"PAPA, HOW MUCH YOU PAY for getting your hair cut in Muscat?" demanded my daughter as I entered home with a new hair-do.

"One Rial, 500 Baisa," I responded.

"Jesus!" she chortled.

"That means, 185 Indian Rupees!" was her quick repartee.

This is the problem with expats. They mentally still live in their homeland. Convert everything – income and expenditure - into their home country currency and conduct a comparative study and find expenses are multifold! However, conveniently forgetting that they get paid Muscat salary, not Indian one!

Forget about my daughter. My better half is no different, who joined me in Muscat hardly a few weeks ago. Every visit to Lulu or Safeer for groceries or Muscat City Centre or Centre Point for other things is a pain. Bar-coded items create the biggest headache, where the actual price is invisible. How many times, you can run to the barcode reader installed at selected places within the premises to figure out the actual price and help her conversion exercise?

That's a diversion. Let me return to the 'salon' issue. Until Oman inflation crossed the double digit a few months ago, I used to pay my hair stylist – you will agree that there is a lot more dignity in this than the conventional 'barber' word – just one Rial when it was exchanging at Rs.102 or thereabouts. No doubt, it was way ahead of Rs.20 I used to pay in Mehrauli, New Delhi – just behind the 12th century Qutub Minar. For the same service, I would pay Rs.60 in a slightly upmarket salon. Only once I got my hair 'styled' at a spanky five star deluxe salon, but it was a free service from a friend whose wedding I was attending. So, no idea how much it would have cost me two years ago.

In fact, Jawed Habib is a personal friend. Jawed's grandfather and father used to style the sparsely haired Dr Rajendra Prasad, the first Indian President, and Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Indian Prime Minister of Independent India. Even Dr Abdul Kalam, the most popular President of India until recently, was their customer. It is altogether a different matter that Dr Kalam settled on someone else during his Presidency! But I was fortunate enough to avail the friendly – yes, totally gratis – service of Jawed. His card rate in the beautiful salon in South Extension, Delhi is nothing less than Rs.800 (plus 12% service tax!) for a single sitting lasting maybe 30-40 minutes with mellifluous music flowing from some hidden speakers and English speaking hair stylists (both men and women) pampering your hair.

If my memory serves right, I had paid just a 25 paise for my hair cut way back in 1962 – when I was six years old – to a bare-bodied hair-cutter on the stone steps of Mylapore temple tank in Chennai, India. And my hairy grandfather had given away a princely 75 paise to get his hair done! Wife and daughter have just began to scout around for beauty clinics for women in Muscat. Hope they are not shell-shocked on reading the card rates!

THIS column originally appeared in OMAN TRIBUNE, 24 January 2009

THIS IS DRIVING ME NUTS, shouted a colleague while we were trying to dock near Bank Muscat headquarters in the Central Business District area recently. It was around 12 noon. There simply was no parking space for love or money. We would have done at least three rounds between Supa Save and Oman Chamber of Commerce looking for you-know-what and an elderly gentleman came to our rescue as he decided to move out of the area perhaps after completing his business. A special prayer was sent out in the direction of Heaven for saving our souls. We were already late by 15 minutes for our pre-arranged meeting. We ran almost like half marathon runners. Luckily, the light breeze helped us to keep our cool. Thank God, it was not May, June or July? You are getting the drift?

It is no secret that the vehicular traffic has multiplied several fold over the past three years, but the volume of parking space has not kept pace. Result: traffic snarls and frayed tempers. Of course, the issue has not ballooned into something as life-disturbing as what obtains in Dubai or Sharjah. The meeting joint may be away at a decent 15 minutes driving distance under normal conditions. But, as we all know, normal conditions exist only on paper.

Factor in at least 30 extra minutes for on-road experience and an additional – yes, extra 30 minutes for finding a parking space near the meeting venue. Treat every appointment as if you are rushing to catch the flight! You can't afford to be late. If you are late, the flight will take off with or without you.
In a way, the government decision to give a month gap between two tests for procuring driving license is the right move. To that extent, the weekly deluge of fresh licenses and the resultant new cars on the already-crowded roads and the silent battle for parking slot is avoided.

The parking lot drama reminds me of my experience in Bahrain last year. Our vehicles have to be parked half a kilometer away from office if we reach late even by 10 minutes in the Diplomatic Area. Though there are several multi-level parking buildings in the crowded business district, finding an empty slot is a tough call. Even if you are lucky enough to find one, the parking tariff were stiff. Were you in sales demanding frequent potential customer calls on a daily basis, you had it. Park, pay, park and pay. The cycle is endless and a big chunk of paycheck will be spent on docking fee alone!

The parking challenge is unlikely to vanish because owning a car is a necessity in a place like Muscat where there is no Mass Rapid Transport System. There is no public transport to ferry passengers from say, Rusayl to Ruwi via Seeb, Azaibah, Ghubra, Al Khuwair, MSQ, Qurum, Hamriya etc. Honestly, many might not take out their cars from garage if big public transport buses are available. Who wants to drive bumper to bumper? Three years ago, the ride from Seeb to Ruwi used to take 30 maximum even during peak hours. Try out now and let me hear your record!

THIS column originally appeared in OMAN TRIBUNE, 21 January 2009

AT THE CRACK OF THE DAWN, they arrive in a bus wearing lemon yellow or grey overalls and blue industrial caps, carrying tiffin carriers containing maybe some lentil, some Indian bread, some dry vegetables, some chicken/mutton. Can’t be sure. They get busy with completing the multi-storey building under construction hardly a few hundred metres away from my living room window from where I watch them almost daily. Most of them, I presume, come from the sub-continent and occasionally hear them talking in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil while passing them on road during the day.

What surprises me is the absence or minimal use of wood. Environment-friendly! Of course, there are scaffoldings, but they are made of steel rods and not of bamboo or casuarina tree stumps I am used to back in India. Another missing element is the ‘uplifting’ exercise of men and women construction workers physically transporting bricks, mortar in a human pyramid fashion from the ground level to the floors above. It was a sight to behold as men perched – precariously of course – on wooden scaffoldings diligently grab the items ‘thrown up’ from just below them. Well, there are no women workers at all.

Amazingly, I seldom noticed anything getting dropped in that tiresome physical exercise. Error-free, but risky. Mechanization has altered everything. Giant cranes lift iron girders, bricks etc to any level the building contractor desires these days. Thanks to helmets which are compulsory perhaps, there are less accidents at construction sites.

At times, I get a feeling that I am watching an industrial plant in motion – not a building under construction. Maybe the ‘uniformed’ approach. Maybe the lack of hurly-burly associated with construction in the sub-continent from where I hail. Plus the wooden-barricaded compound around the site that I am not used to. The work does not come to an end with the sunset. Powerful beams turn the night into daylight almost thus enabling non-stop work. Like there is a double or treble shift in operation, don’t know. I definitely miss the sound of mixing of cement, sand and stone granules that go into floors/ceilings in the site with the machine roaring, men and women dumping the ingredients into the revolving – either mechanical or hand-driven – mixer. The floor/ceiling ingredients come in pre-mix format and machines pump them to whichever level one needs. The only sound I hear is the ‘hissing’ noise of the driver sitting inside the huge glass-fronted trucks monitoring the whole exercise with the buttons console in front of him.

Yes, one thing I envy is the crane operator. He has a panoramic view of the surrounding even while he lifts building materials from trucks onto the site and the desired floor level. Don’t know whether his glass cabin is air-conditioned.

What time all activities end, I don’t know. By the time I switch off my bedroom lights around 11 in the night, they are still at work. When do they leave for home or whatever they call as their abode, I have no clue. Yes, but at the crack of dawn the next morning, they are there. As diligent and as they were the previous day.

THIS Column originally appeared in OMAN TRIBUNE, dated 19 January 2009

I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU, but I go for a morning walk everyday - between 4.30 and 6 a.m. - much before the daylight begins to creep from behind the hillocks (or the mountains behind the Grand Mosque). With my two-year old Zack (Lhasa Apso breed) and better half in tow, I trot at a brisk pace between Athaibah round about and the Al Maha filling station adjacent to the Ministry of Tourism offices situated in Al Ghubrah.

The only halt is at the Al Maha filling station where I get my hot cuppa and two cup cakes daily. Invariably I bump into the young lad - who rhetorically asks: “one coffee, one tea and newspaper?” I nod and collect the same. We have been interacting for more than two months by now, but it never occurred to me to ask his name. Nor has he asked what I do or where I work. An ever-smiling face. Every Saturday morning, he wants to know where I had been the previous day because on Fridays - no, I don’t give up morning walks - my route is different for a change. Nothing else. But one thing is common: I visit another Oman Oil filling station for my morning ritual of one tea, one coffee and two cup cakes. And, of course, a few newspapers!

My morning walk routine has not changed for several years. Until my family joined me in Muscat, I used to go for walks at 3 a.m. as well. Well-lit roads, constant flow of traffic and no fear of getting mugged were the primary reasons for such early walk-outs. I pick a stretch of say 4-5 kilometres with a petrol filling station somewhere on this route! After a brisk walk and sweat running down the spine, who does not need a good cuppa? However at the height of summer with the mercury in the near vicinity of 50 degree Celsius, I go for plain chilled bottled water!

Petrol filling stations have their own social role to play, I presume. There were occasions when I had noticed a small bunch of youngsters playing and singing Arabic songs at those early hours, unmindful of glances from passers-by, on the lawns of petrol stations. Again, I had seen youths drinking Mountain Dew from chilled cans while seated on the hoods of their respective cars and cutting/cracking jokes and laughing loud – again under the canopy of Shell, Al Maha and Oman Oil.

In terms of look and feel, Shell Select is my favourite. So also what it offers. Somehow, I am fascinated by the Yellow and Red combo of its décor. Next certainly is Oman Oil’s futuristic bluish tint. I admire this outlet as well. Eight out of ten times, I would steer my sayarati into a Shell petrol pump for my ‘refill’. There were occasions when I had been denied of my morning cuppa because the machine had broken down. Those were my heart-breaking moments as well. I may not buy a lot of stuff, but no visit to any retail outlet attached to the petrol filling station would be complete without myself conducting a simple guard of honour: nothing special, but a visit row-by-row! How about you?

THIS column originally appeared in OMAN TRIBUNE, dated 16 January 2009