The Birthday Gift

(My brother, Robin, writes very well, although he never admits it.
Last December, on his birthday, he sent me a "weird story for one of your bloggy posts". I choose to post it in his own words because it is a magical story of a father and son bonding through a surrealistic universal force.)

Today while lunching with my friends, one of my friends, Sajith, pointed at the wrist watch I had on me and said he had not seen it before.

“Is it new?”

The moment he said it, my mind harkened back to a year ago, when my son, Aaron, had given it to me at a quiet “father and son” birthday dinner.

I promised Sajith I would tell him the tale. And so they all got to know it was my birthday today and I ended up paying for the lunch.

So it happened like this:

On one of my several trips to our Saudi office on Fly Dubai, I was bored as usual. To pass off the remaining flight time, I picked up a duty free book where a pair of watches caught my eye. Apart from its classy look, the pair was amazingly low-priced (AED 100 each) and to top it all was the offer to buy 2 for 150 AED (approx.USD 40). 

Now, now, how could one let go of such a nice opportunity to grab it and please oneself and also the wifey?

I made a mental note to order this with the crew when they passed by. The journey is so short that they were preparing for landing already. So upon landing I made the request to which the reply was “Sorry Sir, we are on land now and therefore cannot execute the sale” as the regulations are strictly “duty free in the air” and the system does not allow it.

On the return journey with the same airline they were out of stock. I thought, "There goes my dream".

Then the next month my son put a box on the table when I invited him for dinner on my birthday. I could not believe my eyes when I opened that box! He said it was my birthday gift and he had one for mom too!!!

There, sitting in the box was that leather strapped black beauty of a watch with a gleaming airplane doing the “seconds” round and “BOEING” inscribed boldly on the face dial.

This is when it started to get interesting – I asked him how on earth did he know I would have wanted to have this watch (so badly). To which he just smiled, as if he knew exactly what was going on in my mind.

Apart from buying Aaron's return flight ticket to Muscat, I had done nothing more. 

He was on a visa hop to Muscat. His episode started thus. Upon landing at Muscat airport with nothing to do except loiter around waiting for the next return flight, he was in a duty free shop doing what teenagers generally like to do: looking at the latest gadgets, and comparing the Muscat prices to local Dubai prices. 

Suddenly he noticed a gentleman put his cellphone down, forget it due to some distraction, and was walking away without it. Aaron promptly picked up the phone and returned to the person who thanked him very much for it.  Later on the return flight it so turned out that the gentleman with the lost phone was the lead flight steward! He took good care of my son during the short flight back and thanked him with this Fly Dubai parting gift. 

And so this little gift landed on the table in front of me at the birthday dinner!

At the New Muscat International Airport

Billy and Shirley Madison, along with their daughter, Amanda, went to the New Muscat International Airport on a Saturday. 

Their check-in luggage consisted of four big suitcases. Billy carried a backpack and the ladies carried small purses. 

Their journey began at the Oman Convention and Exhibition Center where they were given brand new passports in Hall 1. 

After a short briefing about the new airport and what to expect, they had coffee, dates, cupcakes, and pakodas.The hall was laid out with about a hundred tables covered with pristine white tablecloths. Each table had ten seats for the passengers who were waited on by courteous staff eager to please. 

A fleet of new Mwasalat buses waited outside the Centre to ferry the passengers to the airport. 

A friendly Omani young lady, Badriya, sat next to Shirley. After exchanging pleasantries, Badriya began filming the journey on her phone. She captured the view as the bus neared the airport, the buildings still under construction, the expansive parking zones, the main building itself with its recurrent motifs of crisscrossing wavy lines and an Islamic floral pattern.

"This video is for my family. I didn't bring the children along. They can be so distracting," Badriya said to Shirley. 

Billy, Shirley, and Amanda were booked on an Oman Air flight to Munich. They looked at the indicators at the entrance for the counters which served Oman Air. After locating the right counter, they approached the check-in desk to a welcoming "Hello!" from the ground staff. Thankfully, the weight of their check-in luggaage was within the limit permitted. As their four suitcases, duly labelled and stickered, sailed away on the belt, they turned to the Immigration counters. 

"Waleikum assalam!" replied the smiling officer to Billy's enthusiastic greeting of peace. 

So far so good.

At the hand baggage screening, Amanda's backpack seemed to trigger an alarm. They asked if she carried any liquids. Oops, Shirley had tucked a half-full bottle of water into her daughter's backpack early that morning. It had to go. Shirley looked back at the wasted water in the bottle. However, she found that drinking water was available at strategic locations throughout the airport.  

Next came the queue to the boarding gate. It was nearing boarding time and the gate wasn't open! Two young Omani lady staff members inside the gate struggled with the computer systems and looked quite uneasy. Billy pointed at his watch as he caught their attention through the glass screens. One of the young Omani ladies indicated him to wait for just a minute by touching her forefinger with her thumb and a pleading expression on her face. 

But when the one-minute wait stretched into a quarter of an hour, all the passengers in the queue became restless. They were about to complain to the authorities when an experienced staff member rushed to the aid of the ladies and fixed whatever problem they were facing. 

Soon the Madisons were in the spacious waiting area. They were politely requested to provide feedback on their departure experience on the electronic feedback screens lining the room. 

At the door leading to the airplane, they turned.

They became arrivals!

"Hope you had a good journey. Welcome to Muscat!" smiled the person at the door who had just seen them off. 

TEE...TOO...TEEE...TOOO...TEE...TOOOOOOOO

 The fire alarm!!!

Everybody panicked and looked for exit directions. The staff on duty swiftly guided the passengers outdoors towards the assembly zones. 

Firetrucks and ambulances zoomed by as the passengers gathered outside in the mid-day sun. 

After a long time, it was safe for the passengers to enter the Arrivals area and proceed to the baggage collection belts. 

Sounds of cascading water and a vertical garden were a welcome sight. Artistically embedded in the ceiling, a giant blue evil eye talisman symbol warded off bad luck. 

The Madisons left the airport and boarded a bus to the Convention Center where a sumptous lunch awaited them. 

As they left the Center, they received gift vouchers of OMR 10 each. 

To the Lemos family, who gave up their role plays as The Madisons, it was embarrasing to accept the gift vouchers. As volunteers at the Muscat Airport Trials, they had had an enriching tour of new airport and a fabulous buffet lunch. The gift voucher was like a cherry on the cake. 

Once again, they were overwhelmed by the Omani hospitality that they had experienced several times during their stay in this country. 
 

(According to media reports, the New Muscat International Airport will become operational from March 20, 2018.)

  

   

This post was also published in the Outpost Newsletter, March-April, 2018



 

Dot...Dot...Dot

Just a thought...
This existence is like
The game of joining dot by dot.

A dot here and a dot there
Is what we make day to day
"What a pattern I made!"
We will look back and say.

Back to the Blog

Ronnie told us a story.

It was a story about a mad artist who died in penury. 
At the end of the story, he looked directly at me and said, 

"You remind me of that mad artist."

Excuse me??

"Yes, you do."

We were meeting up with some old friends over drinks and dinner at Kinara on our last visit home. 
It was a few days after the new year had set in and I had already made my new year resolutions. Writing daily was not one of them. Journal writing, yes....Creative writing, no.

The mad artist in Ronnie's story painted pictures and kept them hidden under his bed. Only after his death did the world discover his wonderful artwork. 

Ronnie said he was a fan of my writing and rebuked me for not writing. Ashok, Neelima, and Sylvester also piped in with their opinions about my stories. 

"Perhaps we haven't told you before, but we do read what you write."

***

A beautiful tall black woman passed by me while out shopping last weekend. As I compared her to Michelle Obama in my mind, she turned. 

Then she enveloped me in a giant bear hug. 

"Hey, where have you been?" Amaka's voice boomed.

"And what happened to your blog? I am missing it."

I made feeble excuses as she released me from her hug and promised to post asap. 

***


Ah, and all this time I felt I was talking to a wall. Writing is such a one-sided thing.

So now, one by one, I will pull out my stories from 'under the bed' and put them up here. 

Many thanks to Ronnie, Amaka, and all others who gently nudged me from time to time. 



 
 

Haiku 2

A cluster of clouds

painted by the wintry wind 

swiftly changing form

Haiku 1

Between mosaic tiles

The tiny flower blossoms

Only for a day

The Top Tip

 Sometimes people say things which are completely out of context and yet later you realise how useful they were. 

I was at a few art sessions last summer. It was a 'Beading for Charity' initiative in which an Australian lady, Jeanette, taught us how to make bead jewellery. We made ornaments using her beads and our own sense of colour combinations and gave them to her to sell for charitable causes. Simple.

Most of the time, during the sessions, we talked about the different types of ethnic jewellery worn all over the world. Jeanette gave us details about the different types of beads in her collection - the pretty glass beads, the rustic wooden, the subtle corals,  the elegant shells, the glittery metallic, the precious, the semi-precious, and the ordinary. She had a fine collection that showed how much she had travelled all over the world. 

After Jeanette taught us the technique of putting together a project she had selected for the day, for instance, a bracelet, we got down to work. We lay out our beads in a sequence to have a pre-view of what the bracelet would look like. 

Finally after making our choices, we strung the beads onto the cord and the discussions would move from jewellery to other topics. 

On one such session, a lady I hardly knew said, 
"Do you know that if you keep open bottles filled with water in your car, it keeps the car cooler in the summer?"
We all looked up. 
"Really? Have you tried?"
"Yes" she said. 

I went home, dug out three empty jam bottles from our 'To be recycled' collection, filled water in them, and stuck them into the water bottle pockets in the car doors. I didn't notice much difference in the car temperature that day. 

A few days later we went on our annual summer holiday for more than a month. We inhaled deeply the wet monsoon air of our native place. It was a refreshing break indeed.

When we came back, summer was still going strong in Muscat. The garden was dry, the car was dusty. A carpet of dried pink bougainvillea flowers lay around the house. The cats, who had become skillful hunters, came one by one to say a meaowy hello. 

After dusting the car, I decided to rush to the grocery to buy fresh milk and other groceries. A most pleasant moisture-laden scent greeted me as I turned the car key. The water in the jam bottles had completely evaporated. The inside of the car felt like a wet monsoony cocoon. 

Now I keep open jam bottles filled with water in the car all the time. What a top tip given by a stranger!