About

Life started off in Kuwait back in 1981 in a town called Abbassiya. As with most of the middle east in those days, big beige buildings and oversized GMCs were the order of the day. The two things I'll probably never forget are the white brick school I used to go to and the fish market by the sea (where's the world record for holding your breath when you need it). Uneventful as it may seem, life had its own little joys.

Of course, no story of Kuwait would ever be complete without a mention of the Gulf War. Unlike most people, who were rudely awakened by the churn of armored tanks lining the beach road that morning, we were fortunate to have found out about it from the BBC's South Asia radio service, while packing our bags at the end of a holiday in Mangalore.

I never really did learn much more about what happened in Kuwait during those days, but it didn't take long for monsoon stories of the evacuation from Amman to give way to tales of indefinitely postponed Kannada exams in spring of 1991. Yes, Bangalore was the perfect two year break - just the right distance from anyone with the same surname and enough of colonial India to get you through an autorickshaw in English. It's the Diwali celebrations that I miss the most - there never was another like Bangalore 1991.

We eventually returned to Kuwait in the spring of 1992, and for those of you who thought the post-war scene was one of mines and burning oil wells, I have to admit they cleaned up quite well. This time, we moved to a city called Salmiya and five years of the usual school-vacation routine went by. Interestingly, it turned out that I hated Hindi and Arabic even more than Kannada!

It didn't last long though, as we moved to Dubai in the spring of 1997, having been drawn in by the shopping festivals of 1994 and 1996. I spent my senior high school years at the Our Own English High School - a name my dad first thought was far too silly to even be real. If there's one thing I'll never forgive them for, it's the color-coded polyester sports kits.

Then came the American University of Sharjah in 1999, followed by Wunderman in 2003 and Impact Proximity in 2004 (which is where I'm at right now). Yes, that's 8 years in a sentence, but I'm afraid that's all I have time for right now.