Ever since stone-age man first propped up a palm-leaf awning between two commercial mud huts, stuck a fountain in the centre and posted a sign for ‘toilet’ and ‘food court’ next to it, mankind has had malls to go to. A civic space that provides some place for Madame to shop, Sir to ogle, Young Master to gorge and fourteen-year-olds to stand around in groups trying to look cool (and failing en masse to do so).

And, like most things we’ve invented, over the subsequent thousands of years we have been attempting to make ever greater, more elaborate versions of the two-shop-fountain-and-food-court model we know as the shopping mall. Take the great pyramids of Giza, for instance; a quirky design whose unique architecture and indecipherable signage had led to it long being mislabeled as a place of worship, and even a tomb! Well let me tell you, the pyramids now have serious competition.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have been to the Dubai Mall, and I have lived to tell the tale -- with pictures!

Yesterday was Earth Hour in several places around the world, including here in Dubai. Not much happened, though a few buildings did turn their external lights off. One lovely radio jockey suggested that the best way to spend the hour was to turn off all the lights, fire up some candles, snuggle up with your significant other on the sofa... and watch a romantic movie on DVD (preferably on your big screen HDTV).

Take that, energy conservation!

Dubai-itis is the term I use for that low, frustrated feeling that sets in almost immediately after I return from vacation, to suddenly realise that I live in a flat, hot, congested city where people dress up to go to shopping malls. Any place that makes me miss even the most tedious aspects of a city like Bombay (the chaos, the infrastructure or lack thereof, the garbage and the idiots) is noteworthy.

My escape often comes in the form of a trip to the movies. I begrudgingly overlook the snip-snip of the censors and the twenty minutes of brain-killing advertising, and do enjoy myself. The pre-fab box multiplex model that cinema has transformed into doesn't damper my spirits (I am, in fact, thankful that for now at least the projection and sound quality is better in multiplexes), and once the lights go down I'm a sucker for the experience.

Now this just isn't fair. Somewhere in Italy is a fantastic looking monastery up for sale. It's got eleven bedrooms, twenty-six hectares of land, a stable converted into a restaurant with a professional kitchen, and it was recently fully restored.

It costs about three-and-a-half million dollars, and you might think that's a lot of money, but really, it's a steal*. You know what I could get for that much in Dubai? A decent four bedroom villa in a cubbyhole 'planned' community. In India I may manage to get a three bedroom apartment in South Bombay. God only know what kind of matchbox that money would buy in London or New York.

*(Not that I have the money, and any attempts to amass such an amount would require actual stealing, hehe).

Beyond that, the property is clearly begging to be turned into a quiet out-of-the-way hotel. If I tried to open something of a similar size in Dubai I would need about five times as much money, and about ten times for Bombay. And none of them would have the kind of view this place has.

Of course, if it seems too good to be true then it probably is, otherwise why would such a tempting looking thing be unsold, and that too found on the freaking interwub?

Ghost Infestation. Has to be.

....Still, very, very tempted.

V

My mother let me draw on walls. It was 1986, I was three, and we were living in a one bedroom apartment in Ghusais, back when there was nothing there except for a block of already decrepit government flats, Al Mulla Plaza (closed because of a border dispute), and a procession of electrical towers between there and Sharjah.

She got a lot of flack for it, of course. Neighbours would come round and wonder why on earth I was still alive after such a heinous crime, and then look worryingly at their own children as the young ones gaped at the sheer audacity of the red and green scrawls, their eyes luminous with the shock of seeing freedom, tolerance and understanding -- and of course, whimsy -- for perhaps the first time in their fragile lives. Several adults vowed never to bring their children into contact with my parents, not the first and certainly not the last time that was said to them.

The rationale my mother offered -- since the simple truth of "Why not?" was far too much for others to bear -- was that since it was a rental, once we moved out the landlord would paint it for the next tenant anyway as per the local norm; if the landlord objected, she was gladly willing to pay for the painting herself. They never objected, but I would have liked to see the look on whoever came to that apartment after we had gone. The building itself was torn down sometime in the 90s to make way for a compound of houses.

It was the only place I ever drew on the walls, and even I am not sure why exactly. The rationale to my three-year-old self probably had something to do with not wanting to waste paper, and the fact that if I drew straight on the walls it would forego entirely the costly and time-consuming framing and hanging processes.

Mostly I just wanted to draw, and my parents wanted great art on the walls, for which I gladly obliged.

You see some strange things at the mall. Most of the time it has to do with fashion accidents and, in the case of Dubai, kiosks selling ridiculous looking real estate, but once in a while you spot something you'd swear came out of a Katsuhito Ishii movie.

Take this guy, for example. Fairly normal looking white guy: shirt, loose trousers, glazed-over, pre-weekend look in his eyes, bag of shopping and... fluffy bathroom slippers?

I hope it was some kind of subversive fashion statement, but chances are that either his pair of snakeskin moccasins were off at the cleaners, or he was just too stoned to know what he had on.

V

Like I mentioned in the previous post, I had gone to the mall to watch Music & Lyrics. We usually don't go to the mall on weekends as getting a parking space even in the enormous Mall of the Emirates parking lot on Friday can be a problem. However, it was not yet evening and with nothing else to do, we decided to chance it. The parking lot was quickly filling up, but we did manage to get a space.

The Mall of the Emirates is supposedly the third largest mall in the world. The parking building is certainly the biggest I've ever seen, and the shops are huge, but I still wouldn't mind a larger one to roam around (In a couple of years we're supposed to get at least a couple of contenders for biggest mall in the whole wide world). My favourite part is the huge atrium in the centre. This picture is just a small part of it, and was taken in the early evening one Friday wth the new Kodak c875, before we took in a screening of Music & Lyrics.