A dream city shattered

Every day my inbox gets flooded with press releases.(Mostly with unimportant releases, though) A year back, half of this were from Dubai.Now when things have slowed down, the steady flow has abated but there still is a trickle of such releases announcing to the world what Dubai is currently doing.
No, no more new buildings for some time...
The FM radio channels that we get here is all from Dubai and the world that side seemed to be shining, always, even when recession waves were hitting some countries and Dubai too to an extent.
It was the face of hard sell, of excessive marketing and now it has all gone bust...
Finally people are looking beyond the buildings and finding the face of the labourers who have suffered most in this crisis. Many of them have still not been payed their dues for more than a year, news reports say.
It was the most happening city, a city where dreams would be a reality, and a reporter had said, the city was more Las Vegas than Las Vegas.
Dubai, one of my cousins who lives there quipped, is the best city in India. It was a city in limelight and the torch-bearers were Indians too, Indians who have toiled hard to reach where they are.
But now dreams are being shattered, more now, than ever...
But I wish to God that the poor do not get poorer still while the rich are absolved of their sins of non payment of dues...

The Day After

Today is Amma's birthday and this year, we both (my sister and me) want her to remember this day as it is. Not as a day after the disaster that hit her some 29 years back.
November, she used to say, is a month of losses. For her and for us, too. Every year, this month she would be tensed throughout, as if expecting something bad to happen and come December, you could feel the tension waft out of her.
It is difficult not to be influenced by that particular incident, especially when it has rewritten her life, and particularly when she was so young, just about to enter her thirties, when it occurred.
When the sheltered life she lived, with her husband, was suddenly pulled away from her, leaving her alone and to top it all, with two girls to look after.
And when this incident had slowly taken a back seat, after 10 years, we had another incident in November, making her words seem even more ominous. That was when a thief got lucky, striking us at the right time, ransacking our house of all the jewels, a few months after my wedding. That incident pulled her back again, making her wallow further.
No, I don't want us to forget that incident, nor forget the few fading memories of Acha, I want her to go forward and take life as it comes not fear it for the shocks it gives, but also learn from the experiences.
So this day, we want Amma to think that November is a month of hope and happiness. Hope for all the things she wants to get done, and happiness by being with her grand children and be never alone…
Happy Birthday Amma.
From now remember November 23 and don't think of this special day as the day after Acha died…

Moving On

It is like taking off the most snug, comfy old nightwear and slipping into a stiff, trim and maybe a bit fashionable office wear. You know you should like it still you can't. You know it will be easier this way, still you feel like clinging to the odd comfort of the weathered clothing. You see the beautiful surrounding, love it and yet remember the secure grey compound.
I have shifted into a bigger place and am learning to love it, trying to forget the old cozy flat which fitted us perfectly when we arrived here from Mumbai.
"It is huge," I remember saying, when I arrived on our second floor flat, that day six years back. It certainly was huge when you have lived in Mumbai for long.
It was to this flat that I came four months heavy with my younger one, loaded with dreams and some disappointment too being confronted by the depressing colourless sandy landscape, the first sight when the plane touched down on the tarmac at Doha.
But it was from here that I started to develop as a person, be more than a wife or a mother, be a person with some thoughts or opinions of my own.
Now as I leave the flat, I take some memories and shed some junk collected on the way. I keep my memories safe, to take out, dust through and refresh occasionally with my kids and mostly K, while the junk, I leave aside happily, to collect some more in the new place…
As I shuffled down the stairs weighed down by luggage in both hands, I remembered how I had climbed down these very stairs, on the verge of delivery, just hours before N was born. And how I climbed back, sore and tired yet a proud mom, the second-time around, the very next day, with Amma behind holding her newest grandchild then…
How we had a huge office party, (one of the last times we did those), the fun and the games that we had. How we gathered so many families together for dinner and even in the cramped space, had a really wonderful time…
Now, as I drive to the new place, I hope I will have happier enriching times with friends and family…
With this I hope my hiatus from blogging is lifted and I can write freely and openly...