Shawarma for the soul

Arrival Anti-climax

Was wondering what I’d blog about when I get here… but fortunately for me, there hasn’t been a lack of peculiar episodes ever since my arrival. My first time at Sharjah Airport was punctuated with derision, disdain, contempt, disapproval – if you are gonna point out that those words are similar in meaning, well, I’m trying to drive the point home mister! While my dad thought that my response was largely leaning on over reaction, I couldn’t help the arrogance. Sharjah, a sister city to Dubai, was more of an anti-climax than anything else!
Labourers from all over – Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iraq, even Azerbaijan — queued up in the line next to mine to avail of Hala services… I for one wanted to machao hala for the poor organisation skills… Why would you just have one counter with just two employees serving aeroplane-loads of people?? (Here I should mention that they did apologise for their incompetence with posters everywhere that read: Sharjah Airport is under expansion and development. Sorry for the inconvenience.)
Well, not everyone had to stand in the damn line… I was among the unwelcome few with a duplicate visit visa and the damn procession lead to two indifferent souls giving out the original version of what let me be in this country! That done, I was out in a jiffy… well, almost.
The baggage claim area held another revelation – the damn wheels of my trolley bag had miraculously disappeared. Since I packed light, I carried it and was subsequently robbed of the opportunity of walking out of the terminal with my nose up in the air and my bag trailing behind at a respectable distance.
Overwhelmed with the feeling that I had got off the plane in the wrong country, what with labourers sleeping at my feet and turning this Emirate’s airport into Mumbai Central Station, I asked my father why in heavens name did I have to arrive at Sharjah when Dubai was a gazillion-times better-equipped airport???
“Because it takes as long for me to drive to Dubai as much as it takes for you to fly here from Mumbai,” was my Dad’s calm reply! That silenced me… well, for the next ten minutes at least.
And to cut a long story short – no, I never cut long stories short J now, do I? – I headed to my home away from home.

Off white lies

My home is bathed in off white – yup, everything – including chairs, futon, chaise lounge, curtains, walls… and on the living room wall is a portrait of the other woman in my dad’s life. Well, it is a disputed fact in the family on how old she really is, but the ironic part of the story is; on being warned by my aunt that she should get rid of the competition, my ma gingerly replied, “But, I got her for him!” Talk about open relationships! So there she stands looking down on all of us everyday, as if to say, “I dare you to look as good in a sari sans the blouse?”
Another feature that adorns our house is my dad’s exhaustive crystal collection. He’s as obsessed about it as my mom’s about cleaning and believe me the term OCD was definitely coined with these two in mind. So, every occasion he gets, he’s sure to find an excuse to buy off white accompaniments; but crystal ware is a sure-fire purchase. In fact, his latest acquisition includes these two crystal bears and a charging bull…ya, he’s got his own stock market theme goin’ on here.
While, I’m not too much a fan of the bears, the bull is an exquisite piece carved out of one piece of crystal… (I still won’t spend so much on crystal…I’d rather steal them from Dad!)

Star attractions

Quick list of what I missed most about this place:

a) 24/7 ENGLISH Radio…not one, not two but I could choose from a selection of five or six English channels… what a change from GO 92.5 and Red FM’s Himesh Reshammiya trash.

b) Getting lost in Julie Andrew’s comic timing, Frank Sinatra’s mid-western morality, Orson Welles’ intense dialogue-delivery – yup, this is a film buff’s haven! I have access to more film channels than I can count… They have this channel called TCM – Turner Classic Movies, Channel 33 or One (as it is called now), Star Movies (The damn ban hasn’t been lifted back home yet), and of course the array of pre-paid movie channels too choose from… – I’m hooked!!!

c) I’m the queen of the couch!!! This melt-into, off white, lounge that we have is something I simply want to pack and take home… Also, the dozen packets of Bugles – original and cheese flavoured – and the home theatre system simply buckle me down to the lounge… There’s no way I’m moving…

‘Shoe’ting pain

Dad decided to take me for a spin and I decided it was a good time to take my stilettos on a test-walk! Our first pit stop was at my aunt’s place. My elevated status was observed and remarked on by my oddball uncle who said, “You’ve grown sooooooooooooooooo tall!” He didn’t bother to look at my feet and I didn’t bother to correct him. Also, I was simply happy that I could rest my feet by then for the damn things were killing me…
My aunt on the other hand was too busy showing off my cousin’s girl friend and thrusting chocolates down my throat. Every time I declined, she’d force it into my mouth saying, “It’s got a Kiwi filling from New Zealand!” Now, how could just the filling be from New Zealand?? I didn’t care much for Kiwi or New Zealand but I had to gulp down at least five since she was determined to finish it off, lest she polish ‘em off herself and put on the weight she had so painstakingly shed!
Next, we headed to Home Centre, a one-stop mall for furniture. We wanted to surprise mom with a gift… By the time I went from aisle to aisle and passed children spilling out of shopping carts, women lunging at curtains, men rolling their eyes at the women lunging at curtains, I was in excruciating pain…In fact, I didn’t realize I was doing a cross between a duck walk and a seal’s shuffle – trying to balance my foot in such a way that the pain wouldn’t shoot up as much as it did!

Furnish a feast

With Ramadan on, I was under the impression that people would break their fast to feast on food. But to my utter surprise they seemed more eager to serve a buffet of furniture. They pounced at fixtures, lamps, pillow covers, as though they were going out of fashion.
The frenzy reached fever pitch when sounds of glass bowls, ceramic vases crashing to the floor came from every corner of the store… not an exaggeration! My dad merely said, “With a 70 per cent discount sale, that too on a Friday, what did you expect?” I was silenced once again.

Punctured tyre, inflated ego

After we bought a regal patch-work quilt, we moved toward the parking lot… my father didn’t realize I was lagging behind until he reached the car. I simply gave up…removed those blasted things off my feet and took baby steps to the car… It was the first time I was walking on the soil of Sharjah… (more aptly, on the sands of the Emirate!)
After 10 minutes of trying to maneuver out of this tight spot an Audi left my dad’s SUV in, he was a brimful of curses (I’d need another post altogether on how colourful my Dad gets when he’s in one of those moods!)
Just then, the tyre went over what we at that point thought was a divider but later turned out to be our undoing! Driving just a block ahead, my dad realised the vehicle was leaning towards the left… Pulling over, his worst doubts were confirmed. He had his first puncture!
Now replacing the tyre wasn’t a joke, especially since my father is one of those diminutive SUV drivers who are barely seen behind the wheel. As we waited for help, (Read: Help here translates to pathans who either help for a small amount of money or just coz they have a good Samaritan gene ingrained in them…or so I heard!) I got off the car, sans the stilettos…
There was this jingbang of kids piling out of their vehicle parked right next to us. With the bonnet propped open, their car seemed to have engine trouble…but the parents were nowhere in sight…it seemed that whoever was with the four kids thought it was better to leave ‘em there and go look for help.
Meanwhile, three pathans did offer help… unfortunately (and that word seems to pepper a lot of my episodes till now), they didn’t know the right way to get the jack on…and what do you know, we ended up with a broken jack. That’s all my dad needed!
While all this heaving and pulling on the part of the pathans was goin’ on a band of young boys, locals by birth but of Pakistani origin were observing closely the developments of our plight…At first from far, then a little closer and finally when the pathans gave up and left, the boys offered their services. While, they tried their hand with the broken jack, they couldn’t do much too…
Frustrated, my dad decided to go in search of a mechanic, the boys promised they’d watch over the car… what they meant is that they’d watch over the girl! Now I’m not a self-aggrandising gal, but…well you’ll know soon enough.
The kids with the broken car approached me and repeated “English??” at least six times… I said “yes”… then the elder one of the four, a pig-tailed seven year-old, pointed to herself and said “Arabi”… In my broken Arabic I asked “sayra kharbah” (Your car’s broken down?)… I never got a reply to that coz all she wanted to know was why I didn’t have any shoes on… After ten minutes of trying to point at the heel of my stilettos and another five recalling what was the Arabic equivalent of “ouch!” was, I gave up…They dubbed me a loon and went off pulling each others hair and clambering onto the roof of their car. (Yup, I was bein’ entertained!)
Before long, the boys trickled out…only one of ‘em stayed till my father got back an hour later with the mechanic and more importantly, a jack. As the mechanic screwed in the new tyre and I requested dad to at least thank the boy who had stayed, putting his life on stand-by for total strangers, the boy waved off the thank you with a “no problem” and stealthily walking past the passenger seat where I was to get in tried to pass me something. Now I was taken completed by surprise. Realising that I wasn’t gonna clutch onto anything he was giving me, he threw whatever it was into the car and ran… It turned out to be a chit with his number on it! Amazing… the lengths they go to.
Well, this passing-of-chit phenomenon has happened to me before – but it has always been more often when boys spot a gang of girls hanging out by themselves at a mall or a theatre…But this happened right in front of my father…although he was too busy to notice since he was mourning the loss of the car’s tyre. Well, can’t blame ‘em… In a land where courtship is a taboo, where plainclothes policemen lurk through malls keeping a close eye on boys trying to strike conversations with girls, this was bound to happen. As the cliche goes: Desperate times, desperate measures… And this chit couture has proved to be a hit, coz the boy/gal just has to slip, drop or pass it and the receiver on the basis of whether he/she liked the looks of him would call on the number.
As for if I called the “boy”… well, let’s just say I’m not desperate enough!

(*Have pics of most of the things I’ve penned above…yes, I’m one of those sneaky types who stealthily makes use of my camera phone… the picture quality ain‘t that good coz I’m still getting used to the phone…Cut me some slack will ya, it’s just two days since I bought the phone.. Will try to upload it soon)