Anita Shirodkar's Blog - Posts Tagged "anita-shirodkar"
Mall Walks, Dancing Fountains and Soul Food
As someone who spends half a year in Dubai, I'm often called upon to defend my choice of second home to the critics who cry mall culture, no soul, police state and terrible weather. As I write, I admit the temperature outside is soaring into the mid forties, and my exercise option for covering those 10000 steps (though I manage only about 8000, not more!) tends to be walking in the air-conditioned retail vastness of Dubai Mall. But that's only because I'm not the treadmill type. There are plenty of perfectly intimidating gyms around me. Also, there's a lot to be said for retail therapy of the window watching type. What better exercise encouragement than those impossibly undernourished mannequins clad in Herve Leger bandage dresses? Or those athletic figures diving down the waterfall? Although given the nature of Dubai's mall culture, one has to turn a resolute blind nose to the delicious aromas wafting from PappaRoti and Cinnabon.
When I first came to Dubai as a new bride in the mid eighties, it was not a cool place to be. Apparently, I was nuts; giving up a completely glamorous job as an Art Director in one of the hottest ad agencies of the time, living in the sand dunes and hobnobbing with the riff-raff. In those days, the SRK's and the Bacchhans didn't have homes here. There was no Palm, Dubai Mall wasn't built and the Burj Khalifa not even thought of. Dubai was, as far as Indians went, an extension of the Malabar Coast, the residents of Kerala having made it Their Own Country. All of this was fine with me- I continued with my art directorial career, admittedly in slightly less glamorous surroundings than I was used to. I'm a little hazy about when the perception of Dubai changed, but change it did. A slow but sure trickle of advertising people I knew (pretty much the same ones who'd called me nuts before) began to filter into Dubai, many asking my well connected husband for help finding jobs. That was roughly when we moved back to India.
I'm back in Dubai now after a break of twenty-plus years, and amazingly, it has morphed into a glitzy, vibrant, cosmopolitan city that I'm very comfortable calling home. From my front lawn, I have a clear vision of the tallest building in the world, its steel and glass magnificence proudly glittering in the night sky. It is incredibly hypnotic, watching this imposing edifice every night. And every night, a crowd gathers at the artificial lake below the Burj to watch Dubai's dancing fountains- bigger, grander and prettier than the ones at the Bellagio in Vegas.
It's true that everything in Dubai is bigger, shiner, glitzier. (Move over, Shanghai.) That's largely because it's such a new city, and everything is built state-of-the-art. Built with a vision, too- here's a city that's actually been planned, instead of mushrooming haphazardly all over the place. The appearance, almost overnight, of a fun stretch of Al Wasl that has been named Box Park was a happy surprise; it's right opposite where I live. With edgy colours and single storey shops and restaurants made with brightly painted containers, Box Park has once again brought a new dimension to the cityscape. As will the ambitious 545 million dollar canal project that is currently taking shape at Safa Park- we are expecting our own version of Ponte Vecchio in the near future. With, I should add, little or no inconvenience to commuters- something which we as Indians know very little about!
But all that glitz and shine is just one part of it. What I'm truly fascinated by in Dubai is how so many nationalities manage to live together without treading on each others toes. Everybody minds their own business, and all of us feel at home here. The Indian community makes Dubai its own, simply by taking the attitude that Dubai is the cleanest, most liveable city in India. You'll find everything from idlis at Saravana Bhavan and chaat at Puranmals to anarkalis at Meena Bazar and incredible soul food at Calicut Paragon. Many taxi drivers and supermarket staff speak Hindi, and many Indians living here bring in domestic help from India. Living in Dubai is, quite simply, like living in what we would like India to be.
The Europeans and Americans have made Dubai their own in a way only they know how- expat societies, English pub culture, golf courses, sailing clubs and water sports. And it's all very easily accessible, maybe more so than what they can expect back home. World class restaurants and hotels, resorts, nightclubs, bars, fabulous homes, beaches, marinas, concerts, Art Dubai, the Dubai Litfest, The Dubai International Film Fest and so much more... there is something here for every taste and nationality.
This is not meant to be a tourist guide to Dubai. It's a take on why so many people from across 200 countries choose to make Dubai their home. New York, London, Toronto are all melting pots of culture, but in Dubai it's a melting pot of nationalities as well as cultures. The expats here are still citizens of their own respective countries. The local Emirati population is estimated at less than 15 percent; the rest are all expatriates from all over the world. On an average working day I would have interacted with people from India, Nepal, the Phillipines, Egypt, Pakistan, the UK, Kenya, the USA, maybe Syria, Lebanon and of course local Emiratis. And if I've done the mall walk, I'd have chatted with a Russian sales girl in Russian, been served black coffee by a Croatian man and accepted a paper strip sprayed with a new perfume from a Nigerian girl. I'd have seen a leggy European woman dressed in the shortest of shorts with a strappy tee, and an Emirati woman covered in her abaya, with only her perfectly made up alabaster face shown to the world. Both equally beautiful, both equally at home. How can all this not make people more tolerant and accepting of what's different?
So I rest my case... I am happy to wait for the winter chill to set in, (Dubai weather is lovely for at least six months of the year) sit back in my garden chair, and watch the twinkling lights on the top of the Burj grow brighter as the evening grows darker.
When I first came to Dubai as a new bride in the mid eighties, it was not a cool place to be. Apparently, I was nuts; giving up a completely glamorous job as an Art Director in one of the hottest ad agencies of the time, living in the sand dunes and hobnobbing with the riff-raff. In those days, the SRK's and the Bacchhans didn't have homes here. There was no Palm, Dubai Mall wasn't built and the Burj Khalifa not even thought of. Dubai was, as far as Indians went, an extension of the Malabar Coast, the residents of Kerala having made it Their Own Country. All of this was fine with me- I continued with my art directorial career, admittedly in slightly less glamorous surroundings than I was used to. I'm a little hazy about when the perception of Dubai changed, but change it did. A slow but sure trickle of advertising people I knew (pretty much the same ones who'd called me nuts before) began to filter into Dubai, many asking my well connected husband for help finding jobs. That was roughly when we moved back to India.
I'm back in Dubai now after a break of twenty-plus years, and amazingly, it has morphed into a glitzy, vibrant, cosmopolitan city that I'm very comfortable calling home. From my front lawn, I have a clear vision of the tallest building in the world, its steel and glass magnificence proudly glittering in the night sky. It is incredibly hypnotic, watching this imposing edifice every night. And every night, a crowd gathers at the artificial lake below the Burj to watch Dubai's dancing fountains- bigger, grander and prettier than the ones at the Bellagio in Vegas.
It's true that everything in Dubai is bigger, shiner, glitzier. (Move over, Shanghai.) That's largely because it's such a new city, and everything is built state-of-the-art. Built with a vision, too- here's a city that's actually been planned, instead of mushrooming haphazardly all over the place. The appearance, almost overnight, of a fun stretch of Al Wasl that has been named Box Park was a happy surprise; it's right opposite where I live. With edgy colours and single storey shops and restaurants made with brightly painted containers, Box Park has once again brought a new dimension to the cityscape. As will the ambitious 545 million dollar canal project that is currently taking shape at Safa Park- we are expecting our own version of Ponte Vecchio in the near future. With, I should add, little or no inconvenience to commuters- something which we as Indians know very little about!
But all that glitz and shine is just one part of it. What I'm truly fascinated by in Dubai is how so many nationalities manage to live together without treading on each others toes. Everybody minds their own business, and all of us feel at home here. The Indian community makes Dubai its own, simply by taking the attitude that Dubai is the cleanest, most liveable city in India. You'll find everything from idlis at Saravana Bhavan and chaat at Puranmals to anarkalis at Meena Bazar and incredible soul food at Calicut Paragon. Many taxi drivers and supermarket staff speak Hindi, and many Indians living here bring in domestic help from India. Living in Dubai is, quite simply, like living in what we would like India to be.
The Europeans and Americans have made Dubai their own in a way only they know how- expat societies, English pub culture, golf courses, sailing clubs and water sports. And it's all very easily accessible, maybe more so than what they can expect back home. World class restaurants and hotels, resorts, nightclubs, bars, fabulous homes, beaches, marinas, concerts, Art Dubai, the Dubai Litfest, The Dubai International Film Fest and so much more... there is something here for every taste and nationality.
This is not meant to be a tourist guide to Dubai. It's a take on why so many people from across 200 countries choose to make Dubai their home. New York, London, Toronto are all melting pots of culture, but in Dubai it's a melting pot of nationalities as well as cultures. The expats here are still citizens of their own respective countries. The local Emirati population is estimated at less than 15 percent; the rest are all expatriates from all over the world. On an average working day I would have interacted with people from India, Nepal, the Phillipines, Egypt, Pakistan, the UK, Kenya, the USA, maybe Syria, Lebanon and of course local Emiratis. And if I've done the mall walk, I'd have chatted with a Russian sales girl in Russian, been served black coffee by a Croatian man and accepted a paper strip sprayed with a new perfume from a Nigerian girl. I'd have seen a leggy European woman dressed in the shortest of shorts with a strappy tee, and an Emirati woman covered in her abaya, with only her perfectly made up alabaster face shown to the world. Both equally beautiful, both equally at home. How can all this not make people more tolerant and accepting of what's different?
So I rest my case... I am happy to wait for the winter chill to set in, (Dubai weather is lovely for at least six months of the year) sit back in my garden chair, and watch the twinkling lights on the top of the Burj grow brighter as the evening grows darker.
