the glove compartment isnt correctly named

i keep having this recurring dream of driving. this goes back to the time when i had just graduated from university and had returned to dubai in hopes of finding the greatest job ever written for me since i was now foren educated. sadly that didnt happen immediately, much to my shock, i thought everyone would be tripping over themselves to hire me. hahaha. but like one of my favourite dialogues from this pakistani drama tanhaiyaan which ive quoted before, zindagi tabti dhoop ka naam hai. drama, drama haha. so i ended up doing some gigs which i always wanted to do. like become a professor. so i interviewed and they accepted me. it wasnt a great university, im not going to name it but at least it had a campus of some sorts, which is a big deal since there are so many "universities" that consist of a mere two room apt in dubai.

anyway, so ill write about that teaching experience later on of which there were a few. but in a nutshell, mallus are a very very close knit community and if you are the only non mallu, you stand out like a sore thumb. and no matter how much you try, you cant break into their inner"circle of trust" - i quote from the movie, meet the parents. i was always the outsider. and of course, im extremely exaggerating. but that was my overall feeling at that time. and also i was the youngest professor, so that "rohb jamana" type thng never worked out for me. and the mba class that i was teaching initially took me for a joke, when i entered the classroom for the first time. they thought i was the assistant or something. and being very university americanized, i wrote my email address on the blackboard, office hours and my telephone number too in case anyone had questions they had to ask. how dumb was i?. and i prevented pple from calling me maam and just refer to me by the first name and to stop standing up when i came into the classroom or when asking me a question. and just when students started warming up to me and my fast paced note writing lectures were becoming not as fast paced and when handing out candy before tests was getting appreciated, i got fired.

ok well not fired, fired. just an ultimatum to become a professor full time or leave. and coz my mom would kill me if i gave up my day job (which i finally got after giving a stupid iq test andtwo interviews) so i gave up the proffesor giri. well there were other factors, but ill leave that to another day of reminiscing.

so anyway i think ive gone beyond the words in a nutshell. so this post is mainly about the driving, it used to take me at least half an hour to drive back home from knowledge village back to old dubai. and i used to really really look forward to that. mainly coz the traffic in dubai is so bad and its horrible to drive there now but after 10 at nite (when my classes used to finish) its a dream to drive between umm-suqueim and jumeirah. empty roads and u can go at a stretch with no signals. aaaah bliss..of course i dont know the situation now, this was four years ago. and after salik, which im yet to see, the dream may have become a nightmare. anyway so i know exactly where the cameras are on the road, so it was great. i really have a problem with speeding. I think with speeding you yourself dotn know what speed you are in, coz you are in control you think you arent speeding. so neway i remember i was speeding along on the road trying to beat my time to get home and suddenly all of a sudden the radio stops working, the lights on the dashboard start dimming and my car just stops. and thank god i had some sense to move it to the side.

so now im stranded in the middle of nowhere, (ie umm-suqueim) and i notice my cellphone battery is almost dieing. so i make that last phone call home and then it dies. there is a small grocery shop type place and of course lot of villas around. someone comes out of the shop wearing a lungi and just stares at me. so i get back in the car and now i have no clue if my family even knows where i am or if they understood what iw as saying. in the end, yes this has a happy ending, like movies, i was found, no knight in shining armor or anything close to that (sadly a movie but not a hindi movie). so anyway the car is jump started and everythig is hunky dory.

but in my dream i am never found and i always wake up disoriented. and it seems all so real. not when you sometimes are dreaming and you know its a dream. i dont believe dreams are indications of the future, but i do think they are somethings you have been thinking of subconsciously and they project that. despite that, i cant wait to drive when i go back home.