes after your long term interests even if the daily pinpricks and heart burns feels like turtling the boat.

Six months back I never knew such friends existed: I met Arun Kumar in an interview in the last week of November, 2013. He said,” I read your blogs and your Linkedin page and you are an intellectual. If only I could write like you.” Since then he has been a good friend. Issaias cares for me as a brother, I learn guitar from Tom Manning, I only met him last week. Roberts, Shafeek, and others too. As a jiva, as Swami Paramarthananda would say, we’ll be boxed around in a merry go around. Uncertainty is a part of existence and part of natural evolution. Take it with a smile every time you are thrown out of orbit. 

Lesson four: DEVELOP RELATIONS. Destiny can set the outward situation for you but you need a smartness to know which relation to sprout and flower and which to nip. My friend’s list reads some of the best names in the city: Ranga, Sarada Mami, Kalyani family, Rajaram, T H Iyer, Ramakrishnan, Vivek. I don’t waste a second in turning my back from the gross, boorish and self-obsessed. Solitude is a good medicine and a time to watch your mind and make sense of the events of the day. What is the best medicine for the mind? Just love your mind with its thoughts and emotions even it leads you to a sewage hole of rats. Mind is the ONLY tool we have as a human being and make it your best ally. 

So many insights come rushing unsought in the course of a day. A healthy mind is one that takes a long time (and enough provocation) to get hurt. A mind is healthy when it knows how to snap out of it, recover from the bruises of the day as quickly as possible. It’s okay to lose your composure once in a while but you should back to a semblance of normality as fast as possible. I have an obsession to observe my mental content: what sets it off, blind spots, prejudices, what makes it happy, what makes it still. After all, mind is a tool for my use, but it still uses me as a slave but with less of a hold than before!! 

Lesson six: DON”T BUILD A TIMELINE OR STACK A LIST OF WISHES. The past is but a thought in the mind, the present is what we go through in our waking day (offices, bosses, clients, deadlines, humourless colleagues, laundry man taking his sweet time) but future is just a thought you create and scare yourself. Silly. Having a wish list is another stupidity I have never subscribed (nice house, curtains, furnishings, a woman rushing to hug; car etc). I am forever content with my middle-class comforts. Maybe I am spoilt from staying in Besant Nagar. so close to the beach that I DON'T NEED to make a list and tick them off. 

Living is a miracle for this reason alone: you don’t need know what lies in the next corner. But this much I affirm: no one can be your best friend than you yourself. Two, having a tranquil mind helps. A calm mind gathers while an agitated mind leaks life energies. Three, LOVE yourself more than any FEARS arising out of a situation or people around.  Four, be gentle and compassionate to yourself every day and every moment of your life. Let no person ever snatch that from you even if it was an angel in black tights and pink tops. 

(I wrote this blog in the morning and in the time between writing and posting I got a news from my sister: Sathi, my mother-in-law passed away late last night unexpectedly. Life is so precious. Our time is limited and why squander it in worry, anxiety, and fears of the future. All roads lead but to the grave! Surrender your troubles, fears, aspirations to the uncertainty of the day). 

My deck of cards in April: April is the month of wear and tear of daily living. I was shifted from Al Naeem to Marina Plaza on a temporary basis as a doctor’s wife came visiting from Kerala. That created some uncertainty on office provided accommodation. The progress on the magazine has been tortoise pace, finally it moves to the studio. I purchased a laptop and a guitar this month. Summer is getting to be scorching hot on the scalp. Ramakrishnan, Manisha, T H Iyer, Vivek, my sister continue to write and talk. I am introducing fruits for a respite from hotel food at least two dinners a week. Tomorrow I turn 45 and still more a rock star in attitude to living than a normal Joe. There's been no one quite like me in my family; I don't know why I chosen to be so different than a placid Tambrahm existence who place a premium on job stability, income, and one arranged marriage, two children and both studying in IIT. 

(My office gave me a wonderful surprise yesterday with the cake-cutting and all that. The team got together and we enjoyed a free-flowing banter and bonhomie. Srinivasan in Karpagam Garden called from Chennai and so did my sister. I spoke to Ramakrishnan, Manisha's mom, T H Iyer. It felt nice, so many took the trouble)....28/4. 

Whiffs in March

January saw me diffident; new place and “doubting me” mind frame from a mild meltdown. I was timid to hail a taxi or even visit a grocery store in the initial weeks before the mind got a bit stronger. Thanks entirely to Vipassana and breathing exercises. February saw me fall in love with Abu Dhabi - Corniche, Qasr, ADNEC, Shaikh Zayad Grand Mosque got the mind a new breeze of confidence and optimism. As I see it now, the time flew quickly in January and February. As to March the clock is back to its normal mundane course – time does not hang heavy nor is the whirlwind of a honeymoon

            Opening a bank account with Emirates NBD was the last stage of documents after my residency, labour card, and Emirates ID was processed. Having that ATM/Debit card meant normality and I stopped viewing myself as a foreigner here. The office supplied me room curtains and key to my room in 104 after a prolonged chase. As my room got filled, I smelt a psychological belonging here. The mind felt a good approximation to Besant Nagar; a home feeling is a place you don’t wish to be somewhere else. I belong here, period. It feels good when strangers ask you of an address and you are able to assist them.

            Sangeetha and Ever Green restaurants, I frequent for my three squares in the day, make me glow – I get affection at both places. It was raining last week throughout the day and the night before, Pandian a waiter at Sangeetha said,” Sir, I have never seen such long rain spells here in the last 8 years. But since you are here, it is a raining miracle.” I made a humour of it. Sachin at Ever green says,” Sir, you only come for breakfast. On Monday we serve Paratha and our Friday lunch is a specialty.” These people have seen my face for over 75 days yet they are not bored; I am surprised. Am I turning an angel from the cast away devil? While I am either at Sangeetha or Ever Green my self-image blows up – my humour, sparkle in the eye, banter, smiles flow naturally.    

            I realized the worth of two friends this month. Issaias is a man who cares. I complained of heaviness in the chest on an occasion, poor man kept inquiring through the week,” Sathya, take it easy man. Learn to cope with office stress better.” Ashok is a visitor I see at Ever Green at breakfast time. I keep pulling his leg,” Ashok, you won’t get leaves at your office to go home to Chennai. You are a key resource here.” The “Key Resource” humour can be milked for a laugh anytime as he would say,” don’t increase my stomach ache” in Tamil (this is idiomatic as vaitharchal kalpardango). He was the one to suggest I try Sangam and Saravana Bhavan to complete my knowledge of South Indian Vegetarian hotels here. Now I can write a newspaper column on the subject! Another occasion he said,” I just had my haircut. So I don’t wish to come to your apartment.” Such sentiments feel like Besant nagar here. Besides these two, I smile readily at Jaffer, Sharif and Roberts reserves a kind word for me. Living on your own and in a new city, you need every ounce of a smile and a greeting. Trust me, these are as important as oxygen and your next meal.

            In March I never ventured out for sightseeing. Swamiji lectures transcriptions or even blogs took a back seat. Office became out of bounds on Fridays, which means I am in a speed rush to a laptop purchase at the earliest. I have been postponing the buy the last three weeks. I get the damn thing this week so that I start April with a clean slate and nothing in want.

            It is only in the office I learn my lessons.

a)      Don’t do anything that would weaken or threaten your job security (I remember my momentary foolishness with RWD and that alerted me to this genetic defect my creative side brings)

b)      When a person goes sledge-hammering you with words, it is better go docile. Reason is no communication option to a person who is sitting on the frying pan, they only end up adding more fuel. Better to burn one side of the toast than your side

c)      The mind needs to be tranquil for this reason alone – when you speak slow, calm and with poise and a gentle smile the world treats you likewise. Fear and nervousness and a racing speech are a bad advertisement. Can’t afford in a society you are just implanted

d)     Lastly I have realized how to harvest each of the four colleagues at work. Better to invoke their best side or ignore than rattle their cages.

I went to Al Raha Mall in the first week of March. I left at 6:00 in the morning and that road took me on the Dubai highway. I was scared to see signpost like “120 kmph” speed levels and a city bus that did not stop for forty minutes except accelerate at over hundred kmph. I got down in the middle of a desert called “Al Bunder”. I was feeling queasy and a whiff of panic before another co-passenger gave a taxi booking number. I was waiting in the bus stop for this taxi before another empty one passed my eyes. He stopped as I flagged it down and my first query was,” Is this my taxi booking?” He shook his head to indicate otherwise and fortunately just then my taxi came. This driver told the other,” He is a real gentleman to wait for you.” A small incident but it made my day.

            I still dream of a column in a newspaper; destiny sucks for I am better than most I read in the UAE or Indian newspapers.

            My eldest sister, Ramakrishnan, T H Iyer write in regularly. Manisha too is communicative over mails; I made a regular practice to call the trio each time I get a salary cheque. I got a couple of nice mails from Arun of Kaar Technologies. 

I went for Pradosham yesterday and it opened a door to new friends with similar interests. Seeing a gathering of over two hundred Tambrahms in a hall got me feeling like being in a Mylapore market. As I grow older, I feel more a sense of identity as a tambrahm – it is wonderful community of academicians and hardworking souls and an intelligent gene-pool.

            This is a story against myself. I am a sucker for promotions that I purchased body lotion, mouthwash, face cream, hair cream just because a convenience store was offering them on a sale. I went and blew over 100 AED on a whim. And I did not feel bad; let’s see if I can ever make grooming a part of me?  

            I revise ten idioms a day – I jot down in my home (after that explanation in the second para!) before coming to office. Then I explore them over usage and meaning and context in the office computer. Words give me a secure feeling. When Roberts said,” Sathya, it is terrible to live alone. Find a woman.” I said,” I am happy as I am”. There are certain things in destiny’s territory but adding a woman baggage is not one of them. Being in Abu Dhabi for three months I am basking in my good fortune. The 2007 Sindhi was a 100% loss transaction for me. And this painful experience had dug deep into my subconscious with a chisel on a rock: no more foolhardiness. There are times I feel sad: we had a good bonding and should have built on it. But she just kicked it away with disdain (so trivial as to list romance before below grocery purchases like tomatoes and electricity bills and look out for rentals) and now my heart sees no fun in that direction. 

            What then has March taught me: augmenting my savings remains top on the column. Go slow and easy on yourself, have friends to laugh, and keep your mind healthy. I have learnt long that contentment in the here and now than seeing anything rosy in the horizon.  For a man on the threshold of a 45 birthday, the best days are in the rear view mirror! But as a writer I am only now beginning to soar. April and a new laptop should add to this belief, hopefully.      

February in AUH

I would like to treat myself to a ramble at least once a month. I don’t see this a forum for “Sathya News” for I am not as yet pompous or senile. But I like this idea of once-a-month post to capture the mood the mind has traversed. Just that month. You come back and read that after a year or even 3-4 months later and these words stir the mind to those images. Without these words, they are lost in memory and one’s convenient recording. Human mind is more whimsical than a gush of breeze; a written word fastens the mental imprints on the ground like no other.

            December and January were months I’ll never forget in a long while – these two months got me by the scruff of the neck and it felt the hangman was within shouting distance.  But thanks to extraordinary friends in particular Manisha and my eldest sister in Chennai I found the resolve to overcome. And coming to Abu Dhabi completed the cure. A mild depression after eight years and frankly I never saw this mental slide coming till it ensnared me with its blight. To my credit, I worked hard to get the blues out of the system and allow the sun and outside world to flow freely again.

            This month FEBRUARY is special for it got me back on my feet; and so did my confidence returning to the fold. Abu Dhabi is a far saner society than the one I left behind. This is a writing job and so I am in my elements; it pays me well that two years here and I would have saved a golden nest for my retirement years.

            The article on Corniche, a post in thinksathya in ages, made Manisha write in a mail,” Sathya, you are back and I now know how much writing means to you.” The last six months I am privileged to access the wisdom of Ramakrishnan, his insights and replies (we almost write every alternate day) gives me the belief and strength on the road. My eldest sister takes care of the home in Besant Nagar by keeping an eye on its security with monthly visits; she also doubles up as my investment manager for the monthly remittances. I am so glad that money has never come in the way of my relations with both my sisters.

            I get up at 5:00 here and log in an hour of Vipassana. I also have time for 30 minutes of Pranayama that my yoga teacher in Besant Nagar taught me to combat that meddlesome depression. These two consume over 90 minutes and being ever an early riser, I always love this part of the day. Then I go to “Ever Green” a small restaurant for Idly/Vada for starters; then either “plain dosa” or “Aloo Paratha” and round it off with “tea” – this being a North Indian joint they make good tea and terrible coffee. I like to brandish a word to the waiters: Sachin is from Lucknow, a young sensible chap really. There is Sampath from Andhra on whom I practice my Telugu. Being regular as I am on the table anywhere between 7:30 and 7:45 am, I make friends with other patrons like these two IT boys from Chennai – Ashok and Balu- and have a go at my mother tongue. Btw, I take a lot of pride in my Tamil even if a native were to laugh at my fumbling ineptness.

            I go back to my apartment, which is a five-storey, and Al Naeem Restaurant on the basement that I keep away for it is non vegetarian fare. This building is for LLH Hospital staff (my group company) and we have a manned security; which means I leave my flat door open and not worry about security.

Going to “Ever green” for breakfast is a 7 minute walk one-day; I mentally chant my morning prayers as I cross the Zayed the First Signal. Here each road is a four lane and you can’t jump a signal without fear of a loss of limb and life. Abu Dhabi is a beautiful city, so beautiful I found out last Friday when I had some chore at ADNEC (Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Center). I found the weather and bus ride so refreshing that I did not get down at my destination. Instead went a further 25 kms to the airport and only on the return trip did I venture to my original destination. The roads are smooth as billiard table, each road is awash with flowers and roadside plants trimmed to many shapes – The mosaic of Zayed Grand Mosque on the way impacts your mind for its size and craftsmanship, I am curious to visit it at the earliest opportunity; the water sports of hi speed jets on a stream of a lake flowing by, and the Exhibition Center looked from a book on architecture; majestic and a design element to draw the mind in. Hard to imagine that everything was a desert some forty years back and now this city is as good as any Europe or America has on hand (Abu Dhabi has one of the highest per capita income in the world and it shows even with a fleeting glance from the window of a bus or a taxi). The Emirate shows if the rulers are straight and intentions honest, you can get the best infrastructure. When your taxi beeps a warning to the driver of exceeding 80 kmph speed, you realize that the mind does not fret as in Chennai roads waiting at the signals. Abu Dhabi is so beautiful that you can relax your mind by jumping on to any bus route and it will be a feast for the eyes at every corner.

There is another side to this city – I don’t see any stray dogs (in fact I have not seen a dog in these 50 odd days) and crows. I spot a lot of pigeons; it comes in two colours. This marigold is a novelty to me, sparrows also thrive here, and stray cats abound around buildings. But dogs and crows are extinct here. Unlike Chennai which has a lot of trees; here you will only find palms everywhere. But architectural delights are aplenty; some towers simply take your breath away for elegance and shape that I stop to take the snaps in my digital camera (I used to hate this gadget but got myself this only to capture the beauty of the place. I saw the Corniche and it got me to head straight to the nearest store and place an order for a Sony cybershot).

            The office is from 9:00 to 6:00 and we are a small team. We have our moods but we are civil and cordial to each other. There is a loquacious and throaty; another smart and suave, another saint like in composure and last character emotionally brittle. I get up each morning praying: Lord, give me two years here. The manager is a bit of a Amrish Puri, a la Mogambo! The work permit, health insurance card, and Emirate ID have come and so I am staying. At work, in the spare time I try to transcribe Swami Paramarthananda’s talks. I did two this month: 2014 New Year Talk on Astanga Yoga and 2013 Sivaratri on Upasana Yoga. on spiritualsathya. Only in the calm desert of Abu Dhabi, these spiritual talks feels a weak glow of poise on the mind. I found a PDF file of my Bhagavad Gita summaries from someone in Greece on a freak google search; those give me the resolve to complete that work at least in 2014. I called my sister in Chennai and request her to courier the mp3 formats of those Swamiji’s talks to me here. Spiritualsathya gives me satisfaction for it is my only site that regularly gets me fan mails! One person from Canada wrote: Daily I read your posts on Swamiji's talks before going to bed! And many write in to say: Sathya, you are blessed for doing this service.

            Abu Dhabi has got me outdoors like never before; I have signed on a desert safari this week, this has dune bashing and even a belly dance thrown in! I plan to visit Al Ain in April, Dubai and Sharjah in each succeeding month. As it is, every weekend I have gotten confident to explore the city. There is a beauty at every corner, as a writer if you do a wiki search and then visit then there is a greater appreciation.

            There are two things I am grateful for – I have my lunch and dinner at Sangeetha Restaurant and I get affection here without doubt. I know every waiter by name; most have recounted tales of their families back in India. I converse, joke, banter, show concern and they give me affection. What more can I ask? I get the best service in the restaurant; before my water in the glass is finished, it gets refilled. Even as I am finishing a puri someone is near at hand to furnish me unasked. Or give me extra curd or whatever even if it is not in the menu! Some names to record here: Shanker, Pandian, Vishnu, Dinesh, Bhagyaraj, Krishnamurthy, and so many more. Each one is a story more interesting than mine. Another blessing is the night shift for security to my building where I meet Issias; he is wise, intelligent and the best security guard in the whole of UAE. Small talks everywhere and big smiles, suddenly I am finding Abu Dhabi to be a home than the one I left behind in Besant Nagar.

            Vivek Banerjee and Manisha favoured me when I asked both the doctors to write me an article on Health and Nutrition topics as part of my office assignment. It needed just a nudge and both responded wonderfully; those articles are so good that I realize that creative writers may have a way with words but only trained doctors can get that authoritative ring to the subject.

            Each day is almost similar to the previous but there is meaning to this routine. I have taken a liking to this place and people here. God has delivered at last. AUH is the airline code for Abu Dhabi and MAA is for Chennai – two different worlds and I am finding joy in one in a long, long while. Like the Thums Up adv slogan: Happy days are here again.God, let it stay that way for a while.

Daily Schedule here!

There is learning for me: In mid-forties adapting to a new place isn’t that straight-forward and easy as compared to when younger. In your twenties the body can digest even leather (not actually but I meant almost anything) before age wrings in arthritis, gastro enteritis, and of late even a depression as in my case. An individual need not compare himself to his neighbor and feel shortchanged, even the memories of your past seem distant as to belong to someone else. Even a narcissist like me can’t gloat over any past memories; the present is the only thing that matter.

            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.