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 Riyadh:
Riyadh, means
garden
in Arabic, and is the capital city of Saudi Arabia. It is well
planned with a state-of-the-art infrastructure, a superb road
network and a very imposing skyline. People who have traveled
around it would agree that this city is unparallelled in the
region and is comparable to any modern city in the world.
In one sentence, Riyadh can be described as the city with a
network of bridges, fly-over, over-passes, under-passes,
grade-separated intersections, clover-leaf intersections,
Malls & Super markets, white-colored limousines, flood of
cars & vehicles, besides Keralites (South Indian Malabaris) &
Bangladeshis and numerous gardens & green belts around!
The readers must have noted a conspicuous mention of two
nationalities above; some may wonder why.
Well these two nationalities form the largest community amongst
a large number of expatriates who live and work in Riyadh. This
analogy also applies on the entire Kingdom level too.
Lot of jokes spin around here about them in the expatriate
community and trickles down to the local Saudis either
through expatriates themselves or through the local media.
One such joke is about the Keralites which I would like to
share with the readers, with due apology to them just in case
they feel offended. I am sure, though; they would not because
this was in fact narrated to me by a Keralite dentist himself
who lives in Riyadh and who I often visit.
Here it is: Right after Apollo-11’s landing on the moon in 1969,
the Chinese, over whelmed with their sheer numbers decided to
climb their way to the moon. They did manage to do that and
established a camp there thinking very proudly that they were
to be the first human settlement on the moon. They were
just about to relay this news to the world when of them found
out, to utter chagrin, that a Keralite
Bakala
(Arabic word for small shop) and a tea-shop already existed
there with and a whole bunch of Lungi-cladding Keralites
flocking around, in one of the craters of the moon.
Lungi is a one-piece clothe wrapped
around the lower part of one’s body and is commonly worn by
both Keralites and Bangladeshis alike. In Southeast Asia and
elsewhere it is called sarong.
There are some places in Riyadh, which are mostly frequented
by sinlge-living Keralites and /Bangladeshis specially during
weekends which start in the afternoon of a typical Thursday and
continues until end of Friday.
One such place is called BATHA. This place
is the downtown now but until 25 to 30 years ago this area
used to be the center of the city and the capital hub: Center
of Power. This dates back to the days of King Abdul Aziz Bin
Abdur Rahman Al-Saud, the founder of the present day Saudi
Arabia.
The late King Faisal Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud also used to
operate here. It was perhaps after his assassination that
the Center of Capital was moved from here to its present
location. Interestingly enough all these old Royal Palaces
and the DARAT
(Arabic word from Dar meaning the residential complex,
mostly mud houses used by King Abdul Aziz and his family)
located in this area have now been fully refurbished
& rehabilitated and converted into a stunning modern complex to
form what is now called the
King Abdul Aziz
Historical Center.
This was built to commemorate the 100th year of the
establishment of rule of Al-Saud in what is now the present
Saudi Arabia. This is a huge historical complex and consists
of: a National Museum & King Abdul Aziz Memorial Hall (in
Darat Al Malak Abdul Aziz & Murabba Palace); a Women
Research Center (in Darat) and King Abdul Aziz Public
Library having a Men library Section and the other one
a Women & Children Library. This Historical Center is simply
a marvelous piece of creation, equipped with most modern and
admirable gadgets and is one of such places in Riyadh, which
is really is worth visiting.
Batha then was the Center of Capital and Batha now is a
hustling-bustling business center. It is sometimes said, “if you
don’t know Batha, you don’t know Riyadh”. Batha attracts
single-expatriates for numerous reasons. It’s easy to get there
(Limousines especially pick such passengers who flash a V-sign,
meaning they are passengers for Batha ; V in fact means two
for the Taxi driver who charges them only 2 Riyals for the
trip per person; (US$1=3.76 Riyals) and it’s a business center
so it has all sorts of charms including cheap restaurants. In
Batha the expatriates (mostly Keralites & the Bangladeshis)
gather on weekends, literally in hundreds, for the purpose
of rendezvous & reunion; the advantage is they get to meet
all their buddies in one place. It’s a hangout. For a newcomer
in Riyadh, it’s a terrifying scene, though, to see hundreds
of human heads in one place with a peculiar humming sound of
endless chatting and confabulating.
There is yet another place in Riyadh where one finds a
similar look of a neo-China town; here the Indo-Pak-Bangladesh
expatriates don’t simply gather for rendezvous rather live
here. This place is very famous and is called
Haiyya-al-Wazarat (Arabic word for Area of
Ministries) and over the years its name got metamorphosed
dramatically to a simple HARA; HA from
Haiyya and RA from
Wazarat, interesting no? This area is
now known as
HARA
alone and be it a limousine driver (of any nationality) or even
a local Saudi almost every body in Riyadh now knows it by this
new name. May be some day even the local Municipality (known
as
BALDIA
in Arabic) might as well yield and make this name official.
For the interest of the readers here is the background: Some 25 to 30
years ago when expatriates first started to arrive in the
Kingdom for employment in large numbers, they preferred to
live here in this locality. For simple reason: their
workplaces (at that time they were largely employed in the
 Public
Sector rather than Private Sector) were generally located
here. For that matter, many offices of the Government
Ministries still happen to be located here. This human
settlement then saw its natural growth and the development
followed to accommodate the incoming expatriates and
their families. This explains the reason for this unusual
concentration of such communities here in HARA.
In Hara, you’ll
find all sorts of small shops
that sell those especial food items only which
are exclusively used and consumed by the Indo-Pak-Bangladeshi
community alone. Mutton & beef and even some vegetables
& fruits and similar supplies from Pakistan/India and
frozen fish from Bangladesh are abundantly available. By
virtue of these, Hara enjoys a unique place and
reputation among the Indo-Pak-Bangladeshi community;
residents from other places of Riyadh, even Arabs and
Filipinos, are also known to frequent Hara in search of their
“desi” stuffs or simply for stuffs at bargain prices.
In Hara even the sign boards and neon-signs posted outside
Bakalas are mostly written in Bengali & Malyalam, the language
spoken by the Bangladeshis & Keralites, respectively and in
Urdu & Hindi, the languages spoken in Pakistan and the
northern India. Perhaps, this motivated the Saudis to bring
out Daily News Paper in two of the widely spoken expatriate
languages; the “Urdu News” in Urdu and “Malyalam News” in
Malyalam have a very large circulation here and across the
Kingdom and even are in high demand from Qatar, Bahrain,
Kuwait and the UAE.
Last but not the least, there is yet another street in Hara
which is known by a very funny name, it is called “SHAHRAE
GHIBAT”;
SHAHRAE
in Arabic is called street while
GHIBAT
means to
back-bite or to speak against some body. I
have driven through this street and have found a
considerable number of people standing on both sides of it
and chit-chatting. I was curious about this name and
investigated.
An Indian friend of mine
TOLD ME me that this place (around this particular street) was
mostly inhabited & frequented by single young men from
Hyderabad in South India. They sort of gather here in the
evening as a routine for socializing, and
Ghibat
and hence the name of the street; funny indeed, no? But, this
is what is Des in Pardes is!!!
(Editors note: Opinions expressed here are strictly author's
and in no way reflect despardes.com's iews and opinions on
such issues and subject matters)
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