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Notes From Abroad: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

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I traveled to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) in the month of May, this year and stayed there for about three months with a break in between, back to India for about a month’s time, before the third month. I was deputed by my organization to work for a Client in the software and/or banking sector and I must say, I loved the experience unlike how it is usually perceived except for some of the Indian mentalities and behaviors that pulled the experience a little lower. Anyway, prejudiced treatment of people by many big chaps is to be blamed for such mishaps though I believe that is pretty universal nowadays, given the high population and competition for every single task that is at hand to be carried out.

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Never mind, I learned a lot, especially about people, though it is unsurprising given the past experiences I have had, analyzing people psychologically.

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Anyway, my aim here is not to materialistically describe my experience in KSA, if it was so, then I would have definitely added pictures of my trip, though I am not used to taking many because of my philosophy of having everything registered in my mind and enjoying it soulfully as an individual. God willing, each of us will certainly get such beautiful experiences in life and not always are foreign trips the do and for all for such experiences because I have a dream, where I want to go to rural India and take part in some farming and teaching too, which I believe will be an equally enriching experience.

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On the contrary, my effort here is to try and make the other part of the world understand how delusions and deliberate false ideologies can hurt our sentiments about a group of people – in this case about KSA. This is perhaps similar to how the whites in the US used to (and perhaps still do, to a small extent) treat and think about the blacks. In that, my observations have, at least in general, made me realize that Saudis are much better than most Indians. I know I may be wrong in generalizing because there are exceptions in every group of people but I felt that the absolute disgust with which most Indians live their lives and the ignorance they show to the local problems that plague the country, make me wonder if me becoming a rogue to hurt them wouldn’t be much of a mistake. I get reminded of the Tamil film ‘Anniyan’ where actor Vikram plays a perfect portrayal of a person with bipolar (or rather multiple personality disorder) who switches between an innocent TamBrahm (Tamil Brahmin) and a rogue who butchers people is uniquely distinct ways quoting some scripture where punishments are enlisted against each type of sin.

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Anyway, let me make this excerpt brief by describing what I loved most about KSA and of course as any country, there would be points where they can improve, which I will try to point out here too –

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1. I landed during the month of Ramadan (May) and because I am a person who doesn’t take much care of my eating habits, personally, I didn’t mind the fasting though there were days it got frustrated especially due to the workload. In many ways, I am happy that they are people who have certain stern rules though I would have preferred such a rule to be flexible and subjective. So assuming that the fasting time is from early morning 3:30 AM to about 6:30 PM, the latter of which is the time when we leave back to retire for the day from the office, we found people stopping cars (our own car too) and delivering packages with food, water, and dates, that they bought from supermarkets even when we were waiting at the signal. This they claim is an act of blessing which they will receive from God, and trust me because of my love and understanding of God in this short span, I believe such people will definitely be blessed by God, of course, if their other acts in life are not in complete contrast to the ones mentioned above

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2. You are greeted with a ‘Salaam Alaikum’ (Peace be upon you) every time you meet someone and trust me, with time, I myself started offering them the same, thereby leading to the subsequent ‘Wa Alaikum Salaam’ (And unto you peace) from them. Nevertheless, imagine yourself being bullied by crazy people who have been part of something for a long time and yet don’t know the scope of the same and after that, you hear someone whom you have never before met in your life telling you something so peaceful. You would feel rejuvenated telling yourself, “Well, there is at least someone who is willing to love and respect me as a human at the end of the day” and go ahead with completing the troublesome task that is at your hand. I hope you get it

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3. The roads are very broad and my word, for a person like me who loves driving both cars and bikes fast and safe, it was almost always itching my fingers to catch them by the throat and start playing. But unfortunately,  I didn’t have an International Driving License which I again attempted to gain this time around but decided against it due to a few reasons. Anyway, though I tell you about the well-maintained roads and better rules than in India, I have heard that other parts of the Middle East, like Dubai and Kuwait, have much stricter rules because I found at least one car every day that had a dent on itself as though it very recently met with an accident. So yeah, there are downsides to the same as well

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4. Initially, I did feel that my Clients were pretty strict but it is only with time that I realized that the Clients were only reasonably stern on what they wanted because they were fair on how they dealt with both Managers and Developers. They knew that the Developers are giving it their all and it is some other organizational reasons that are hurting the entire shape of the Project. With time, I actually enjoyed dealing with the Client because they too felt that my honesty and willingness to be frank about the issues in the System was a better approach to solving them than hiding and carrying it out a later time. Indeed, honest and committed people have, right from the beginning of the world, been a need of the hour and this was one reason why I returned to India with an idea of using some Middle Eastern funds to start an organization of my own. Of course, it didn’t materialize though I will hope for time to do the tricks because above all I know that my intents may not always be right, but God’s is

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5. Of course, you would want the butterflies in every part of the world to not be nested when they fly. Yes, I am referring to the women of KSA. Though I have heard that most of them like such a policy owing to their devotion to Islamic rules, I felt that it should again be at their discretion to decide if such a purdah should be worn or not. Anyway, we will hope for such things to change soon because I believe that the Indian mentality of restraining freedom from women and getting them married off to people who are not of their choice at a young age too is something that hurts their rights. We can only pray that all in all human beings are happy with their lives because of course there are gruesome things happening to a lot of people across the world, which meagre words can’t describe

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6. With time, I realized that the entire landscape of KSA was a combination of USA and India because of course, KSA has a lot of links with the US, and many of their dealings happen in the American style. But when I traveled to some other parts of KSA, I found a lot of similarities with India too perhaps due to the heavy north Indian and Keralite influence there

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7. I have heard that there are parts of KSA where there are live execution of people and theft that happens pretty regularly with women witnessing and laughing at such executions though I am yet to witness and experience or share it

8. Of course, the Salah (prayer) timings are pretty inconvenient for most of us, especially if we don’t practice it and are not aware of it, as we are forced to return to our homes empty-handed if we go to Bakalas (small shops) at those times. We get used to it with time and until people are friendly otherwise, we wouldn’t mind such a restriction

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9. I have heard that KSA was a much stricter and unhappy place to live in about 10-20 years ago but with their vision 2030 now (of which our Project too is a part of) under the initiation of the new Prince, I feel many changes are happening, of course, most of which you too are aware of being circulated in the news

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10. A lot of people whom you meet here as foreigners are either from Pakistan, Bangladesh or Nepal so yes, knowing at least a little bit of Hindi will be handy while interacting with them especially if you are in a Cab with a Pakistani driver and so on. I met Mr. Tilak who works at a petrol bunk grocery outlet near my residence at Riyadh, KSA and you won’t believe it, though he is from Nepal, he conversed with me in Tamil and told me that he knows many such languages because he was earlier stationed in Malaysia. Who says you need a white-collared job to travel the world

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Of course, though I tell you all this, there were Clients who may have hurt the sentiments of some of my colleagues and were unhappy with our work but I wouldn’t blame it on them but rather on some other organizational reasons that I had mentioned above, which I wouldn’t want to detail here. All said and done, I consider that project as an absolute ‘Project Development level success‘ because come on, not just me, the entire team developed this project within a very, very short span of time and as I always tell them, “This project would have been a delight to work on if and only if we had more time in our hand”.

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Thanks for spending the time going through this excerpt. We will definitely hope for good times to come in the future and guess what? I do believe that a little bit of violence or at least the intent to be violent can help change India too and I don’t know what the purpose of my life is, but I’d definitely attempt this. All said and done, if the people don’t want change, there is nothing for me to lose. God has graciously given me more than what I need and I believe that whatever skills he has given me and many of us is enough for a decent sustenance here and as promised by Him, lasting and posh sustenance in Heaven.

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Also, an important point that I observed towards the initial part of my stay at Riyadh, KSA –

Gandhiji’s saying, “The world has enough for everyone’s need, not for everyone’s greed.”

Anyway, the following links will be of help to you to observe in these lines –

BBC News – ‘We moved to the forest to fight climate change’ – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-49295800

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVuVlk2E_e4

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May God bless us all as he pleases.

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