Germany Visit: At Abu Dhabi Airport

Barely within 2 weeks of reaching home, I had to set out on another business visit. This time it is going to be a 5 days long trip of Germany.

The trip started with an odd-itinerary of Mumbai – Frankfurt via Abu Dhabi. The most odd thing about the trip was the timing of the flights. In my long international traveling experience of over 10 years, this was the oddest. The Mumbai – Abu Dhabi flight left Mumbai at 4:30 AM and reached Abu Dhabi after 3 hours. Then I had a break of almost 6 hours at Abu Dhabi.

The airport is like any other modern airport. Extremely clean and with lot of passengers. There are food stalls providing different type of food right from Burger King to Japanese Sushi. I did not notice any Indian Food outlet though. In fact, not even any Arabic Food outlet. Arabic food is pretty close to Indian food. I did not notice any pork being served anywhere. May be it is prohibited.

The airport has a number of computer terminals where one can access his/her mails. I did that some time back. The keyboard has Arabic characters and the interface is "right-to-left." Google shows the "Search" button on the right and the "I am feeling lucky" button on the left. I could not read Arabic but could figure it out after I used it." Search results appear on the right instead of the sponsored links! Seems strange when you use it for the first time.

There are noticeable number of prayer rooms around. The flight I am taking today is Etihad Airways, this is the national carrier of UAE. The entertainment system of the flight had sound track of Koran. I tried to listen to that but could figure out nothing. The announcement that was made in Arabic probably started with an equivalent of "Bismillah-ur-rehman-rahim"

At 12 in the afternoon they played a audio for doing Namaz. This lasted 10 mins and was played aloud to the entire airport. Interestingly I did not notice anyone reading namaz then. I am actually writing this page at the Adu Dhabi airport. I am waiting for my connecting flight to Frankfurt. As I was tying this page I noticed someone sitting behind me playing some "Hindi songs that I could not easily recognize." That's the time I realized that I am surrounded by at least 200 Pakistanis.

The last time I had a similar feeling was when the Babri Masjid was demolished in Ayondhya. It had triggered riots in Mumbai. I was in Mumbai then and I still remember the day when I and my manager had gone to meet a client in Mahim. As we went there we could see some of the shops that were burnt down during the riots. These were the shops of timber (wood.)

Both of us had gone to a hotel in Mahim. The hotel was full during the lunch hour. It was hoisting a green flag with Moon and Star, indicating the religion of the owner. We were not too sure if we were doing the right thing. We were both marketing buys so we were dressed in formals with impressive neckties. Both were clean-shaven and it would have been difficult to judge our religion from our looks. We just had to remember not to speak in Marathi (my manager was a Konkani, so we would naturally get into the habit of speaking in Marathi).

People observed us carefully as we entered had lunch, then had a cup of tea and left. I still remember the taste of the tea that was made from goat's milk!

Today, I am sitting in not just a Muslim country and am surrounded by at least 200 to 300 Pakistanis. They are all wearing Pathani dress. I am in jeans and T-shirt and am sitting alone. So there is no need to speak in any language. From their looks, it is clear that they have identified that I am an Indian IT Professional. But they are more surprised my map laptop, headphones, and style of sitting and working rather than my country of origin. At times they are peeping into my screen to see what I am doing.

Even noticed some "Malyalis" around. Familiar faces! No matter where you go in the world, you will find Mallus and Sardarjis. They are truly international communities. They work hard and are doing well wherever they have gone and settled.

I am surrounded by literally all types of people from around the world. I just had a Burger King Sandwich Meal and was sipping a cup of American Black Coffee. World has truly become global.

Just that we need to be a lot more tolerant towards each other. Till the time we do not do that we can not understand each other.

Twenty year old paradox!

As I prepared to leave out of USA, I started wrapping up things. This included preparing a work report of things done, preparing a schedule for things do be done over next 3 months, and so on.

 

While I was handing it over I realized that my business contact in USA was US Marine at the time of first Gulf War in 1991 (launched by then US President George Bush.) He narrated a number of interesting experiences. This included his staying on board the war ship where they used to get so much less space to sleep that they could barely turn on their sides. He also narrated his early morning running exercises on the ship saying "When we used to exercise the ship would be sailing on the waves. Thus our run used to be always at an inclined plane; either running up-hill or down-hill. Those were tough days. I had to take the decision to join the army as I was running short of money for education at that time. The days were tough. We had rigorous physical training."

 

It was natural to talk about war movies. I think Bollywood does not make a whole lop of war movies. Those days, there were hardly any good war movies being made. So for us then the only war movies to see were made by Hollywood. Impressions of movies like Guns of Neverone, Where Eagles Dare, Five for Hell, Platoon, are still fresh in my mind.

 

"What you see in Hollywood movies is hardly the complete truth. The director shows that part of the soldier's life that he feels is interesting. Rarely does a movie throw light on the complete life of a soldier", he said. "My father had fought in Vietnam and he said the movie Platoon was far from reality. Serials like Band of Brotherhood probably have gone closer to life of soldiers."

 

This was news for me! It was difficult to accept that what a war movie like Platoon showed was not complete truth.

 

I recollected what I was doing when he was actively involved in Gulf War-I. We were in our third year of engineering. My room partner's father was in Kuwait then and he was worried about the war breaking out. He would therefore be religiously be listening to radio channels like Voice of America and BBC on Short-wave Radio (these were days before Internet and Mobile Phone came to India). The radio reception used to be good late in the night. So we would be glued to the radio till late night trying to find out if the war would start any soon. Every night we would be a disappointed as the war would not start.

 

We wanted to be the "ones to break the news before anyone else." We actually did that, and we beat the BBC, CNN, and Voice of America at that. The only problem was the news was not real! We had "engineered a radio recording" saying that war had broken out when "USA fired the first missile on Iraq from its warship USS Gabriel." It was recorded in my room partner's voice who could fake American ascent. To make it "sound real" we even had introduced background noise. We had written down the script before the actual recording. The name USS Gabriel was inspired by the tennis player "Gabriela Sabatini" whose poster was pasted in our room. We made sure that the recording started abruptly. So we recorded it on one of my room partner's favourite cassette erasing his favourite song. It helped us to sell the story saying "do you think we would spoil his cassette for nothing?"

 

It worked! We did manage to get attention of our entire hostel next day. The news even spread the college through all our hostel-mates. People believed it for one-day. We even told them "Indian media is sure to suppress this news for at least 2 days because it is Government-controlled (there was no cable TV and no private news channels then.)

 

I hardly knew that I would, at some point of time, do sound recording editing and multimedia authoring for earning my bread and butter.

As you can imagine, I do not have any copy of this "ingenious piece of work" we produced using only a cassette recorder, audio cassette, cassette cover and a key (used to generate the cyclical noise.)

 

Here is the fun part: while I was engineering this news items of the war in Pune; my business contact in was actually fighting it in Iraq! We both lived to share each other's stories after almost 20 years! What a coincidence! ..and a paradox!

 

A paradox is necessarily a coincidence I guess!

Adios Amigos

I met Victor at my client's office. He was the one to suggest the name of the Mexican Hotel for us to go and have food at.

 

Victor was extremely jolly and good at heart. He was the die-hard fan of basketball and staunch supporter of the LA Lakers team. While talking to him I told him what I had learnt during my previous US visit. In 2009 I was working on a project for client in Kansas. I was put up at a decent apartment. The complex had a gym and it had lots of photographs of noted sports personalities who grew up in Kansas. There I learnt that Basketball was invested in Kansas. They used to play it with something that looked like a "bucket" kept at waist height. Later on as the game developed the "bucket-like structure" was replaced by a basket fixed at a high level pole.

 

When I told Victor that basket ball was invented in Kansas he immediately replied "and it was perfected in LA." Knowing Victor's passion for the game and support for the team I had to agree at once. I also told him that I almost missed an opportunity to watch an NBA match at Seattle about 5 years back. You could count on Victor to know everything about NBA. His reply was "Well that wasn't a strong team and they moved to another city later/ They wanted a batter ground for playing matches. Seattle did not give that so their owner moved the team to another city." Victor then explained to me how the NBA matches are conducted.

 

Our discussions went on for some time where he told me that he was a musician and used to perform with a group live. Victor told me about some of the festivals celebrated by Mexicans. This included some of the festivals when them remember the dead. It is called "Day of the Dead" celebrated in first week of November. On these days they arrange all the things liked by that person on a table. This can include food, photos, items, even certificates, trophies the person used/won. These days the family would come together, remember the deceased and celebrate. I am sure the readers can find more information about this on the web. Lots of photos would also be available. Check out http://www.inside-mexico.com/featuredead.htm

 

He said they even play music during funerals. Death is celebrated. It sounded a bit strange, but if you go to the core of the philosophy, it is understandable. A soul is leaving behind a human body and is being elevated to higher degree of consciousness.

 

I was to return to India the next day, when I was saying goodbye to everyone at office, Victor said "Adios Amigo"

 

I promised him to watch a NBA match with him during my next visit to USA.