The Corniche on King Faisal Highway remains my favourite promenade in the world, with Thomason Marg and Nanda Talkies Road filling up the second and third spots respectively. The place is Bahrain's answer to the Bandstands and Palm Beaches of the world- one of the few saving graces for the otherwise barrenArabian landscape. Stretching from the Bait-al-Quran, a 6 storey-museum dedicated to the Quran, to the swank Financial Towers, the path is almost symbolic of the one the island country has taken in the last three decades on its road to development.
It has been seven years since the last time I took a walk down the Corniche. What was once a daily ritual is now no more than another bookmark in the yellowing pages of fading memory. Seven years. I was another person back then. I was even called another name by my friends and relatives. In all the million changes in me between then and now, the Corniche still remains just the way it was. I suppose we all have our own special spots in the world- places that serve as reminders of all that we've lost to the unforgiving march of time. The Corniche is my spot.
Faith is never a matter of choice. For some of us, it is the mere accident of birth that determines our eisegeses of heaven and hell. Then there are others who believe that nothing in our life follows a pre-ordained script, that all stories are essentially a series of coincidences. And yet, there are junctures in all our lives that even the most skeptical of us looks back at and wonders if the hand of a greater power was indeed at work. Sooner or later, we all realize that things we once took for chance were really inevitable or, as the great Danny Boyle would have put it, written. I have reached that point now, as I stand before a board adorned with notices of a strange shade of pink, still firmly in the clutches of unemployment.
Two weeks from now, I will return to Bahrain, with or without gainful employment. No matter how horribly the next two weeks pan out, life can never be too bad as long as I can still take walks along the Corniche.
11 comments:
Wow.
You truly have gone from Whine to Wine.
It's difficult to say what was better- the post, the wisdom behind it or your cognizance of it.
In slightly less awesome words, but carrying the same awesome message- "Bhagwaan himalaya par rehte hain, ukhaad lo jo ukhaadna hai."
My reminder is my School Dela!
Cheerio!
"What oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed"
I hope you return to The Corniche with heavier pockets and a lighter head and not the other way round.
"And so it goes"? You have been reading too much Kurt Vonnegut. Let me know when you are gainfully employed. That way, I know who to get my treats from if and when I come to R-land next sem.
Congrats on the placement... But from what I gather now, the Persian gulf will be replaced by the Mediterranean!
On a different note, the Corniche in Muscat still holds its spot among some of the most beautiful places my eyes have feasted upon.
I'm not sure if it's just me but all your blog posts seem to begin the very same way.
Following the phone call, shouldn't the last line be- "...as long as 'we' can take walks along the Corniche"?
@Lefty
Baster. I am having nightmares about the trip and you aren't really helping. My latest alibi is that a Cancer-Capricorn match is, to quote Wiki, 'astrological hell'. Silly, I admit, but you know what they say about desperate times.
Unemployment isn't so bad. It let's you see life from perspectives you'll probably never get to encounter again. Though, I am also pretty sure that you won't be unemployed by the time you read this, either out of desperation
... or by getting what you deserve. :)
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