Muscat – Magic, Masti, Mwaaaaah….

Couple of month’s back I had to back-pack for this whirl-wind tour of God’s own country. I don’t know why, but my friends usually choose the same day or at best subsequent days to get married. Perhaps their way of testing who my loyalties are towards! Anyways, it puts you in this strange corner where you not only have to think about a valid excuse for a longer leave but also one for not attending one of the weddings or (if you manage to plan and attend both) even worse excusing yourself to leave early after showing your sleep ridden, fatigued face. One such ordeal took me hopping across seven cities of Kerala over a period of two days.. well you may say technically Kerala doesn’t have seven CITIES… but who’s ever cared for technicalities!!!

During this ‘hop-skip & jump –ethelon’ when my bus was in the middle of nowhere heading towards somewhere, my mind started wandering. All the various places, big and small that I have ever frequented started waltzing on my cerebral arena. Think of it.. all places that you have ever visited in your lifetime, all cities, towns, villages, hamlets. And in my not so long lifetime (I wish it were but many would otherwise!!), I’ve visited quite a few. Well nothing un-natural, a jaded mind finds its own way of entertaining itself!!! But what interested me was the thought that followed.

My mind, as jobless as I was, started to compare the different places, as if to find out the best among them. My father’s Central Govt service made the adjudicator’s role that much more complex, what with him and us packing our bags to a new place once every thirty six new moons!!!

That being the case the race to top of the list of best places began. I am impartial, at least I pretend to be… so my being a Mallu couldn’t or wouldn’t shift the scales in the favor of the so called CITIES of Kerala. Hence began a sojourn down the memory lanes, across the meadows of Pollachi to the waste lands of Kutch, across the un-ending chawls of Dharavi to the high rises of Dubai, across the humidness of Chennai to the chill of Mount Abu. Each place, each city, each road, each person had a story to recount.

Have you ever thought of it… the best place you have ever been to! No, not the most beautiful or exotic, nor the dream destination, just the normal place where you would like to return, say fifty years from today if the place was still the same, with the same lanes, same shops, same markets, same people, same friends, same enemies. Is there one such place you can think of?

Coimbatore is a city that I like very much. I have spent two invaluable years of my life there and if I was Chetan Bhagat, my ‘Two States’ would have been based there. The city, its people, the love-hate relationships that I developed, the foes turned friends that I cherish to this day make me nostalgic. I have always wanted to return to that place… to the open air college canteen for the sugar-less tea (yeah.. they are highly health conscious !!), to the Caramel bakery for their exquisite cream bun with added sweet when the girls from the nearby medical college are sitting a gape away, to the Ramu’s bar that serves more of touchings (for all you boozilliterates, that means a side dish!) than the actual drink, to the auntie’s tea shop across the road for the mid-night teas. But somehow it was not the place.. over the last six years, while I have wished I could go there, I haven’t really missed it !

I have done crazy things with my life and crazier things with my career. I was this young (yes at one point I too looked young!) and influential (of course…my Regional Manager had hand picked me and moved me to this new assignment, nobody dare mess with me, I am the boss’s boy!) Area Sales Manager of this leading automobile company. Learning the tricks and thoroughly enjoying myself I was, when I don’t know why, but I decided to apply for this job in the desert country, perhaps I was searching for my oasis.

And before I realized I was on a plane to this no man’s land… Middle East is the happening place dude, the cloud kissing buildings across the Sheikh Zayed road are a testament to it !!! Little did I know that Sheikh Zayed road was 450 km from this hamlet called Muscat the capital of Oman. They say Sindbad the Sailor set sail from Oman and now I know the reason why!!!

One hour after the flight took off I was scanning the surrounding for the mystical Arabic country, but all I could see was endless wasteland of cottony cloud. I stared and stared till my eyes could stare no more and I didn’t realize when I dozed. Jumping to attention when the flight attendant announced ‘fasten seat belts, seats up-right and tray table closed’ I continued my gaze. From the half-open windows of the Gulf Air flight all I could still see was endless wastelands of barren dunes and rocks, as if some mega construction was happening and the contractor had carelessly unloaded ship loads of sand across. The only high-rises my eyes could distinguish were at the max a three or four storey structures a la over-sized villas. I told myself, this is not it. This is some small town before we land in Muscat; the magical Muscat is some distance away. And then the flight landed!!!

End of Part 1....


Dedicated to you Shail, who brought back the memories of Muscat... not that I forgot them !!!