JOIN USPoor Dubai seems to be having a bad year. The otherwise booming real estate collapsed into a debt trap as if the tall spire of Burj Khalifa had pricked the bubble. And no one expected that creating an International City would invite all kinds of international problems.
First, Israeli gunmen chose to murder a senior Hamas leader in a Dubai hotel. Then as if to fill in the gap for M F Hussein who moved to neighbouring Qatar, the city now awaits Shoaib Malik and Sania Mirza to make their home there. Of course Malik had earlier bowled another Hyderabadi maiden over and many shouted that it wasn’t quite cricket. Thanks to Dubai that played third umpire, the match was set.
While the Shoaib-Sania story was their internal affair, the great Dubai story is about the Indian Premier League’s external affair. One fine morning, the ‘who’s who of Dubai’ were curiously asking “Who’s She?” about the glamourous owner of an IPL team. Even the ‘karmayogis’ from ‘Karama’ wanted to know the ‘satya’ from ‘Satwa’. Apparently most of the P3Ps were content to mingle with the stars, but one of them asked for the moon and actually found one mooning over her. The benevolent radiance also purportedly arranged a rendezvous with a sports club and 70 crores in equity — no sweat!
Life should have been smooth sailing, but for a ‘Modi’fied problem. The IPL commissioner wasn’t happy with the successful Team Kochi bid. So while the moon tweeted, he decided to blow the whistle. The former used technology to wax eloquent about his views and latest muse while the latter recorded transactions. Anyway, damning evidence or a convenient excuse for higher authorities to get rid of a liability saw the moon completely eclipsed.
In India, no other game can match cricket when it comes to ugly scandals. Dubai should have known this before opening its cricket stadium exactly a year ago. Now all it can do is sigh and ready a villa on the stationary fronds of Palm Jumeirah for the latest migrants from the Indian subcontinent — Mr and Mrs Tharoor.