Hi folks,
A friend of mine wrote this piece. She hails from Kerala and grew up in Kuwait. Her studies have brought her back to India and she reminisces as she spends time in Kuwait with her family over the holidays.. I found it very interesting and have her permission to publish it on my blog. So, read on...
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Most people come to Kuwait, the Promised Land of the Middle East claiming it is for a maximum of two years or "to make enough money'" and go back home. Countless Falafel and Shawarma sandwich years later, they are all still here. Grayed quite a bit, but very much here.
Kuwait is like that. One starts off earnestly in a job, shares an apartment with some kind folks. Soon you begin to get comfortable with the non-iron bed sheets and Jamaiyas laden with easy to serve yogurt and long-life milk. By then your status has risen back home because you work in this oil-rich, highest per capita income wonderland. Ma beckons from home that they have found a "nice, homely" girl for you. So you rent your own one bedroom apartment, put out few cheap "Banta" chairs, and blend in some Ikea "As Is" furniture just for it to not look so cheap. Few Friday market( second hand stuff) visits later, your house and heart are ready to receive the new bride.
If winter is here can spring be far behind? Stacks of Pampers appear in the by now crowded home. The patter of tiny feet, Cartoon Network, pushchairs(Prams) and colic occupy your waking and sleeping hours. The MBA you well intended is long forgotten with the stress of how to ask the boss for a raise, now that your child will start playschool, and you can't cope with the installments for your new place back home. The luckier ones find fresh opportunities and move up the economic ladder, but never out of Kuwait. You upgrade your car and home, and generally grow to be a part of Kuwait, or rather Kuwait like a sandy desert spirit becomes ingrained into you and fourth and fifth ring roads become your best weekend hangouts.
Just because it seems the in thing to do, you apply for migration to a western country, knowing full well in your heart that you may never be able to start a new life in another strange land. The taxation everywhere else hurts. So do the residence fees here, but can you leave Kuwait? The general view was that once the health insurance was levied; there would be an influx of expats fleeing Kuwait. No one I know has left for those reasons. Leave Kuwait, and miss the Houmos and Mutabel and all the Vaasta you built up, are you kidding? Life goes on, with bodies and souls flirting in and out of The Sultan Center, Souk Sharq, Caesar's Restaurants, all the new malls(The Avenues, Sharq mall, Geant..etc) that have sprung up like mushrooms.
Soon one Friday blends into another and next thing you know you are boarding a flight to the U.S. to drop your son or daughter to University.
Time has flown, and you and your friends of yesteryears still meet occasionally, and discuss who has grayed more, and whose cholesterol is threatening. The whole point of who "made more money" but never returned home is never brought up. Endless weekend dinners, get togethers, beach picnics, potlucks and problems, growing-up pains, career ups and downs, friends who are like family, birthdays and anniversaries, visit visas and residences later...Kuwait is still HOME!
Kiran Elza Abraham
(writing from Kuwait)
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