My dear students, friends and colleagues,
A philosopher, whose words are among the most derided today, wrote in 1848, “A spectre is haunting Europe.” More than 160 years later, no such spectre may haunt the world. But for me, he made common sense when I visited Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) recently.
The visit was strictly personal. I came back refreshed and replenished. But I cannot conceal that it was also political. I recalled a phrase, hanging from the threads of the flower children from the 1960s and 1970s, resisting the Vietnam War: “the personal is the political”, a slogan that was also central to the feminist movement.
The waiter wiped the table with tissue paper
A close relative took me to a family restaurant for breakfast. Outside, it was Dubai in June: hot and humid; cars and concrete. Inside, it could have been any Indian city, any time of the year: dosas and filter coffee; spicy conversation dripping from Indian tongues.
Except, the waiter wiped the table with tissue paper.
I glanced at him. His face reminded me of the waiters who served us at Raj Mahal, an Udipi hotel in Dhobi Talao, Mumbai, when I was studying at St Xavier’s College. I have not seen this happen, anywhere in India. We had our fill of sheera and dosas with chutneys. But as we left by car, our personal meal became my first political insight.
My feelings grew firmer as I rambled for ten days. During a lunch, a student described how she was afraid that Dubai had exploded from a fishing community for a thousand years (dates, pearls) into one of the most modern cities of the world – since the first shipment of oil in 1969, and, more so, within her own memory of barely two decades!
So when I returned to Pune, I dug out and re-read my famous philosopher. This is how I propose to write this post: a sentence or paragraph (in bold italics) from the little book by the famous philosopher; then my observations and reflections. I will try and see Dubai in the words of the philosopher, who dared to change the world.
“The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape (of Good Hope), opened up fresh ground … The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies … gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby … a rapid development. … Modern industry has established the world-market …”
Everywhere in Dubai, you can ‘see’ money shining; and ‘feel’ the naked power of finance capital with “C” in capitals of concrete and steel: in the flashy cars, on the smooth roads, in the magic malls, the Jebel Ali Free Trade Zone; and on people (present on the rich, absent on the poor).
And at the seven-star Atlantis The Palm Hotel, during a fashion show, someone mocked with envy, “Can you see the recession anywhere here, eh?” Merely the air-conditioning had already frozen the marrow of my bones into ice.
“The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. The bourgeoisie … has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals ... ”
Tens of huge cool towers lined up the big, main road like two rows of pillars holding up the hot sky. There is sand where I stand. I pinch myself awe-struck at the lawns in the desert. That Dubai is being erected in the twenty-first century does not detract from it being branded a wonder.
As a young man I had read ‘The City of the Yellow Devil’ by the Soviet writer Maxim Gorky (1868-1936). Moving around Dubai in 2009, I knew how Gorky must have despaired when he visited New York in 1906 and published his essay in Appleton’s Magazine, an American publication in August of that year.
Dubai is an ever-changing tribute to world-class quality. The far-sighted and liberal rulers of Dubai have an unparalleled vision that is transforming the emirate into a niche of excellence. The city is shooting up like an adolescent teenager attached to a jet engine.
Like 24x7 ants, thousands of construction workers, from all corners of the world (from India: Kerala, coastal Karnataka, Goa, Bihar, U.P., A.P., Bangladesh), fabricate entire floors of skyscrapers in days. Just the car parks in the basement are three stories tall.
“The bourgeoisie has put an end to … idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the … ties that bound man to his ‘natural superiors’, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment.’
Here I should only update my philosopher with the latest touch-screen ATMs and swiping credit cards.
“(The bourgeosie) has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value. And it has set up that single, un-conscionable freedom -- Free Trade.”
Like Ibn-Batuta, I scoured the ‘free trade’ malls. Like Diogenes of Athens, I walked through the ‘Mall of the Emirates’ window-shopping for the countless things I did NOT need. The two books I bought: for me, The Elements of Journalism by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosentiel (second edition, 2007, Three Rivers Press); for my close relative, Maverick by Ricardo Semler. Leaving, at the airport, I was shaken by the last-moment scramble in duty-free Dubai; the key-words here being “free to buy”.
“The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society … Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch … All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”
Since our summer vacations with our grand-parents, I had known that generations of my native brothers and sisters had abandoned the comfort of red mud, coconut villages, scattered along the Canara coast, around Mangalore, and migrated to the Gulf in search of the good life.
Serving as an editor in the land of my ancestors, where Konkani is the official language, I had heard of ‘Goan Gulfies’, men who came back with finger-thick gold chains dangling from their necks.
In 1967, when I passed Class 11, a close relative of my father had gifted me a Sovar Prima watch – made in Switzerland, bought in Saudi Arabia, worn in Mumbai. On formal occasions, I still wear it as a precious heirloom.
On our journey back from Dubai, we bought a gift for a baby, newly born into our extended family. The baby dress: made in China, bought in Dubai, was given to the baby’s father in Pune, to be worn by the baby in California, USA.
But a wise NRI shopkeeper in Meena Bazar, Dubai, saved me from the embarrassment of buying an expensive Italian shirt made of Egyptian cotton. He advised me that the finest cotton was Indian, made by Century and Arvind, and available along Pune’s very own Laxmi Road. (“All that is solid (cotton) melts in the (Dubai) air.”)
I have returned from Dubai – humbled and chastened.
Sitting here at my Fujitsu-Siemens laptop (“All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify.”), I dwell in my mind’s eye upon my beautiful, special and different nephew, Adrian Terence D’Souza.
"With sober senses", I visualise the 26 year-old singing Konkani cantara, playing the drums, kicking a football, drawing his blue ‘Time is running out! … Save water!’ picture and laying out the table at the hotel, where he welcomes his honoured guests.
And hot tears roll down my cheek. I hope in international solidarity for my brave brothers and sisters, who toil in Dubai. Peace and love to you, mates.
This then is my Dubai, seen in the words of a philosopher.
Your support is my strength,
- Joe.
Pune, India, Sunday, 19th July 2009.
Showing posts with label Adrian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adrian. Show all posts
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Beautiful, special people enrich my life
My dear students, friends and colleagues,
Most of us ‘normal’ people take our own abilities so much for granted that we keep demanding achievement from ourselves. So people with ‘special’ needs are perceived as ‘beautiful people’ because they put the few abilities they have to such fantastic use that we are astounded by how much they can do – with so little.
Though I will be talking about a sensitive and delicate topic, I reject the ‘politically correct’ (PC) usage that has been devised worldwide during the last few decades. To describe the ‘poor’ as the ‘underclass’ is as much a cover-up as it is a sham when ‘failure’ becomes ‘under-achievement’ or the ‘blind’ are glorified as ‘visually challenged’.
I shall go along with common sense: “Call a spade, a spade”, but avoid any derogatory meaning that lowers the dignity of the human being – disabled or challenged.
Enter: the first and second beautiful persons in my life
When I was doing my B.Sc. in St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, during 1967-71, I used to ‘read’ to a blind student who was doing a brilliant second M.A! Let us call him ‘Dilip’, because I have forgotten his name. We generally recognise people by their names or faces; some of us can distinguish between voices on the telephone. Dilip could identify who was coming up behind him!
Such an unusual ability, I wondered. Till I asked him how he did it. Dilip told me it was hard at first, till he began to listen intently for the small sounds that people made as they walked: from the scraping, stamping, stomping and shuffling of footwear; whether they dragged their feet, hopped lightly, or glided along on their toes.
He described to me his girl-friend who had a slight limp, so she dragged her left foot making a soft, rustling sound, like dried leaves lifted by a breeze, as she brought it up.
Dilip was the first of the beautiful people to enrich my life. The second was ‘Kate’, again a blind girl in Leeds, England, who taught me how to type, when I was 40 years old. She boosted my self-esteem by telling me simply that I could do anything I wanted – only if I desperately wanted to.
And shall I tell you how desperately I wanted to learn how to type? In July 1990, when we went abroad, I worked as a sub-editor in a Pune daily with paper and pen. The local copy was keyed in by our reporters on manual type-writers; the agency copy from UNI or PTI came on the ticker wire.
Then, we subs did the editing by hand and the type-setters re-typed the subbed copy. Even the editorials, I wrote out long-hand or dictated them at one go to our editorial secretary, Duru “ho ja shuru” Tejwani.
That was how I used to work in Maharashtra Herald, Pune, before I noticed in Leeds, England, that in all the Yorkshire newspapers, the subs used computers and knew how to type. I could see no way out but to learn – typing. The dread of what could happen to me, if I did not learn how to type was so strong that one night I had a dream.
In my nightmare, I saw myself standing outside Pune railway station with a begging bowl in hand crying out to passers-by, “De re Allah! De re Ram!” Because I had lost my job as a sub, since I did not know how to type!
That is when Kate came to my rescue. I had learnt simple keyboard skills using a Typing Tutor, due to the kindness of Peter Coltman from Leeds University. But where would I practise my novice skills? Kate used to come daily -- led by her Labrador guide dog -- to manage a Braille centre on the Red Route and she gave me the task of typing out an entire book on South Asian history for the reading pleasure of blind students. And so I learned me how to type diligently.
The art competition for Beautiful People in Dubai
Meanwhile, another ‘beautiful’ person was growing up far away from Pune in my native Mangalore: Adrian Terence D’Souza was born in 1983 to my sister Flavia and brother-in-law Michael. My sister had noticed he was unusually quiet as a baby and the shape of his forehead looked different from the two older sisters he had. Soon he was diagnosed as a child with Down’s Syndrome (DS).
Today Adrian “Manu” D’Souza is 26 years old and I had the wonderful opportunity to be with him during our stay at my sister’s home in Dubai since 17 June. (We will be here till 29 June.) My sister tells me Adrian has taken to painting during the last one year at the JamJar, Dubai, an activity organised by START, one of whose founders is the Al Madad Foundation.
The gorgeous evidence of Adrian’s slow and steady learning is not only scattered around their home but his picture has also been selected as one of 38 artworks as part of a Beautiful People competition. (Hence, the words "beautiful people" in the title of this post). Ms. Wemmy de Maaker introduced Beautiful People to my sister and other parents of children with special needs and is actively involved with the project in Dubai.
But at the outset, I declare a conflict of interest. Since Adrian is my ‘special’ nephew, I cannot be impartial in judging his ability. But I say he's good. Look for yourself and please vote for Adrian.
Adrian Terence D'Souza (26), my beautiful, special, different nephew
But there are 37 other special, beautiful and different people there too -- all of them already winners. So if you like them, you may vote for them. But remember one vote only. A vote will encourage beautiful people like Adrian immensely in the long journey of a crore miles.
Fortunately, his father, Mr. Michael D'Souza, Managing Director of Humaid Al Suwaidi, and a native of Puttur near Mangalore, is one of Dubai’s esteemed businessmen in real estate. So Adrian is well cared for.
Drums and soccer with Adrian & friends
What else am I doing in Dubai with this nephew of mine, Adrian, who is swimming against the tide? On 20 June, we go to see him learning the drums and kick football.
(As I write this, he comes up and tells me that I have not finished drinking the water in my mug. I have told him I am writing about him and he reads his own name “A-D-R-I-A-N” out loud.)
He knows the drums already and has a drum set at home, but practice is constantly required as DS kids (like many of us) can forget skills that they have learned. The teacher is Atsu Dagadu from Ghana, who belongs to Dubai Drums, and the session is free, held at the home of a gracious local Emirati lady, Mrs. Hanne Al Gurg.
The 12 kids along with their parents take active part drumming. What strikes me is how attentive the children are, stopping at exactly the point where the teacher tells them to finish off – every time!!! Since Adrian already knows the drums well, he is happy to play along.
Then we go to play soccer at the Hayya Club Meadows. Again a bunch of 10-15 kids are being taught free. Like the drumming this session too is coordinated by All 4 Down’s Syndrome Dubai, a voluntary support group, and the Soccer Kids Club (James Masterman, Ben McBride and group member Ingeborg Kroese)
In soccer, Adrian does not take part as much as the other kids, since he tends to watch the other kids play with his hands on his hips. Only occasionally does he get excited, when the ball is kept in front of him and he is asked to kick – at the goal. Then he gets really charged up.
But I recall there is this little scrawny girl – all so eager and bubbly – who would shoot a goal at one end and then turn the ball around to shoot a goal at the other end, oblivious of the side she belongs to! How she plays the game and scores goals for both sides, a virtue we have abandoned as normal people.
Activities like the soccer and drumming, which I witnessed, is mainly coordinated by the devoted and ever-energetic Sally Pearson, who strives tirelessly to keep the support going in Dubai. Her son Robin too is part of the group.
*****
Sunday in Dubai is NOT the weekly holiday it is in Pune, India. The weekend here starts on Thursday evening and people are back to work on Sunday morning. So on 21 June, I went along with Adrian and his mother (my sister) to the Oasis Court, a hotel of furnished apartments, which is managed by the D’Souza family, especially Ms. Rochelle Lobo, Adrian’s eldest sister.
Adrian has been meticulously trained by his counsellor Ms. Meenakshi Kumar to perform various functions, one of which is working at Oasis Court as a ‘trainee’ in Guest Relations from 9am to 12 noon, five days a week. In the near future, Adrian will also train at Dunes, another hotel of furnished apartments managed by Ms. Nisha D’Souza, his other sister.
Adrian greets the guests with a shy, “Welcome to Oasis Court!” then hands over the keys, TV remote, and other service cards, which familiarise the guests with the amenities available inside the furnished apartment and the facilities offered by the Oasis Court hotel. Finally, he leaves them with a cheery, “Have a good stay!”
To cast your vote for Adrian, please click here.
*****
Dilip in Mumbai, Kate in Leeds, my nephew Adrian in Dubai – three beautiful, special and different people who have enriched and are enriching my life. What can you do to enrich your lives?
Search out with all the compassion in your heart for the support groups in your local area for any beautiful and different people with special needs. Volunteer your knowledge, skills, time and energy to make things happen for them. "We give but little when we give of our possessions. It is when we give of ourselves that we truly give," said the mystical poet Kahlil Gibran of Lebanon.
And then surprise yourself; discover the secret well-springs that you never imagined could be hidden deep inside you.
Your support is my strength,
- Joe.
Pune, India, Monday, 22 June 2009, Summer Solstice.
Most of us ‘normal’ people take our own abilities so much for granted that we keep demanding achievement from ourselves. So people with ‘special’ needs are perceived as ‘beautiful people’ because they put the few abilities they have to such fantastic use that we are astounded by how much they can do – with so little.
Though I will be talking about a sensitive and delicate topic, I reject the ‘politically correct’ (PC) usage that has been devised worldwide during the last few decades. To describe the ‘poor’ as the ‘underclass’ is as much a cover-up as it is a sham when ‘failure’ becomes ‘under-achievement’ or the ‘blind’ are glorified as ‘visually challenged’.
I shall go along with common sense: “Call a spade, a spade”, but avoid any derogatory meaning that lowers the dignity of the human being – disabled or challenged.
Enter: the first and second beautiful persons in my life
When I was doing my B.Sc. in St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, during 1967-71, I used to ‘read’ to a blind student who was doing a brilliant second M.A! Let us call him ‘Dilip’, because I have forgotten his name. We generally recognise people by their names or faces; some of us can distinguish between voices on the telephone. Dilip could identify who was coming up behind him!
Such an unusual ability, I wondered. Till I asked him how he did it. Dilip told me it was hard at first, till he began to listen intently for the small sounds that people made as they walked: from the scraping, stamping, stomping and shuffling of footwear; whether they dragged their feet, hopped lightly, or glided along on their toes.
He described to me his girl-friend who had a slight limp, so she dragged her left foot making a soft, rustling sound, like dried leaves lifted by a breeze, as she brought it up.
Dilip was the first of the beautiful people to enrich my life. The second was ‘Kate’, again a blind girl in Leeds, England, who taught me how to type, when I was 40 years old. She boosted my self-esteem by telling me simply that I could do anything I wanted – only if I desperately wanted to.
And shall I tell you how desperately I wanted to learn how to type? In July 1990, when we went abroad, I worked as a sub-editor in a Pune daily with paper and pen. The local copy was keyed in by our reporters on manual type-writers; the agency copy from UNI or PTI came on the ticker wire.
Then, we subs did the editing by hand and the type-setters re-typed the subbed copy. Even the editorials, I wrote out long-hand or dictated them at one go to our editorial secretary, Duru “ho ja shuru” Tejwani.
That was how I used to work in Maharashtra Herald, Pune, before I noticed in Leeds, England, that in all the Yorkshire newspapers, the subs used computers and knew how to type. I could see no way out but to learn – typing. The dread of what could happen to me, if I did not learn how to type was so strong that one night I had a dream.
In my nightmare, I saw myself standing outside Pune railway station with a begging bowl in hand crying out to passers-by, “De re Allah! De re Ram!” Because I had lost my job as a sub, since I did not know how to type!
That is when Kate came to my rescue. I had learnt simple keyboard skills using a Typing Tutor, due to the kindness of Peter Coltman from Leeds University. But where would I practise my novice skills? Kate used to come daily -- led by her Labrador guide dog -- to manage a Braille centre on the Red Route and she gave me the task of typing out an entire book on South Asian history for the reading pleasure of blind students. And so I learned me how to type diligently.
The art competition for Beautiful People in Dubai
Meanwhile, another ‘beautiful’ person was growing up far away from Pune in my native Mangalore: Adrian Terence D’Souza was born in 1983 to my sister Flavia and brother-in-law Michael. My sister had noticed he was unusually quiet as a baby and the shape of his forehead looked different from the two older sisters he had. Soon he was diagnosed as a child with Down’s Syndrome (DS).
Today Adrian “Manu” D’Souza is 26 years old and I had the wonderful opportunity to be with him during our stay at my sister’s home in Dubai since 17 June. (We will be here till 29 June.) My sister tells me Adrian has taken to painting during the last one year at the JamJar, Dubai, an activity organised by START, one of whose founders is the Al Madad Foundation.
The gorgeous evidence of Adrian’s slow and steady learning is not only scattered around their home but his picture has also been selected as one of 38 artworks as part of a Beautiful People competition. (Hence, the words "beautiful people" in the title of this post). Ms. Wemmy de Maaker introduced Beautiful People to my sister and other parents of children with special needs and is actively involved with the project in Dubai.
But at the outset, I declare a conflict of interest. Since Adrian is my ‘special’ nephew, I cannot be impartial in judging his ability. But I say he's good. Look for yourself and please vote for Adrian.
Adrian Terence D'Souza (26), my beautiful, special, different nephew
But there are 37 other special, beautiful and different people there too -- all of them already winners. So if you like them, you may vote for them. But remember one vote only. A vote will encourage beautiful people like Adrian immensely in the long journey of a crore miles.
Fortunately, his father, Mr. Michael D'Souza, Managing Director of Humaid Al Suwaidi, and a native of Puttur near Mangalore, is one of Dubai’s esteemed businessmen in real estate. So Adrian is well cared for.
Drums and soccer with Adrian & friends
What else am I doing in Dubai with this nephew of mine, Adrian, who is swimming against the tide? On 20 June, we go to see him learning the drums and kick football.
(As I write this, he comes up and tells me that I have not finished drinking the water in my mug. I have told him I am writing about him and he reads his own name “A-D-R-I-A-N” out loud.)
He knows the drums already and has a drum set at home, but practice is constantly required as DS kids (like many of us) can forget skills that they have learned. The teacher is Atsu Dagadu from Ghana, who belongs to Dubai Drums, and the session is free, held at the home of a gracious local Emirati lady, Mrs. Hanne Al Gurg.
The 12 kids along with their parents take active part drumming. What strikes me is how attentive the children are, stopping at exactly the point where the teacher tells them to finish off – every time!!! Since Adrian already knows the drums well, he is happy to play along.
Then we go to play soccer at the Hayya Club Meadows. Again a bunch of 10-15 kids are being taught free. Like the drumming this session too is coordinated by All 4 Down’s Syndrome Dubai, a voluntary support group, and the Soccer Kids Club (James Masterman, Ben McBride and group member Ingeborg Kroese)
In soccer, Adrian does not take part as much as the other kids, since he tends to watch the other kids play with his hands on his hips. Only occasionally does he get excited, when the ball is kept in front of him and he is asked to kick – at the goal. Then he gets really charged up.
But I recall there is this little scrawny girl – all so eager and bubbly – who would shoot a goal at one end and then turn the ball around to shoot a goal at the other end, oblivious of the side she belongs to! How she plays the game and scores goals for both sides, a virtue we have abandoned as normal people.
Activities like the soccer and drumming, which I witnessed, is mainly coordinated by the devoted and ever-energetic Sally Pearson, who strives tirelessly to keep the support going in Dubai. Her son Robin too is part of the group.
*****
Sunday in Dubai is NOT the weekly holiday it is in Pune, India. The weekend here starts on Thursday evening and people are back to work on Sunday morning. So on 21 June, I went along with Adrian and his mother (my sister) to the Oasis Court, a hotel of furnished apartments, which is managed by the D’Souza family, especially Ms. Rochelle Lobo, Adrian’s eldest sister.
Adrian has been meticulously trained by his counsellor Ms. Meenakshi Kumar to perform various functions, one of which is working at Oasis Court as a ‘trainee’ in Guest Relations from 9am to 12 noon, five days a week. In the near future, Adrian will also train at Dunes, another hotel of furnished apartments managed by Ms. Nisha D’Souza, his other sister.
Adrian greets the guests with a shy, “Welcome to Oasis Court!” then hands over the keys, TV remote, and other service cards, which familiarise the guests with the amenities available inside the furnished apartment and the facilities offered by the Oasis Court hotel. Finally, he leaves them with a cheery, “Have a good stay!”
To cast your vote for Adrian, please click here.
*****
Dilip in Mumbai, Kate in Leeds, my nephew Adrian in Dubai – three beautiful, special and different people who have enriched and are enriching my life. What can you do to enrich your lives?
Search out with all the compassion in your heart for the support groups in your local area for any beautiful and different people with special needs. Volunteer your knowledge, skills, time and energy to make things happen for them. "We give but little when we give of our possessions. It is when we give of ourselves that we truly give," said the mystical poet Kahlil Gibran of Lebanon.
And then surprise yourself; discover the secret well-springs that you never imagined could be hidden deep inside you.
Your support is my strength,
- Joe.
Pune, India, Monday, 22 June 2009, Summer Solstice.
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