Holiday Travails!

Time was when we actually waited for those cherished holidays - Eid, Diwali, Christmas, New Year, birthdays and anniversaries - with pleasurable anticipation - time out, time spent with family, quality time, we gave it different epithets - these days really gave one a chance to catch up with oneself, and in a manner of speaking rediscover one's favourite pursuits....becoming a parent, or rather being a parent to today's kids puts a whole new spin on things - a 360 degree spin, in fact! Not only are holidays now spent with itineraries built around children's schedules, indeed they are the ones that form those itinerariees these days.....close your eyes for two minutes longer when you wake up in the morning, and you are invariably forced to jump up and attend to some thing that apparently urgently demands your attention - the older one has thrashed the younger one in the bathroom for making bubbles in the wash basin, or the youngster - more precocious of the two perhaps, has taken the older one's "life purpose" and most precious possession - the PSP and smashed it - you swallow, remind yourself about the importance of staying calm and meditating, and then promptly go and get smack, bang in the middle of a raging dispute! Which mark you is a lose-lose situation - if you take one side against the other, you are accused of favouritism, if you ground them both, you are such an indefatigable monster! Taking them through their studies, sorting out playtimes, fixing meals, resolving arguments and keeping them from the brink of disaster wherever they may turn....is it any wonder that you return from long breaks at home, with a big smile on your face, greeting colleagues at work with really happy expressions, causing them to grumble - wonder what she looks so happy about??! They have no idea, do they?! Take a holiday? No thanks, I'd rather go to work - or war! Am I the only one that feels this way?!!

What Moves Us?

The other day, sitting in the darkened surroundings of of the full-house Cinestar Cinemas at Deira City Centre, watching the new, much-hyped Hindi movie, Love Aajkal, I was forced to wonder what it was that drove us to be such obsessive, compulsive consumers of the same "Shaadi-Pyaar" theme - what is it about Bollywood that remains so ingrained in our blood that we faithfully head off to catch the first-day-first-show of yet another love story that revolves the formulaic hero-heroine-villain-singing and dancing around trees-plot to kill-parents-denoument.....why subject ourselves to three hours of nonstop, mindless entertainment? As an NRI, I have to say, I believe there's some justification for this behaviour - Hindi movies for me, and all my countless countrymen who do faithfully turn up to watch each one, I am sure, have become a panacea for missing India and home - our culture, traditions, beliefs, attitudes and all that makes the quintessential Indian are reflected faithfully in these flicks - yes, even when half of them are based in London, New York and Sydney! My husband refuses to join me on these movie trysts, saying, "Phew! Imagine subjecting yourself to three hours of unadulterated rubbish! Pyaar, pyaar, pyaar, shaadi....don't they really have anything more informative to talk about?" Well, the point is really, do people who go to these movies, actually go there for information or plain "masti" and entertainment? Of course, they don't want to hear all the serious developments in the world of climate change and fluctuating oil prices...they are here to simply switch off from their grim and often not-so-palatable realities....so of course they are more than delighted with seeing the same thing again and again! Why not? We all understand love, we all understand ambition and the need to become successful, our lives are all about fuelling aspirations and striving to meet them! And that is exactly all the Hindi movie promises to provide - three hours of absolute "suspension of disbelief" - heroines who are glamorous and efficient dressed in fashions to die for cavorting around places most of us would only have seen on films! And that feeling of fulfilment at the end of three hours when the lights go up and the final credits scroll on, is hard to explain to someone who bad-mouths these films! When Shah Rukh Khan manages to beat up the bad guys and win the heroine for himself, we all sigh and rejoice in our hearts - because it seems like there is some justice after all on God's green earth.....naive, foolish, sentiment? Well, tell that to the audiences that have fuelled and sustained the world's largest film industry through good times and bad!

Print Media More Relevant Than Ever!

A recent article questioning the importance and indeed even the relevance of newspapers and the print media in an era of instant messaging and communication has thrown up once again all of those questions - did radio kill newspapers? Did the advent of Television effectively silence the radio? And then again - with the all powerful Internet that spawned blogging, facebook, twitter, digg, stumble upon......and what else have you(!) are we any closer to seeing the end of Television itself?? The thing to realise possibly is to appreciate that all these different forms of mass media have their own use and purpose - just like we never forget to ride a bicycle or swim, we never forget to read newspapers for their depth and "tangible" reality. That is not to say the other media do not have that sense of reality, but consider this - are they not still tantamount to rumours until you actually read the printed word on something you can touch and feel? The article also made some interesting conjectures about how the printed word can continue to exist and give itself an enduring shelf-life - and it is all about convergence really. If newspapers can exercise a kind of dominant role in complementing the other types of media, and even embracing them, they have a far better chance of survival in the long run, than they would by ignoring them!
http://http://www.kippreport.com/2009/07/is-print-dead-part-i/

You Know You've Been In Dubai Too Long When.....

...You decide to take the elevator rather than the stairs to cover the smallest distances - You are on a desert safari and start looking anxiously all around for a Pepsi and McDonald's as relief from the heat ( and you probably will actually find it too!). Your competition with your girlfriends includes issues like which of you got the cheaper duplicate bag from Karama ("How much did your Chanel set you back?" is the nature of these questions!!) - You invite friends home and get take-away's - You wait for the weekends and then cannot wait for the week to begin again - You take in a dose of retail therapy no matter what the time and day to beat the "blue" feeling - You choose to live a life beyond your means and then wonder where the money is all going, You tell yourself this is only a temporary thing, and then find you are stuck with a car loan, a housing loan, and a maxed-out credit card! You think it is is exceedingly backward to actually pay for a purchase with cash - "What, no credit card? Not even a debit card??") .....You come into town young, nubile and naive and leave old, wizened and grey! You believe it is not only fun, but really vital to visit all the new shopping malls that mushroom one to the month! You cut traffic lines and raise your hands in obscene gestures if anyone has the temerity to honk at you from behind! You choose to speak your own version of the Queen's English, liberally peppering it with words and phrases from India, China, Australia, Timbuctu! You consider a BBQ to be an absolutely tame affair unless it's got "spiked" soft drinks and lots of it. You believe that Polite Conversation is actually asking your friends / acquaintances about their visa status, salary and how many houses they own back home! You think the weather's fine when it's a blazing 35 degrees in the shade.....Your best dreams involve moving into a Villa, a three-bedroom apartment with a maid to pick up the pieces for you and a chauffeur thrown in for good measure!You start dividing the years on the basis of the Ramadan, Eid, Summer and then some! You decide that the Shawarma could be standard fare on any dinner menu. You pay lip service to stopping pollution and greening the planet and then in the same breath decide that Dubai is so cool in planning the world's first air-conditioned beach and boasting the world's first indoor ski resort! You break up your day with what you did prior to, between and after shopping trips, You have to own that perfect piece of jewellery which you will never use. You have to buy books that you will never read, and accummulate them for all to admire.......and if they ask you what it's about, just say..."Oh, that one I am still reading!")......You enjoy coming back from a holiday so much more than going for a vacation back home! :)

Dubai Bling!

Whenever I hear people talking about the sorry state of the global economy, about how expensive things have become, and about how one in three people in the UAE have lost their jobs, my attention invariably wanders to those designer boutiques, which are a dime a dozen - and that is hardly even putting any value on the cost of the items these stores stock, if you know what I mean! - Manalo Blahniks, Gucci, Fendi, Dolce & Gabbani dazzle Dubai's fashion enthusiasts and wannabes making it impossible to pass by without atleast enquiring what they actually cost! And truly, the thing with Dubai is I guess, that you get carried away - it has unwittingly or perhaps much more strategically set up for itself a reputation of being a Designer City - where you need to own designer bags and shoes and clothes, or atleast amazing imitations from your friendly neighbourhood Karama stores - to actually belong! So you see every possible imitation under the sun - it could be fake Gucci sunglasses or Chanel bags....or whatever! You always see people negotiating best prices, the Big Red Sale sign is never absent from store windows for long, and we always see tourists to the city and the local yokels bargaining cheek-by-jowl for the best designer steals......"Bling It On" seems to be the Duabi slogan......and it is just not the Europeans, or the Americans - this seems to be a classless, casteless addiction that transcends physical boundaries.......what drives them, you wonder.....I was never one of those design-tastic people.....yes, always had the shopping bug alright, but it took coming to Dubai, and becoming a veteran of these parts to see the bug manifest into a full-blown epidemic, for which there's no apparent cure! So does the average Dubai-ian actually blow up large sums of their hard-earned moolah on these its-and-bits just for a lark....well, you've heard of music being the food of love....in Dubai it appears Shopping is the food of love. And the national pastime as well....did someone say recession? funny Ha-Ha, and Funny Peculiar! :)

Your Life Is Now A Tabloid!

Even as we resign ourselves to going about our daily tasks, so conscious of making the right impression, so careful and discreet about everything we do, simply because we are just so paranoid about making a "good impression" (who decides what's good is a good question, isn't it?), we suddenly find ourselves hurtling along the information superhighway, on which privacy is something unheard of - where bandying one's conscious thoughts, and even unconscious ones at times!- one for each minute of your waking hours - is the sort of fuel that keeps your vehicle in motion.....what am I talking about? Well, simply the whole obsession with Facebooking and Twittering and what have you! Why has it become so necessary to tell your friends and family - and believe you me, a considerable number of those 300+ friends you may have on Facebook, might not even be your "friends" in any sense of the term.....they inhabit a virtual world which is quite astronomically more dangerous than the real one we inhabit - for one simple reason.....in this Virtual World you don't know who your friends are or by the same token, who your enemies are, either!
Today it was interesting to read the Gulf News about His Highness Shaikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Ruler of Dubai, and Vice President of the UAE turning 60, and his Facebook page being deluged with complimentary messages! What was even more interesting perhaps was a research piece carried by online newsletter Matoob research which talked of how popular one world leader was versus the other....all based on the number of Facebook friends they had! What a funny world! Are you on Facebook....and Twitter....Do you Stumble Upon....or Digg....have you a blog? Or you have no life at all....seems to be the new-age mantra!

http://http://www.gulfnews.com/nation/Government/10331542.html

http://http://business.maktoob.com/20090000007716/Dubai_ruler_Facebook_star;_Brit_PM_friendless/Article.htm?utm_campaign=Day-Newsletter&utm_medium=Main-News1&utm_source=Day-Newsletter&utm_content

It's Summer Time......And The City Sleeps!

Have you ever looked at the changing faces of Dubai, and wondered at this city which has so many extremes to offer? There's the hustle and bustle of the city in winter, where everyone is out and about and a spirit of exuberance is a palpable entity in itself, there's the quiet and sober summer months, when people leave the city in droves and the city, like a great big giant just stretches, lies back and goes into a deep slumber......we're in one such hibernation phase right now, where it seems not even the birds are around in as large numbers as before - everything is quiet and subdued......the decision this year to actually extend the summer break for schools - private and Government by another 3 weeks is simply going to add to the students' festive mood. But it does make parents pause to think what on earth to do about making sure the students do complete their portions, and to worry about the inexorable pressure that will be thrust upon them once schools do finally reopen? Isn't it sad that in countries like India, and even up until now in the UAE, the Holy Month of ramadan has been a month of reflection and solemnity, of devotion and abstinence, of going about your work as usual, even while you fasted and turned your thoughts to God.....and here we are, being given time off from school owing to ramadan, should be viewed as some kind of an anti-religious thing to do - after all, this is like saying you have a special license to compromise education, simply because you are fasting....fasting or feasting, difficult or not, the spirit of the season needs to be honoured. Not to mention that students need to be given an example that they have to carry on with work, regardless what may be the hardships involved. the irony is that in several countries of the developing world, including India, there are no special timings or benefits for people who are fasting. Quite often they go about their daily tasks with a minimum of fuss and drama. Perhaps it is time to observe festive seasons in letter and spirit....and reap the benefits of being more disciplined.....