The day that i met "Almost-a-Taliban"

My experience in UAE has been pleasant and all the more surprising most of the time. Had a whole lot of experiences, which will be there in my memory for quite sometime.
Most of them happened during my interactions with the cab drivers who are plying the streets.

Although most of them can be pinned down on a continuous basis, i dont find the motivation to be sufficient enough. I blog when i reach that tipping point most of the time.. when there are some emotions that keep lingering in my mind which i find unforgettable. And when that thought or emotion reaches that tipping point i decide to blog it out.

My this blog is also an experience which has been lingering in my mind for quite sometime, that every once in a while it keeps coming back to me. Hence i am blogging this.

Some time back ~say 3 weeks ago~ i was coming back from my office with my colleague Rajeev, to our place of residence. The journey takes 30+ mins and we took a cab whose driver was a pakistani. That was the day of the Hindu festival of lights "Diwali" and the indian radio stations here was bustling with all sort of well wishes and greetings regarding the same. I and Rajeev was also talking about the festivities that occur during that period in India.

Suddenly this pakistani driver starts talking to us in a very friendly manner. He asks us about what is diwali. What is the significance of Diwali, Who celebrates diwali, What do u do during diwali which we muslims do during EID. The muslim festval of EID has just concluded and so he was asking as to what do hindus do for the festival like fasting or something..

Rajeev is quite informed regarding the indian as well as hindu history, which even i dont have a clue of. He is "Jain" by birth but has read extensively about Indian History & independence struggle and Hindu Manuscripts, which has made him quite knowledgeable. So he was explaning what the occasion is. Whether he knows about any hindu festivals? Whether he knows about Ram? The driver has no clue. He is totally alien about what hinduism is all about. Regardless Rajeev told him that it is the victory of good over evil and indians normally celebrate it by lighting lights which is a sign of good over evil.

Rajeev was telling him that there are hindus in karachi and all in pakistan also, whether he has seen any celebration for diwali in pakistan? He said that he is from Waziristan and has landed in Abu Dhabi some 5 months back and dont know much of karachi and all. He was telling about the hardships in working in UAE as a driver. The amount of speeding fines that he has to pay and the ruthless nature of arabs for not giving space for driving.

As we were talking, the time for the 5mins news bulletin came in radio. That was the time, the pakistani army launched the army operation in South Waziristan against the taliban. So we were inquiring about what is happening to pakistan and all. We were asking him as to why is there a lot of infighting in pakistan. Why is pakistanis killing pakistanis. He retorted quite strongly to all this. He said that there is no consideration for wazirs in the pakistan army and the punjabis hate wazirs. So that there is very less ppl from wazirs in the army. And that the army get money from america for each person killed in pakistan. That was the time when there was a massacre at a pakistani army base where quite a number of people have been killed. He was asking us as to whether we would dare to go to a military base in an army uniform. He said that its all pakistani army's own plans, by doing the attack on their own people, they just want to attack the wazirs. He was telling about the flattened homes in wazirs and of the people and kids who got killed in the attack. He also told about how a father who lost his son took a bomb with him and killed a truck full of soldiers in pakistan. He said what wazirs want is a place where there is no interference from government or miliary.

Rajeev trying to get more out of him by knowing his true psyche, asked him about the fact that why is the schools there being bombed. He said that there was no need to educate the girls. He himself confessed that he has studied only till 7th std and that he dont find any reason to teach girls. He said in their culture the girls are supposed to serve their husbands and anyway there are men like him who are working to earn the living for them. I asked him as to why he dropped out of the school. He said that there are no schools in the area and that has to go long distances for learning and that there are no universities there.

Rajeev asked him whether he knows who found about making a nuclear bomb.? He said he dont know. Rajeev told that there was a woman scientist called Marie Curie who discovered radioactivity which could be used for nuclear bomb. So why are u saying that girls should not be educated. He was stunned. He tried so say that what might have happened might be an exception and most women end up doing nothing otherwise. He said that women are not allowed to watch tv at their place as they will be corrupted. And that women are not supposed to even to talk to any other male than her husband. He was telling us that his wife will not even talk to his brother when he calls here thru the telephone from here. That is the trust that a women should have.

He also mentioned how when taliban took over their place they took all the satellite tvs and cds away from them. So Rajeev asked him whether he sees bollywood movies, he said yes. Again Rajeev asked whether he sees hot scenes in those movies? He said yes. So Rajeev asked him so how is it that u can watch and see whatever u want to see and while the girls are not supposed to see even movies or talk to other people. He said that men can do it and its no what girls are supposed to be doing.

I asked him about what he wants to do with his life. He said he want to go back home and relax at home. So i asked him who will bring the food? For that he said that he is having a joint family and there will be someone who will be working and that he dont have to worry about that.

Rajeev finally asked him whether he is happy with the taliban there. He said that there is no problem with them there and that America is the biggest problem. When america decides to not interfere with their lives, they will be well off and pakistan will be better.

We had reached our place of residence by that time. We payed him the fare and quite surprisingly he asked whether both of us are angry with him because of his words. I said that it is your life, your country and that we r not at all angry with him.

Although he was quite gentleman like in his actions, i could clearly see in him the level of motivations and the enrage that would mould another taliban. Marin Luther King has once said "We have guided missiles and misguided men". I really felt so. All these days i was wondering what can be the corrective measure a country or a person could do for individuals like him who are still stuck with the traditions of the old world.

The three things which i believe that should be done to guide these misguided men should be by educating them, by giving them exposure to the world by urbanisation of the population and by the guidance of proper religious heads. The present world is giving undue importance to religion in every walk of life! When will humans realise that religion is created for the humans and not otherwise. There is point which i am critical of muslims in particular, because there religious heads r not working for the people of their religion esp in India and Pakistan. The point which i want to put across is although there are lots of moderate and well educated people in muslims also, they are not able to live their way of life or exert their opinion on the world coz of a minority that preaches extreme interpretation of Islam. Most of the middle eastern countries like UAE and all exert their full energy into educating their next generations and these muslims are the least bothered of what is happening in pakistan or afghanistan, or what the clerics there are preaching. I think it is a chicken and egg kinda story in india, pakistan and all, where either there is rampant proverty or people are so jobless that they dont have anything else to think about other than religion.

One more thing which i understood after interacting with people of different nationalities is that the story of human beings is the same everywhere. Everyone wants their family to be better off.. Everyone is willing to make sacrifices for a better future. Religion is highly over rated in the current generation. I dream of a world in which there is peace and everyone is respected for what they are. As they say "No wars will be fought if only they had talked and respected each others' perspective". Adios for the moment!

First impressions of UAE

Ok. I have been here for like 2 weeks. I’ll outline my first impressions of UAE. When people hear about it they say”Oh it’s another Middle East country!!”, “do u get to see girls there?? “, “Man your days will be boring”. As they say “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing”. United Arab Emirates consists of a set of emirates of which the biggest and the most powerful is Abu Dhabi. It has 90% of all oil production 90% of land area and which is also the permanent Ruler of UAE. The Sheikh of Abu Dhabi is the Permanent President of UAE. The Sheikh of Dubai is the vice-president and prime minister of UAE. Each emirate has its own rule and laws. Dubai being the most liberal and places like Sharjah being the most conservative. But most of the action happens in Dubai and Abu Dhabi which are places where people can live a very complete life, the way ones want it to be. If you look at the demographics it is inhabitated by 10% Emiratis and 90% by expats!

So I had my flight at 530am on 12^th Feb. ‘09 from Mumbai. I reached the airport at close to 3am. Checked in. It was a Qatari airway. I was to travel from Mumbai to Doha, have a transit and then head to Abu Dhabi where my office guy will come with a cab to pick me up. Geographically Doha is farther from Mumbai than Abu Dhabi. As a matter of fact I cross Abu Dhabi first and then land in Doha and then fly back to Abu Dhabi. Longer duration but cheapest fare. Cost cutting my travel department said for choosing the flight. I weighed my entire luggage and found that I had an excess baggage of 20kgs. Now this is an interesting thing to note. People who are going to Middle East can carry only a baggage up to 25 kgs, but if u are coming back to India you can carry upto 35kgs! Are we supposed to buy up to 10kgs of extra stuff from there! No wonder it’s called a shopper’s paradise. Anyways as days went by I realized that people do actually take plasma TVs and what not from here back to India which weighs in the excess of 10-15kgs. So now I know why we have more luggage allowance on the way back. I got in the flight at 5am thinking I’ll be flying out by 530. But as we know the flight was delayed by an hour due to some technical glitch. Now this is a serious concern. A recent report said that almost 80% of flights operating out of Mumbai airport are delayed. What the hell. If so many flights are getting delayed why don’t they make the delayed timings as the new timings, so that the time and cost loss of both passengers and the airlines minimum and my sleep! :P. Anyways I have not realized that we were that delayed until the flight accelerated in the runway coz I was snoring away to glory. I have this habit in flights. As I get onboard a plane I find it so comfortable that irrelevant of the time of the day I sleep. Although this time the reason was I haven’t slept all night, coz of the weird flight timings.

Another surprise was that the flight was full! I mean FULL. Except for a seat or two every single seat was filled. Now is it because Qatar Airways is the best, I don’t know. But people all over the place are talking about a slowdown and recession and here I am sitting in a plane to Doha, where all the seats are full. Unbelievable. But then I found out that Doha is a major transit route for other flights and many people are travelling to other parts of Europe and US from there. As a matter of fact very few people have their final destinations as Doha. Anyways as soon as we got off we had good breakfast and I had a coffee. And as you might be thinking that I had the coffee to keep me off sleeping, I would say not. This is also a behavior I got from college. Many people I say from REC would agree. We had this mini canteen near out hostels. Initially we used to go there late night for a cup of coffee so that it would keep us awake during exams and all. But then gradually it became a habit such that until we have a coffee, we can’t sleep. Anyways coming back to the flight trip, many people were having beer at 7’O clock in the morning. Typical Indian behavior I would say. When you are getting something for free they grab it by the neck. But yea the flight crew was pretty girls, mostly Lebanese, Moroccan, Chinese and whites. And I dozed off. The inboard entertainment system was first class. You have a screen in front of your seat and you get to choose from thousands of movies and TV serials. And you can see Hindi movies, mallus movies and tamil ones onboard! That was awesome! Plus you have thousands of song videos. Full to cover thousands of hours of travel. This was first class.

Finally I landed at Doha airport. It’s a desert. No greenery whatsoever. The only thing I could see is cream coloured sand and miles and miles of airport roads. Although the flight was delayed by an hour my connecting flight was still an hour away to liftoff. Now I want to tell u something which I didn’t know. My tickets showed that I would depart from Mumbai at 530 in the morning and the captain said the flight will take 3 hrs to reach Doha. And the connection flight had a departure at 915 with the check in at 845. Now this timing is local timings in Doha. I was of the view that it’s all in Indian timings because we got the ticket in India. If you look at it that way I was thinking that 530+3hrs=830, so I was a little worried with the timings and whether I will reach there on time. So checked up with the airhostess and she explained that it is local time and don’t need to be worried. I was relieved. The flight landed there and people who had connection flights to US and Europe scrambled.

I get to see the first signs of the fact that I have landed in Middle East. Most of the airport staff were Indians, except for people on the visa counters, with a couple of people on the workforce talking in mallu. Yea as I find out in the later days of my stay, the only language that you need to know if you don’t know Arabic & English in Middle East is Malayalam. The connection flight to Abu Dhabi was a fairly short one. It took me close to an hour. I had absolutely no clue as to what the local time is now by the way. Doha is 2.30 hrs away Indian time, and Abu Dhabi is 130 hours. I was going forward and back time zones.

The flight landed at the airport. But there was a categorical difference between Abu Dhabi airport and Doha. This one was green! I could see greenery all over the place! There also was a surprise at the immigration counter. There were two counters in which u have to show the work permit issued. One is for all the countries other than India and the other was for India. Imagine that! That means 50% of the people coming to UAE are from India! We got our own immigration counter. And as I saw it there was a huge line with mallus, Sikhs and the rest. Got my retina scan done, got my original work permit and got out of the place. Got my luggage. Went to the duty free shop and got 2 cartons of Marlboro lights which Moii, who is staying in Dubai, ordered from me before I start the journey. 2 cartons costs 27USD close to 1300INR for 20 packs, a pack costing 70bucks, pretty cheap must say as compared to Indian rates of 90bucks per pack. If you are entering Abu Dhabi, you are permitted to carry up to 2 cartons of cigarettes and 2 bottles of alcohol. I’ll elaborate more about the legality of alcohol consumption as we move ahead.

I checked out and the local time was 1200. The faithful driver was in the lobby with a placard calling out my name. I waived my hand to him, he responded. We went to the parking area. That was a pleasant sight! Tell me which car you want to see and it’s there in that parking lot! I was awestruck for the moment. First time on a foreign land I thought! But I was extremely tired after the trip, but I had to go straight to office, because it was said that on Thursday the medical test center will not be that full. I put my 40+kg of luggage on the car and got in. The airport roads connecting the city are pretty and green. The day that I land, there was a sand storm engulfing the city. This happens often in the Middle East that’s what I was told. This happens because of the unobstructed desert coupled with the winds. Most of the habitation in Middle East is near the seafronts or oasis. There I landed in my office block. Got my medical tests done. There at the medical center also the doctors, the nurses, the security staff were Indians, mostly south Indians! You know what I mean! So I got it done, the results will be available on Sunday. Here another fact of life is a weekday extends from Sunday till Thursday. And the normal working hours for a government employee is from 7 in the morning to 3 in the noon. Pretty cool considering the fact that u have the entire evening for your family and socializing.

I reached back to my guesthouse in mussafa. That is in the suburbs of Abu Dhabi, a locality in itself. Close to 30kms from the city. I reached my “home” as this will be I’ll be put up for the rest of my period in Abu Dhabi. Then I called up ramanan, college batch mate, roommate, fellow L&Tite who has been here for more than a year in Abu Dhabi on a separate mission. ;) He was driving from ras al khaima, another emirate. Here the car was the only mode of transportation till a few years ago. Lately Abu Dhabi and Dubai introduced the public bus service. So coming back to ramanan’s story he was coming from ras al khaima which is 300kms away. He picked up moii from Dubai which is 190kms from Abu Dhabi and then reached my guest house by 12 in the night. I had some problems directing them towards my guest house as I was unaware of the direction or the location. He somehow managed and reached. Afterwards I hoped in the car and said that we will head towards the city, “Ok let’s go”. We reached his home and then headed to Irish pub.

Now about the alcohol part. I did extensive research on the legality of alcohol consumption in UAE. According to the rules one is not allowed to consume alcohol unless he has a permit to have alcohol. If you are caught consuming one without a permit you can be punished. Now if u are a tourist you don’t need one. There are wine shops which can sell one provided you show your license. Also hotels are permitted to sell alcohol to guests. You can consume it in hotels or buy one for personal consumption. But if you have a residence permit you need to have one. But no Muslim will get a license. Getting one is not difficult you need to have employment contract information. You need to have a salary of more than 2500AED. You need to get a document from the employer saying that you are working for them and need to apply for a liquor permit. The permit will allow you to consume and buy alcohol for personal use. The annual fee is 200AED. The maximum monthly alcohol that one can purchase from a wine shop depends on the salary.

Now the facts on ground. You can consume them in hotels and pubs. You can get them from wine shops. They won’t ask you for a license. I heard that the wine shops ask you for a license towards the eid and other Muslim religious festivities. Other times the rules are pretty much relaxed. But there is still a problem if u have an accident on the way back home with bottles in car, or u are caught with bottles when u leave the wine shops. And the night clubs here operate till 330 in the night and on Fridays and Saturdays they work more one more hour! Till 430am. So the clubbing scene is there. But to warn you drunken driving is prohibited, and if you are caught drunk while driving you are imprisoned for atleast 6 months or more depending upon the incident and the emirate in which you are in.

Now back to the Irish pub. There was a live band which was playing and the place was filled with Europeans, Africans, young Arabs, Americans, Indians and Far East Asians. A truly multi cultural and cosmopolitan city indeed. We had a couple of draught beer (600ml mugs) which comes for 25dirhams each. We drove back to ramanan’s place, notwithstanding the fact that we had downed a couple of beer mugs. We lay there taking rest for our next day’s trip to Dubai.

We got up by 9 in the morning and decided to head to Dubai. But before we go, we roamed around the city and I was awestruck by the way they have kept the city. The city is well planned, wide pavements, trees on both sides, boulevards. There are two things which impressed me the most. One is the low level of policing. To this day I am left wondering how the city works like clockwork without the police on the streets. Everyone follows the rule; no crimes and illegal activities are not happening or drastically reduced. Selling alcohol I’m not discounting. But the fact of the matter is that people are at peace with each other. Even at the darkest and loneliest nights the taxis work perfectly and the cops are not to be seen anywhere. There are no conflicts or yelling or shoplifting which I have seen. Or maybe this thought had come to me because of the fact that being in Mumbai had got me used to see police on each and every signal.

Secondly the level of cleanliness. The roads and pavements are well kept and maintained. Also I have absolutely no idea as to how they keep the dust off the air. The air is fresh, the level of pollution is less, the amount of dirt and dust is also very less. If u take a 30 min drive during peak hours in Mumbai in a bike probably u’ll have to sneeze like crazy to get all the dirt off your nose! When I was moving around the city which was engulfed in a sand storm the previous day I was left wondering how they keep things so neat and clean. Maybe it’s the type of sand, maybe it’s because they have covered up all the places in concrete. You never know.

We went and met sandy! No. No. don’t get weird ideas. Its sandeep rajagopal alias sandy! He is one chap u need to have on your side every time. It’s because of the fact that he will come up with his wits and shoddy ideas which makes him a good goal post we can score every time! ;) This guy is an absolute nicotine addict. He has the weirdest ideas. For example he buys Marlboro reds and takes the bud off and lights the side where the bud was and smokes with his lips on the other side without a filter. His explanation more tobacco is on the filter side! Seriously weird! All the more, its good fun to have him around.

We had some chicken kebabs as fillers and started to Dubai. We had a special event to catch up with in Dubai. It was the Iron Maiden Rock concert at Dubai media city. The distance from auh to Dubai is close to 180kms. It took us close to 2 hrs on the road to reach Dubai with the pit stop in between, where we got down at a petrol pump and had chicken biryani for lunch from a mallu restaurant. :D. The road from auh to Dubai is 8 laned, perfect flat roads with an official speed limit varying from 120 to 160km/hr with speed radars at intervals of 15km or so. This is where we hit 180km/hr. that was pretty awesome. The quality of the roads is so good that there is no vibration when you are travelling at even 180. Even in Mumbai pune express highway you hear and feel vibrations when you are travelling at 120km/hr. No wonder you have F1 tracks in Monaco and all which are street roads. This is quality stuff..

It was assumed that we will drink and after the maiden concert it’s not advisable to go back to auh. Also ramanan was not interested in driving to and from the concert. Moii also stayed with a family who will not entertain extra inmates. So we went to naïf (pronounced as “knife”) and took lodging there.

Now there is something we did as daring as we do always. The room is for 2ppl costing 400AED. So we had to plug in 2 more people. I and sandy was waiting in the parking lot near the road and ramanan and moii said they will get the room first and tell us of the room no. then we can walk in after 5mins without arousing suspicion. The plan was plotted and we awaited their call. Ramanan calls and tells us that the room is 502. The call was handled by sandy as I still didn’t have a cell number. We went forward with sandy directing. Now suddenly there was a confusion as to which hotel these people have gone in. there were 2 hotels side by side. Sandy took the call and we went in one of them. We walked straight to the elevators and clicked the 5^th floor button. We landed at the fifth floor and sandy walked to room no. 506. I was confused and asked him, haven’t they said 502. “No, this is the room”. We rang the bell. No one opened. Suddenly he started fiddling with the door handle. I was like “what the hell man?? Just call them!” suddenly then he realize that they are in 502 and we went to that room and ringed the door bell. Still no one is responding. I was over my wits. I told him to call them and tell them to open instead of us roaming around. Finally he called ramanan and he said we are in the other hotel. Fortunately, no one was there in both the rooms and we were thankfully saved of any embarrassment. We came down, went to the nearby hotel and reached the destination finally. We ordered some red label and had some kebabs for dinner and got a cab for media city.

Now Dubai is the bigger and faster than auh. Dubai is the financial hub. This is where all the action is, where all the performers come, where all the clubbing and partying is! This is the most liberal of the emirates. This is the city which lives on expats!

We reached the location. This was also amazing, we just walked in. there was no strip searching, the normal metal detector, no frisking you which normally happens in India. Smoking is rampant throughout Middle East. That is one thing that the Arabs can’t let go off, the other being women and money. On our hands were tied two bands, one denoting that we had the ticket for the show and the other showing we are above the legal limit to drink. Yea they have provided a beer parlor inside where one could go and have a mug of beer while watching the concert! Pretty awesome considering that this is a Muslim country and one cannot imagine such a thing happening in India. Maiden came, played their numbers. The crowd was filled with expats from Europe and UK. There was an interesting sight to watch. I remember that beside us was a batch of students. I say so because they didn’t have the alcohol band around them. They had a Persian skin tone. In that there was this girl who was fully covered in burqa but was head banging to the rock music. This is an acceptance of the fact that humans are a diverse lot and our aspirations and interests can only be subdued but can never be completely exterminated. This brought back me memories from the movie “Persepolis” which is about life of a girl in Iran before and after the Islamic revolution. The show got over by 12 and crowd was happy and peacefully dispersed, contented with the music. But I feel that the iron maiden concert in Bangalore was much more energetic. We enjoy things much more when we have spent money on something.

We came out, the night was young, but we were too tired and head back to the hotel where we stayed. The next day we came back to auh.

There are some other things which I would like to list out here.

One is the construction boom. It’s unbelievable until you see it. Wherever you look there are atleast 5 construction cranes in that direction. The view from my window in my guest house lists gives a spectacular view of atleast 10 construction cranes.

The 2 cheapest things here are gasoline and power. There are street lights everywhere. When I say everywhere I mean everywhere. Even if there is no road or people there is a street light. When u travel on the road u can see street lights even in the deepest localities far away from road, far away from habitation.

Now the languages you need to know. I was going to Lullu supermarket with a tamilian couple from the office. In the parking lot, the cars that are infront of us were stopped by UAE police. So we were pretty anxious about what the whole thing is about as you don’t see cops in these places unless there is an issue. As time went by our turn came. We lowered our window and this guy started talking to us in Arabic. We were looking at each other without a clue. So this guy says “Do u want me to explain this in English, Arabic or Malayalam??” We were like “alright! We can adjust with English”. This guy then talked about how to drive in the sand storm. Whether you are comfortable with driving? What to do when there is a rain. He completed his conversation by giving us a pamphlet which explains how to drive in English and Malayalam! Imagine that! A pamphlet printed in Malayalam handed out by UAE cops! More than that, all my office colleagues knows Malayalam or wants to learn Malayalam. No wonder middle east is called the second home of mallus!

Another interesting thing to note is about the airfares. I was checking how much it costs to go to doha on qatar air. It gave me result saying 900AED. Then i checked how much it costs to go to cochin. It gave me 600AED!!! YES only 600AED to travel across the arabian sea to india. this is true for all the airlines operating out of gulf! the flight charges to fly to any neigbour is more than the cost to travel to india, esp. south india!! unbelievable as it may sound, a quick search will give u the same results!

There are lots of entertainment avenues. We went to the beach. There is a paid and public beach. People sunbathe, swim, do surfing, everything is fine. Then there is zayed sports city in auh where you have swimming, snooker, ice-skating ring, bowling all at decent rates.

Auh has one of the biggest mangrove forests in the region.About 40 km2 of mangroves. You can see it when you enter the city towards the marshy sides.

There are always talks about Arabs having an upper hand in the rule of the law. But I think it’s perfectly legitimate for them to have a priority because it’s ultimately their country and we all are guests here. The fact that they are tolerating this much is itself a reason for us to not complain. There was statement by the sheikh recently that Emiratis should be the last to be expelled from a company. There was uproar over this in the expat world. But this is nothing compared to the atrocities that we have in India based on regionalization, minoritisation and what not. I believe that UAE has an economy that has enough depth to absorb atleast the 5% of the total working class which will constitute the Emiratis.

All the more my experience here has been pleasant. The climate has also been pleasant, but the scorching heat can start anytime. I will update you on my new experiences in this enigmatic place as and when I encounter them.