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Living on the wrong side of town and loving it

"I don't actually live in Karama," I point out, and, sometimes, flash Google Maps on my phone triumphantly. "I live in Mankhool.

A decade and a half ago, when I still lived in Kolkata, a couple of my friends, both men, moved to the United Arab Emirates (they got jobs at the same time). Every year, they would visit Kolkata on their annual vacation, with stories about their wonderful "high life" in Dubai, their apartments on a "high" floor from where they had a staggering view of the beach and the sea. The "swanky" shopping malls they frequented on weekends. Being goggle-eyed at the cultural diversity on display. The street style, the fashionable women, the beach boys - all sounded swimmingly elegant. "Plan a trip to Dubai," they'd tell a few of us (all wet behind ears), while we stared back at them in wide-eyed wonder. "It's so upmarket. it's like living on the pages of a luxury magazine."
Then, a few years later, they moved back to India. That was that.
Just before I moved to Dubai, I bumped into one of them - accompanied by his wife - at a swanky mall in Delhi; he was in the city to meet relatives. I duly informed him I was moving to his former 'upscale county'.
"Sharjah?" his wife butted in.
"No, Dubai," I said, mildly confused.
"But he never lived in Dubai," she exclaimed, "He lived in Sharjah."
Turning to her husband, who suddenly appeared very fidgety, she asked: "Why would you tell her you lived in Dubai?"
"Because my office was in Dubai?" he tried to adopt a flamboyant tone now.
"What about the apartment on the beach?" a broad chuckle was beginning to spread across my face.
"He had no apartment on the beach," I had no idea why his wife was poking such big holes in his story with such alacrity and so matter-of-factly, maybe she'd just had truth serum injected into her. "He used to live in this hole, I visited him once and swore never to return. Do you know what his idea of a weekend used to be? Slow cooking mutton at home!"
I was amused that he went to such concocted lengths to prove he lived it up in the "Dubai side" of the UAE but, later, yet another friend remarked this is an existential crisis that one has to swagger through - at times, ahem, by lying: living on the wrong side of town. It used to happen a lot in Delhi; you were "judged" on the basis of your address. I knew of those who always said, "I'm from Delhi", when they were actually from out-of-town Gurgaon or Noida or Faridabad or, worse, "Okay, I live in Gurgaon, but the entry point into Delhi is right outside my gate!." Even among the satellite towns, there was a class system. It was okay to say you are from Noida, because Noida is new-fangled and a special economic zone; not so okay to admit you are from Indirapuram right next door. Indirapuram denizens would often mask their insecurity by saying brashly, "Hey there, I'm from Noida."
For seven years, I lived in a rented place in Delhi, and everyone used to get ever so enviously bristly over my address. It was smack bang in the middle of a very desirable part of town, but I have to add here I had landed the place purely by luck - I had absolutely no idea my home address could become my calling card.
In Dubai, there's been a role reversal: I now live on the wrong side. I'm frequently asked why I continue to live in a "ghetto". "Because I love it," is what I usually offer.
But then, I tend to get picky with specs. "You live in Karama, right? That place will implode one day with all those eating joints and barber shops."
"I don't actually live in Karama," I point out, and, sometimes, flash Google Maps on my phone triumphantly. "I live in Mankhool. And I insist I be tagged with the correct location not because I'm an address freak but because I believe I learnt geography for a reason."
sushmita@khaleejtimes.com