Who Am I?

What a lot of you may not know about me... is that I grew up in a sunny place called Dubai. Dubai is a city or province (depending on how you look at these things) or an emirate in the United Arab Emirates. The United Arab Emirates or UAE for short is a country the size of Bellville on the tip of the Middle East. However my lineage neither begins nor ends there. What few people know about Dubai is that it is made of immigrants. 80% of the population is immigrants. In Dubai there are also different levels of immigrants. There are the Arabs and British, who are white collar immigrants, the Asians, Indians, Pakistanis etc. who are the middle class immigrants, they crunch numbers, are secretaries, mid level managers etc. Then there are the lower class immigrants, the Pilipino, the Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis from villages, who are not well educated, who become the servants and construction workers, people who have built Dubai.




Here’s a little history on Dubai. It is part of seven emirates that make up the UAE. Of the seven Dubai and Abu Dhabi (the capital) have the most oil and natural gas reserves (10% of the world’s reserves.) Dubai will run out of its oil reserves by 2010. When my parents first arrived in Dubai in the 70’s from India, it was nothing but sand and few buildings. I lived in Dubai till 1995, and Dubai was still a quite little city. Fast Forward to today and Dubai has positioned itself as a Mecca for business tourists. It has developed at an extraordinary pace in the last 10 years. They have built the Bur Jul Arab, the world’s only seven star hotel in the form of a sail, in the middle of the sea. They have the palm islands, the islands of continents, an indoor snow resort, and various other schemes that could only have been developed with a nation that has too much money.



Now back to me. My parents were immigrants from India. Now India is a country that I liken to a collage. It is made up of plethora of religions, languages, traditions within traditions, the list goes on. My parents are Catholic Indians, a dying breed. From our names and my grandparents wavering memories we at some point had a randy grandmother or grandfather, who mingled with the British and then later the Portuguese.



By now your wondering, where is this girl going with this? Well the one emotion I have never felt in my entire life is nationalism. In Dubai we were painfully aware that we were mere guests of the country, despite having been born and brought up there. In India, or Indian culture I am a bit of anomaly. For one thing people are always asking what my name is short for. ‘Nothing’ makes them suspicious. (The majority of Indians in Canada are of Punjabi descent and tend to have names like Bopinder Singh, which they then cleverly shorten to Bob.) I have always admired nationalist sentiments. Dracs for instance could not have been a prouder Trini. I have friends who have immigrated to the States who are now Proud Americans.

After living in TO for the past ten years now, I would say that I feel somewhat Canadian, well except when I travel two hours outside Toronto, and people pointedly ask me what my heritage is, because their idea of a Canadian is still blue eyed and blond.

Times are changing. And of all the countries I’ve visited and lived in, I have to say Canada has something extra special about it. I now have a crazy family that cheers loudly for the Leaf’s, have added maple syrup to their breakfasting and occasionally say ‘eh’ with a gleam in their eyes. Even more Canadian is that we now eat Jerk Chicken twice a week, Vietnamese once a month, listen to Latin music and admire bodacious beauty of all races.

So I ask, who are you proud to be?