And I try. I really do.

But fodder for self-loathing spills out as I pull my shirt above my head. It exposes what 64 kilograms look like on a 166cm-tall body. It causes my flyaways to stand up and make me look as if I’ve touched a live wire and have lived to tell the tale. The tiny brown mole near my navel shows me the vast expanse of my abdomen in comparison.

Pulling down my jeans exposes a panorama I wish to never see again. Subcutaneous fat, cellulite and body hair. Thighs that stick together. Calves that aren’t sloping lines to be exploited, but rather cylindrical balloons filled up. My feet are as battered as feet can get. Shoebites from all the heels I stupidly wore in attempts to look taller, cracked heels from walking barefoot everywhere else. It fills me with disgust.

I had a perfectly functioning body until I decided to ruin it.

And so I do not look at myself in the mirror for any longer than is absolutely necessary.

I cannot.

But instead, in a feeble attempt to cover up my revulsion, I look down at my hands. Slightly more acceptable.

I look at the curve above my wrist and think of how closely they resemble my great-grandmother’s hands. My fingers are long, like hers. They give me a better reach on the piano.

The microscopic mole on my palm that an astrologer told me predicted success almost feels like a consolation prize for the grotesqueness of the rest of my body.

I touch my own hands, and feel the softness. They remind me of the people who traced circles with their fingers around my thumbs. I touch the back of my palms and remember the people who kissed them. I wonder if the sight of my wide hips was sickening for them too, and if the kisses were to mildly placate me.

I place my hands together and remember people who held them- literally and figuratively. They’ve been squeezed for reassurance, held for comfort, grabbed to pull me out of the way of things I hadn’t seen coming, shaken firmly at every opportunity- some mine to take, some mine to survive.

As I trace around my left wrist, I see how it’s always been adorned with bracelets, friendship bands and scrunchies- proof of me being a normal girl, despite everything.

And I see how it bears the red kalava. A promise to always strive to bring goodness through these hands, into this world.

I look at my hands. If privilege had a colour, it would be the colour of my skin. On these hands, specifically.

My skin is light enough to grant me an unwarranted step up in a society that reeks of post-colonialism, yet hued enough to flaunt my ethnicity. I am not White, I haven’t had to worry about paying rent to live with my parents at 17. I am also not Black, and I will never be subjected to the same level of racism. But the fairer skin that points to my North-Indian heritage is the result of generations of my female ancestors being raped and impregnated by Persian invaders, to an extent that caused genetic mutations in an entire caste.

I’ve never had to do a day of manual labour in my life, and it shows. The only callouses I have are from when I didn’t change the grip tape on my squash racquet in seventh grade.

My hands are soft. Moisturised. Clean. Manicured. And I look down at them and see everything at once.

Because despite the vastness of my abdomen, the width of my hips, the way my thighs touch, my hands hold love. Only love. And despite the repugnance that seeps through me when I look in the mirror, I think I can bring myself to look at them more often.

Expats climbing in. Maids, drivers, gardeners, interns. From the scorching heat to clean, pristine, air-conditioned buses.

Most know the metro timings by heart. And each other's names. They know that a 6-minute delay on the bus or an extra traffic light is the difference between them missing the green line interchange at 7:30am and entering into the peak rush-hour crowds that’ll add another 18 minutes to their commute, which’ll end in a boss inevitably asking “why are you late?”

They won’t know how to speak Arabic, and most only speak broken English, but they’ll tell you exactly which exit you need to take from Burjuman, and which is the fastest way out of the Business Bay metro station.

The security guards at each station, intimidating at first with their crisp uniforms complete with shades and mouthpieces will soon start wishing you good morning. A month into taking public transport, you’ll know the difference between fresh and reheated cheese and zaa’tar manousheh, and you’ll convince the staff at the cafes near the ticket stations to let you skip the queues. Despite being Indian yourself, you’ll let everyone mispronounce ‘kadak’ while ordering chai and you’ll smile at how the numerous nationalities have collectively learnt that ‘adrak’ is good, and Rainbow Milk is even better.

The women’s cabin at 7am on the red line to Emirates Towers is a sight- each woman dressed to the nines, wearing slippers, carrying their heels in bags, and waving pink portable fans in their faces. At 9pm on the way back, they’ll call their friends to catch up, complaining about their husbands, bosses and colleagues while the rest of the cabin subtly eavesdrops in. It’s standing room only, if you’re lucky.

This is Dubai.

Here, the metros are faster than the Ferraris. The red line runs at 110km/hr, with trains between 2 to 8 minutes. The Bugattis on the roads beneath them travel at 150km/hr, on roads filled with more Bentleys, Range Rovers, Porsches and Patrols, averaging 25-minute commutes on good days.

I once saw someone hire a cleaner on the bus from the MOE to Arabian Ranches.

I’ve exchanged LinkedIns with people who tell me they’ve just moved to Dubai, feeling alone in the city that never sleeps, out of place with the glamor, struggling to manage expenses and fluctuating exchange rates.

A woman on the red line once pulled out a bandaid from her bag after noticing my shoebite and insisted I keep it.

And then there are the ones who haven’t been home in years. A Filipino woman told me my lipstick looked nice, asked if I was interning, and then showed me pictures of her children back in the Philippines. She hadn’t seen them for three years, but the smile on her face showed not a hint of dismay.

Another woman, a Syrian, told me how she moved here with her family after the civil war. “This is our home now”. And it was.

They say “Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up, knowing it must outrun the slowest gazelle or else it will starve to death. Every morning, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion, or else it will be killed.” The ruler here once famously said “In Dubai, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”

Everyone talks about the Dubai lifestyle, and how diesel has long since been replaced with Diesel. Where people buy gold from ATMs and where red soles on sidewalks are the norm. “Dubai-it” is now a term. It means ‘to achieve extraordinary excellence in record time’. Nobody talks about how the people who “Dubai-it” aren’t in the Patrols, they’re on the metro above. The one that’s faster than the Ferraris.

And honestly, this city has a way of rewarding these people. The people who catch the 7:15am metro to work, carrying their laptops, lunches, lives, knowing that in Dubai, the metros are faster than the Ferraris, and the red line that takes you into the financial heart of the city takes you closer to success with every 5 dirham ride.

“I’ll have a venti chai latte with non-dairy vanilla sweet cream, extra foam and light ice to go, please”. “Get us another round of ‘karak’ masala chais, and please use the ‘kulhads’ for them”

For most people, these two phrases evoke two starkly different images. The first is of a busy person in a bustling urban coffee-shop, and the second is of a group of regular customers at a roadside tea-stall. I often find myself intrigued by the evolution of traditional chai and how modernisation led to the creation of the ‘chai-latte’.

During colonial rule in India, tea-sellers were banned from making ‘masala chai’, an affordable version of traditional tea that used more spices, because it required less tea leaves and decreased the demand for Earl Grey. When the ‘Swadeshi movement’ that preached self-reliance on local products gained popularity, selling masala chai was an act of resistance against oppression, especially when it was served in kulhads (sustainable clay cups) because it was a step towards self-rule. Traditionally, chai took a long time to brew, and preparing it gave people time to get together and converse meaningfully. Fast-forward to 2024, the chai-latte was popularised by chains like Starbucks to incorporate these traditional flavours with the creaminess of a latte to fit global taste palettes.

I find it amusing that a beverage that served as a symbol of resistance against heavy commercialisation has been transformed into a ‘trendy’ replacement for coffee and now gives revenue-focused enterprises a considerable portion of their profits. I view this commodification as a reflection of the larger clash between capitalism and socialism, and how there is little place for socialist practices in capitalistic economies. However, despite the loss of originality, cultural symbols gain more popularity when they are commercialised by capitalistic practices.

And so I did
I built up a palace
A palace of my dreams
But now it’s crumbling

Why? You may ask,
What went wrong?
I’ll profess incognizance with tears in my eyes

I can provide you 4000 words full of excuses
In an attempt to make up for the builder’s incompetence

But it really shouldn’t be surprising
Because in this world
Of earth, of glass, and of stone
Everything burns, everything breaks, everything crumbles

It has been, since centuries
And it will, for eons to come

There’s no use of crying out
There’s no use of seeking help
This is metamorphosis, the cycle of change

New builders will come
New dreamers, new writers
They will make new palaces; stronger ones

That will take longer to crumble
But none of them will last
Because in a world of earth, glass and stone
Everything burns, everything breaks, everything crumbles

And this is why
I’ll profess incognizance with tears in my eyes
Because in this world
Full of crumbling rafters, crumbling hopes, crumbling dreams

I wanted to be unbreakable.

it was blue and white
and i hated flannel, it wasn’t cool then
and i hated blue, and i hated white
but i loved them

and begrudgingly, unsmilingly, questioning my life decisions
i let them convince me to try it on
i sighed as i pulled it over my head, they smiled as i came out of the trial room
and the middle-aged store workers who were probably going to lose their jobs soon sang off-key to “Beautiful in White”

the skies were blue there too
and there were white clouds all over
the sun was always out. always.
and it was always in your eyes like the high-vis jackets traffic conductors would wear

when i staunchly refused to wear it, they pulled up photos and googled “how to style flannel with skinny jeans”
we bought gold hoop earrings from Claire’s
and soon enough, i tied it around my waist
like they showed me to do

then when it seemed like every second store we’d see
on the bus ride home from school
had ‘clearance sale’ signs up
they left the city that didn’t even have tobacco-stained streets then.
Temporarily. Just for a while. A few months longer

and suddenly flannel was cool and everyone was wearing gold hoop earrings
but the skies didn’t seem so nice anymore
they were still blue, but not the same blue they used to be
they were blue like the ocean, blue like navy, blue like that shirt

and i knotted the ends around my waist
pulled it over white tank tops as anoraks
wore silver hoop earrings, and black canvas sneakers
waited and waited and waited
for the clouds to pass, for the skies to change, and for everyone to get over Pinterest

until they returned

with the same shopping addiction, the same smiles, and the same ability to make people try on clothes they’d hate at first sight

and everything was okay again.

A couple of years ago, at a wellness conference that I begrudgingly agreed to attend, I was asked to introduce myself to a room full of people I had never met without using my name, age, hobbies, education or profession. I thanked the stars for my seat at the back of the room, and desperately tried to find a word- ANY word- that I could use to introduce myself.

I couldn’t say I was a student, I couldn’t say I was an aspiring lawyer. I couldn’t say I learned to play the piano, or that my lap time was 13 seconds. I couldn’t call myself a writer- because I wasn’t one, anyway. I hadn’t written anything that wouldn’t be assessed since middle school.

Everyone in the room answered. Some called themselves dreamers. Some called themselves planners. Some called themselves early-birds, some jovially confessed of hedonism and some playfully called themselves the bane of their spouses’ existence. As the mic was passed across the room, the dread rose further up my chest. For the life of me, I couldn’t think of anything.

I still can’t. And that’s why I am choosing to write again now.