Move On

I wake up to the sun filtering through my curtains and slowly my room awakens to a new day. My eighteenth floor bedroom opens out into a long balcony with a sprawling view of the Dubai creek on the left, and spans to the Burj Khalifa and then the Burj Al Arab. If I crane my neck to the extreme right, I can see the Arabian Sea.

Before I moved here, I lived in an apartment that stared right through some towels and clothes hanging on the balcony of bachelors. Ours was a 2-bedroom apartment, one that you could walk across in a few seconds. It was a cosy home that I had come to love over the seven years I spent on the seventh floor. And prior to that we lived in a small one-bedroom apartment that we rented when we first arrived in 2003.

In Mumbai we lived in a large flat. A joint family of two brothers and a set of parents. I had a big bedroom to myself, a living room, two more bedrooms and a kitchen. When we moved to Dubai our house was tiny in comparison, but I came to freedom and a house I could call my very own.

Having lived the first 10 years of my marriage under the constant vigil of my mother-in-law, Dubai was like rediscovering my freedom all over again. I was back in a carefree environment. I could cook what I wanted, wear what pleased me and could go wherever and whenever I wanted without having to explain or make an excuse.

When we were in Mumbai, I saw more of my husband’s family than him as his work took him away for most of the waking hours. In Dubai, I had him to myself and since he had set up an office just 5 minutes away, he came home for lunch and got to spend time with my daughter who had started to grow up rather rapidly.

We bought a car and I took driving lessons and soon started to drive on my own. Since his office was close-by and most of his work took him abroad, I had the car to myself and had the pleasure of discovering new places in Dubai. I would buckle up my three-year old daughter in the rear of our car and stroll out whenever I felt like. I loved the Honda-CRV.