the indian rule

L to R:  Ritesh, Sheela & Faiz
Aren't they adorable?

It's stunning that it's taken me nearly to the end of the month to write about this topic, since it's been a rule that was literally adopted within the first couple days of arriving in the UAE.  The Indian Rule (which I may have been responsible for codifying... I know that surprises you) has to do with the fact that we had 3 teammates from India who were critical to our successful maneuvering in the UAE.

Background explanation:  UAE society is made up of a majority of ex-pats from other countries who come there to find work - most of the service, construction and making-society-go jobs are held by people from Asia, especially India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Thailand.  Every morning, the team would take 3 taxis from our hotel to Al Ain Municipality, the government offices where we worked.  And, every morning, our drivers were Indian (mostly), with an occasional Bangladeshi thrown in for some variety.  India has lots of languages - each state has its own language - and the common language that unites the country is English.  Most of the Indian languages are not intelligible to the others.  So, the average Indian person knows not only the language of their state, but English, and maybe Hindi and a couple others.  It's really quite extraordinary and obviously prepared Sheela, Faiz and Ritesh to be truly global citizens.

Right at the beginning, the team decided to implement the Male Rule; namely, that there should always be a guy with the ladies.  Very nice, I like that rule.  The Male Rule quickly got trumped by The Indian Rule, which, in its most general sense, stated:

Never go anywhere without an Indian.

The Indian Rule had a special incarnation for our morning taxi ride:  One Indian per cab.  This was necessary because you could never be sure that all cabs would make it to the Municipality.  Also, the driver sometimes spoke broken English, sometimes just about no English, so trying to explain where we were going (especially until they figured out we went to the Municipality EVERY day) was not easy.  Enter the Indians, who simply chatted away in whatever language they deemed appropriate and we were off to the races.  (You think I'm joking here but some of those cab rides were... adrenaline-producing, shall we say?)

In the second week, we had to make a slight revision to The Indian Rule when we went to a different office of the Municipality with our Emirati interpreter Asma.  Not only could Asma speak to the driver but she actually knew her way around the city too, which resulted in the following:

Take a native Emirati with you as a first choice.  When Asma is not available, take an Indian.

 In reality, we only had Asma once or twice, but it seemed irresponsible not to update the rule.

Eventually, we would find that there was also a pecking order that had an impact on implementation of our Indian Rule.  Faiz could talk to anyone, and in fact, he did.  I swear, the guy never met a stranger.  Everywhere he went, he busted into conversations with everyone about everything.  So Faiz was definitely high on the list of Indians to make sure you stayed close to.  If you remember from this post, Faiz could survive anywhere for weeks with only lint in his pocket and make about 50 friends in the process.  He seemed to speak to people in Hindi most of the time when I was around.

Sheela kept meeting people who were from her state and spoke her native language, Malayalam.  Even though she could speak several Indian languages, she'd invariably pick her native and strike up a conversation with cabbies, bus drivers or any random person.  When I'd ask her how she knew which language to pick, she'd just casually say she looked at the name.  Huh?  I think it's actually some sort of  top-secret language-sensing radar Indians have installed at birth that they just don't want the world to know about.  Maybe it's installed by their CIA.  Maybe Sheela was doing me a favor not letting me in on their little secret?  In fact, I might be in jeopardy just mentioning it.

I didn't actually get to spend a lot of time with Ritesh because he was on the Other Project Team (ack!  THEM!  just kidding, love you guys!) and always seemed to end up in a different cab.  But, I did hear about one incident where he couldn't talk to a driver, so I was forced to demote him.  Very unfortunate.  He's still a nice guy and will, I'm sure, go on to raise a pile of multiple Indian-language-speaking kids with his lovely wife.

Felipe made a grab for getting on the Usefulness List when he met a Colombian at Al Ain Museum and spoke to him in Spanish.  Even then, I told him the most he could hope for was to be Useful Person #4.   I mean, yeah, it's impressive you hold a convo in a language other than English or Arabic in the UAE but how's Colombian Spanish gonna help if we suddenly encounter a date avalanche or stampede of camels?  Unfortunately, I was all the way at the bottom of the Useful Person list - that's right, blonde, English-only-speaking American me was #11 out of 11.   What an embarressment.  I did FINALLY figure out one teeny useful skill I had, but it took 3 weeks to happen.  I could hail a cab really quick.  Chalk one up for the blonde American chick.  #ibmcsc uae