I went to the library in Abu Dhabi Cultural foundation yesterday also.
The building was around 3 or 4 kms from my uncle's place where I lived and I normally try to take a taxi to the foundation building. The cultural foundation is called something which had 'Sakafi' in Arabic and till date out of the 15 taxis I hired, only one recognized the name "Cultural Foundation". I had 2 options, to learn the cultural foundation's Arabic name (......sakafi) or educate the taxi drivers (97% Pakistanis) of the name “Cultural Foundation”. I chose the latter since it freed me from the effort of learning one more name [the freedom drives me most of the time :)] and, moreover I loved teaching.
I wasn't quite a library kind of person. I don’t even know what a library kind of person means but the conventional wisdom prompted me to classify things and here, all I meant is a person who goes to library out of utter boredom! I was getting so bored sitting at home and had come into terms with the fact that there weren’t many places to visit in Abu Dhabi and the heat made roaming around almost impossible. Moreover, you ought to have a lot of money to have fun in Abu Dhabi and by the sheer choice of my birth, I kind of eliminated that possibility.
My friend Lipsa once mentioned that we find interesting people inside a library. though I wasn't fully convinced about this opinion, I was pretty much ready to take my chances. Wise men (quite a lot of them, I have heard) say hope is what drives life, and my life in library was also driven by hopes. In the library, I chose essays and books about the cultures and societies in central middle east and I was interested in this category since I thought it would be a really boring reading and I won't be too engrossed in the book to miss out any chances of meeting somebody interesting, and to an extent also the fact that you do not get these literature easily available back home in India.
And there I was inside the plush library building and there weren’t many people inside. I walked towards my usual corner in the reading room.And wow, there was this very good looking girl in my usual corner. Out of sheer nonsense, I thought I would play it cool and with a made-up casual look I just went and sat at my usual spot-oblivious to the fact that it would have mattered anything at all to the girl, but wisdom comes much later in life. I thought I would speak to the girl; she was beautiful, looked Indian and most importantly seemed interesting. But I felt naive and to worsen it, I have heard that in this country you cannot talk to strange women and god forbid, if a woman complaints then your life is hell a.k.a prison in this dessert country....Also, in my 15 times visit to the library I haven’t heard any two people in the library talking to each other too (this made me often wonder what's wrong with the whole library setup in general).
The burden of this tradition and effect of the fear was quite evident on me and I decided to confine all my hopes in a smile and I smiled. But alas! I realized that I wasn’t even smiling but just staring at her trying to smile but trying in vain. I accepted my defeat and started reading 'the true stories of slave girls' which I picked along with my usual books for no apparent reasons comprehensible to human minds of the 21st century. In addition to the books, I was also equipped with a notebook for jotting down anything I found interesting and thought worth some googling later on.So there sat I scribbling down a lot on the notebook as if the notebook was responsible for all my miseries in life, so I had to punish it with the sharpness of my pen. I had this strange sense that I felt like the girl seemed to be noticing my studious scribbles. The more I felt she was noticing, the more I punished the notebook. Now I feel silly, but that time it made perfect sense; it's funny that how the same things arouse two different emotions when it involves an opposite gender.
Excuse me! a sweet, gentle and kind sound hit my ears. Were I dreaming or this came from the girl, I didn't know but this girl definitely took the culture and society book from me and started to skim through it. I was so lucky to have chosen that book to keep it beside me, and in retrospect I should have had taken a lottery instead. The analytical mind swung suddenly into action and I thought there could be 3 possibilities: She is genuinely interested in culture, society, heritages etc,
She is interested in talking to me, and the more-truth-bound third option that she is so bored out of studying. I also thought of grouping all the other reasons on this earth under a fourth division and completely ignore that possibility. But the tradition and fear were still a barrier, and my hopes for the second possibility were so high that I started to prepare myself on how to talk, what to talk and very importantly what not to talk.
Somehow I felt that preparation was of paramount importance while talking to a girl and I thought of subjects from culture to religion to comedy, and movies to books to tragedy. The preparation time didn’t last very long; I saw her getting up and packing her things up. I was panic struck and didn’t know what to do. By the time I had enough time to be panic, amused and confused, she had already stood up with her things packed. I prayed for a Miracle! but damn! nothing! The dumb boy of Indian origin with a tummy full of the Arabic hummus bil leham didn't do anything in particular per se. But somehow he was lucky to realize that he once again wa simply staring at her face, So I managed a smile with greatest of efforts possible-I could have even moved mountains if I used that kind of efforts somewhere else. She give me a smile back revealing those pearly teeth and a slight dimple on her left cheek and then slowly left, so soft and gracious that even that dessert land looked like paradise and the boring library became a plush palace...
Whether she stood there for longer than usual or she was subtly asking me to come along without actually saying anything, I don't know till date; but I had to leave the intricacies and complexities of a woman's mind to god though I doubt whether even he could comprehend it. Maybe all these were just figments of my imaginations. I would find out eventually, I thought. And that meant coming back again for the next 30 days religiously-what an arduous plan that was. Then I wrote a small poem, I thought I would share this poem with her the next time I see her...
we sat there bound by the walls
but the hearts were opened by the souls her eyes dark, deep and mystic
and hearts lost deep down in its depth
sorrows left the poor hearts forever
for the eyes might melt them otherwise
I was in bliss; I was in heaven
I was in but pure joy
I am anything but a poet, nor I was very good at plagiarism, and these qualities made sure that the poem didn't come out as even a mediocre one, but still I knew, it was a good way to start a conversation :-)))
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