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Editorial
Destined to Dwell in Dubai (Contributed by Pallabi Chakraborty)
Dubai, an enchantment for me, is the city where architecture attains unbelievable. The city is eligible to make you forget the subtle line between reality and hyper-reality. Sinuous curves touching the sky-line, Dubai is all about glitters.
Society in Dubai is bifurcated in terms of wealth; the native rich sect and the working class. It is striking to note how Dubai welcomes the rest of the world. ‘Dubai jobs’ is quite an exciting jargon, with a different face when comes to reality.
Dubai streets are flooded with Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and so on. The interesting part comes to the surface when you get to see them toiling primarily as taxi drivers, hotel staffs and so on.
Talking to them, one can discern different stories underlying individual immigration. I met a man of thirty-five from Pakistan, who incidentally explained me that he used to work as a graphic designer in a company. Getting paid enough for himself, but not enough to take care of his family there, he decided to shift to taxi driving. According to him, when he was working in the previous company he never used to get holidays, whereas, now he can get even six months off and go back to his home country.
Numerous single men and women from foreign lands work there. As it is an overtly expensive place to reside, most of them fail to afford their families. As a result, a sense of cumulative loneliness pervades the place.
Security in the domain is very high; a single lapse in following driving rules can lead to unaccountable financial loss. The National laws are not at all lenient to the foreigners, if not more rigid. A single driving license can cost unreal. For the Indians living there, it is easy to earn Dirham, but hard to preserve it.
During the debt crisis in Dubai, a lot of rumors brimmed over. The panic resulted in stories of foreigners getting ousted. Though most of the projects are on, Dubai suffered badly, for sure; resulting in panic-stricken insomniac foreign workers. However, Dubai is expecting to come out of the predicament with the aid of some promising schemes.
Despite the tinsel town provoking larger than life fantasies, it remains a cold shouldered business center for most of the hollowmen living on working visa. If you talk to them, you will find them satisfied with the system, the law, the management, but with no emotions attached with it. Engrossed in every possible clinquant, Dubai for most of the dwellers is a phase to make money and return home as a rich man.
Editor’s Temptation
This year September, I had written a book called The Wordsmith Sutras - a collection of 200 word essays each, on the themes of our lives like Education, Sex, Fitness, Media and Debt. In Debt, I wrote
Debt is an addiction. It is addictive only when there are too many people offering debt. Be aware of debt. In the smoke and mirror show called this world, this easy credit (=debt) may dry up leaving you in addiction and also to pay interest for previous addictive sessions.
Debt on Money has ruined men, nations and civilizations. Be aware of debt.
I could not anticipate that within 60 days, Dubai meltdown would take place and a soverign country (or nation-state) would suspend its payment. Yes, debt has ruined many.
Now, consider these 2 pictures below – of the same street
Dubai Centre Road in 1990 Dubai Centre Road in 2004
[Courtesy: http://suddendebt.blogspot.com/2009/11/dubais-shut-up-finance.html ]
Where did all these debt go? In many extravagenza which can be rightly told to be hubristic. Who paid? The greediest with the purse to match the greed. Who allowed? An oligrachy. And blood built it, wealth enjoyed it.
The hubris was seen to be believed. In these 30 years, all achievement was for the eye or ear or skin or taste or smell. There was not a single edifice which could have anything to do with something of the mind, of the intellect. It was strange. This whole Dubai saga - the real estate boom, the hedonism always made me realize the fact that there lies something, something very valuable for humanity that could not choose to make a Parthenon ten times bigger or Taj Mahal some 900 metre high. It was not only about getting cheap labour, technology, easy money – it was about a sense of proportion and message.
A huge population from Kerala (Malabar) – where I spent a decade of my youth will be severely impacted. So will be Bangladesh and other South Asian countries whose blood built these hubristic extravagenza.
As the Dubai oligarchs stride in high hubris with their dream and vision and as I hear (from media) that UK banks feature heavily in the list of lenders, I would remembered what an Englishman, some two hundred years back told something so compellingly about hubris – of a relic in stone in some desert, may be in the desert of Arabia
Ozymandias – Percy Byshe Shelley [1791 -1822 ]
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said ---"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear :
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
[Courtesy: Debra. Inspired and taken from her comment in http:// suddendebt.blogspot.com]
Our young, humble, debt-free Pentasect will see another new year next month. All regular features remain with news of a New Venture: Embrace the Leadership
Best wishes,
Pritam Bhattacharyya
Editor-at-Large
editor@pentasect.com
December 2009
