Jamboree.!

One hundred and thirty five days, twenty hours, and fifty two minutes: The amount of time I spend in this fantasy land.

This jamboree that’s filled with white draped men, names that invariably begin with ‘Al’, malls built literally out of granite, air-conditioned environments, coffee made with condensed milk, roti that could be a very good substitute to a table mat, a place where luxury is cheap and service is costly, a place which people believe sells gold at dirt cheap prices (which in fact is not at all the case), where Mercedes and BMWs roam like the Maruti 800s do in India, where there are more expatriates than the nationals, where people ride SUVs with their legs propped up as if they are riding camels, where the rates for a 5 star hotel suite on a Valentine’s Day night starts from INR 6,00,000, where vegetarians find it particularly difficult to survive, a place which truly is a Mecca of retail, though surprisingly it still remains unorganized in many ways, a place about which you can have no statistical data available whatsoever, a place which is in the process of constructing the world’s longest tower and haven’t declared its actual height for the fear that someone else might build a tower longer than theirs, a place which is truly an oasis made out of sand, the jamboree that’s called Dubai.

Phew.! That was nice.! Maybe I’ll get a few more the next time.