In Dawood's city

Dubai airport looks somewhat like an alien ship. And here for the first time I was at a place where I was surrounded by thousands of people out of which there were very few Indians. The population was mixed,- Europeans, Asians, Africans, -a meeting place for world cultures.

The flight from Kolkata was cool. There was a screen in front of every seat, where one could watch TV or play or listen to music. There were two cameras fitted on the plane giving direct video in two of the channels – the front view, and the downward view. It was great seeing the takeoff from the pilot’s viewpoint. I switched to the downward view for sometime, before switching on to the movie channels (one was airing a Bengali movie – Bondhoo). There was also a channel giving the plane’s location on an Asia map, and also the flight parameters. An interesting data at a point of time was that the outside temperature was minus 50 degree Celsius!

The food was interestingly Bengali food. At least the menu tried to suggest that. Three languages were used – English, Bengali and Arabic. Fish curry was written as ‘Machhi Masala’ (machhi means house-fly in Bengali). And the effort in describing the Rasmalai was laudable – poached cottage cheese dumpling, soaked in saffron flavoured milk, garnished with pistachio nuts.

My next flight is at 2.40am Dubai time.