Desert Living–17 - Dubai airport

Dubai airport is supposedly one of the biggest in the world. This airport is acting as a connecting point to several parts of the world. Many flights across the globe have stopover in Dubai. This sprawling airport accommodates so many duty free shops. Prices in the shops do not look to be significantly higher than that in the outside market. If the purse is big or you have a credit card, take a walk around the airport. You will be tempted to buy.

As we walk along, doing window shopping, we can spot many people sleeping on the floor just below the chairs kept for passengers in waiting. It gives an impression that we are somewhere at a bus stand or a railway station in our country. If you happen to be in Pondicherry bus station, at any given time, you could spot two or three men lying on the platform, smeared with vomit. No one cares for this, because, drinking is the state sponsored occupation for many in this part of the world.

It is not factually correct to state that we could hardly spot Arabs in public places. We can see so many of them in “Bars”. In the bars, more than eighty per cent of the tables are occupied by the Locals. Sipping the nectar, they while away their time lazily there. In the other room next to this, skimpily dressed Indian beauties were dancing their heart out to earn a fortune. Outside both the rooms, at the door, men dressed up in ‘royal suits’ salute every visitor expecting some tips from the users of the bar, to make both the ends meet. Life has extremes like this. Dear friends, relax. Be unfazed by all that is happening around us. Don’t get so perturbed if you feel that nothing much could be achieved in life so far. If possible, try to snatch a chair from the Arab in the nearby bar and gulp a glass of Chivas Regal added with a few cubes of ice. Let the spirit sour high. Without spirit nothing can be achieved, after all….

Locals are also found is shopping malls. There are so many shopping malls in the city built in multi stories and lakhs of square feet in area. Carrefour has a number of malls here. We can spot a Carrefour in the city just as we can spot a KFC and a Mc Donald in a China city. There are flyovers constructed exclusively to reach shopping complexes. Dubai Mall must be the biggest among all. In the Dubai Mall the biggest attraction is the aquarium.

Dubai Aquarium, one of the largest tanks in the world at 51m x 20m x 11m and featuring the world’s largest viewing panel at 32.8m wide and 8.3m high. Dubai Aquarium has more than 33,000 living animals, representing more than 85 species including over 400 sharks and rays combined.

Dubai Aquarium's 270-degree acrylic walkthrough tunnel makes for incredible close-encounter experiences with some of the most fascinating underwater animals on the planet. A special 'lunar-cyclic' lighting system will change the ambience of the tank depending on the time of day. (courtesy -http://www.thedubaimall.com/en/entertainment/entertainment-section/dubai-aquarium-underwater-zoo.html)

There is facility to swim inside this aquarium wearing diving suit. In the glass container, there were a number of varieties of fish, big and small, swimming around. Each type of them flock together and ‘go places’ as a gang. The groupism in the glass container just reminded me of behaviour of we human beings. If we are in a group of people from all over the world, we tend to segregate according to the countries we come from. If we are in India, we segregate according to our states or language and in the company of people from the same state, we segregate as per our religions. If we are in the company of the people from same religion, we segregate as per caste and the division continues. The only difference between the creatures in that container and the humans is that, they do not fight with each other.

My return this time was by Jet airways. The beautiful girls on board the aircraft gave a distasteful experience this time. They called everyone ‘sir’, including me. The not so sincere call gave be some kind of itching sensation all over the body. The tone of that call was definitely not befitting a service driven industry like aviation.

The aircraft was only partly occupied. Hardly after one passenger occupied his seat, one of the air hostesses approached him and requested him to shift his seat to another vacant one. He did not like it first, but obliged to her repeated requests. After a while, a little boy approached one of the girls to help him answer nature’s call. She had virtually shooed him away to his seat. As the flight took off, I demanded a feedback form from one of the crew members. She suddenly wanted to know from me if I was satisfied with the service rendered by her. She even dared to say if I had any complaint to lodge through the feedback form, she will not give the form. I do not know if she really meant to say this. Crew members of some airline services are no longer justifying the popular belief that they shower tons of smiles on the passengers and suffocate them with care and attention.

As I landed at Anna International Air Port, Chennai, another episode of desert living has come to an end. A delighted heart got back into the usual business in the chaotic ambience of its motherland…