She Moves So Fast, Her Body’s Only Keeping Up

My brother and I were gossiping about my mum, as we usually do, and we were talking about her insane plans for everything: for holidays, for where she wants to eat, what she wants to do. She sits at the iMac planning holidays for next year, and does so quite earnestly, down to the hotels she will stay in and the buses she will take to go from this hotel to that restaurant. No prizes for guessing where those genes came from. Mum lives in the future, my brother (who, incidentally, is named… Adrian, did you know?) said. She has the habit of coming by to announce, Tuesday we are going out for somebody’s dinner at this place ok, keep it free. (Which Tuesday? We know better to ask now.) Oh, that Tuesday… one and a half months from now, don’t say I didn’t tell you. My brother then said mum travels so fast — in her head — her body has trouble keeping up. Like when she thinks about going to eat bird’s nest at the Bangkok Chinatown, she’s already there even before she gets on that flight (she does). Or when she wants to eat laksa at Kelantan Road, her mind is already there and her body’s only playing catch up when she makes that journey.

I have a different kind of problem, but it’s related. I live in the future too, one that’s unsure if my body is catching up with my head. I can’t say very much more, but one of the ways in which my body is catching up with the places my head’s already been (all over the place), is, at this point, on the cusp of moving itself to the Gulf.

You heard right. The Gulf. I’m moving… to Dubai. Next month. This time. I’m as shocked as you are. But why? You ask. I’ll give you the only answer travel writers will give you: why not, it’s there, if you don’t like it… there is ALWAYS that bus and that border to cross. On a random, mindless day surfing the web as usual, contemplating life and the next six months of it, the idea of going somewhere I had never thought of going popped into my head. I wrote to someone to ask about job prospects, and two seconds later had one. One I liked the sound of, one that more or less involves what I currently do and have been trying to do freelance, but with salary, medical insurance, and the safety of (dare I say it) corporate expenses if and when I do travel for work. More details when I get there, but no, I’m not… selling out. I made sure I firmly established my future bosses and I have a good understanding about the important things in life (namely, preferred choices of German beer, followed by an appreciation of Nepali chai and female bodies), and more importantly an understanding of such things as stipulated working hours, or the lack thereof. It could have been the alcohol and shisha I fed them, but I think my major fears of regular employment — those involving any form of working hours, and any form of routine — is mostly unfounded. Like most people going to Dubai… it’s a short term move and I should be back in this part of the world before anyone misses me, not necessarily in this country but definitely within a 380 km radius, northwards.

Some of my best friends — Tanmay, and Carrie, in the same city; the other people I love — Z and Alp, a budget flight away in good old Istanbul. The love of my life four time zones behind, instead of eight, and a quick Emirates flight away. All of India by my side, including my Bombay.

I think we’ll be okay.

When I get to the Gulf, I want to sing I Am Malayali to every Mallu I meet (especially my boss), and if I ever see Dr Yohan Chacko (who recorded that song), thank him for helping start off the very inexplicable chain of events that’s led to me being meaningfully, and I think happily, employed, in that incredible roundabout way that only happens on the web.

In other news, as a public announcement of sorts. If you run to your nearest bookstore, I have something in the August/India issue of the Asian Geographic, and one more next one or next next, have a short piece in the International Institute for Asian Studies’ Women Warriors edition, and soon my essay, “The Longest Way to Dinner”, will be appearing in a food magazine. It gets better. The whole of the coming week, I can have amazing char siew, amazing chicken wings (end of Jalan Alor), and an amazing girl. I’ll miss them most when I go (along with the family, of course!), but I’m really lucky because they all either move about as quickly and madly as I do (i.e. the girl), or never go anywhere at all (i.e. the char siew, the chicken wings, and the girl).

There are lots of things happening in the background too; the freelance writing and photography I will take on, with all the benefits of a radically different geographical and cultural hub I never envisioned; the empire I am slowly building, and funding with a Gulf salary.

2009, and beyond, with all the big big things in it, and you, seems even brighter and bigger than it did when I first dreamed about 2008 with you in it.

Proof that I’m totally cut out for the desert: how many people can say, I’m in the centrespread of a daily tabloid… on a camel?

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