our lady of the pink patrol

31Oct09

admittedly i have been somewhat lax in our online reminiscences of the life of my royal majesty, leaving you to pine for updates but everything worth having is worth delaying so that the demand supply ratio works in the favour of the supplier. i’m sure warren buffet would approve of my market strategy.

when you think about it, or rather, when i think about it, there aren’t many people in the world who come up with original names for places of worship. this is probably because creativity in matters of faith is often considered a no-no of the highest proportions; hence while you will see the world bearded index crossing one billion in your lifetime, you will be hard put to find the mosque of blackbeard anytime soon. or, for that matter, the basilica of the celibate priest. and i have no problems with this. because once it starts, there’s no telling where it ends. i’m not sure i want to worship in a motorsport themed mosque sponsored by ferrari – even though most of my worship revolves around a common theme involving a ferrari 599, a supermodel, good relations with the aforementioned, etc, – essentially your standard achhi see eik garee ho, larki us mein pyari ho concept.

however, i have digressed from the subject at hand. not that there’s anything you can do about it – but still. to get back to where i was coming from, my point was that all indications to the assumption notwithstanding, the title of this post has as much to do with the blessed saint of breast cancer preventation as it does with my liking for orange teeshirts. no indeed. this is about the curious preference certain arab ladies display for pink nissan patrols. to put this in perspective, this is something like an armani leopard print bulletproof vest or snakeskin stiletto construction boots. and yet, such a vehicle is not uncommon enough to stand out in a car park in abu dhabi – and if it does, it’ll only be because its owner managed to find a parking spot, which was, for the record, one of the undocumented tasks of hercules (the only one he flunked out on, by the way).

life in abu dhabi has innoculated me against many things. i no longer register surprise at the sight of a guy with an eighteen inch long beard walking with two abaya-clad females into a cinema to watch a teen dance movie at 12 am for example. i give only a passing glance at ludicrous displays of daredevilry on the roads involving 8 pre-teen kids and a landcruiser coasting on its side on two wheels. i will probably not go into cardiac arrest if i see a nokia phone with a skin made by de beers or tiffany’s. and so on so forth. so leaning against a pink nissan patrol in one of the parking lots on the corniche to take a break during my midnight biped sojourn is not exactly akin to hitchhiking my way to helsinki, even if it isn’t the posture you picture when you think of my majesty.

what is unusual though is to find out that the owner of the said pink nissan patrol is in fact a member of the male species. let me put this in perspective. the arab race is very, well, arab. especially if they are from what i call the persian gulf (at my own risk – they call it the arabian gulf). it would be hard for you to find eighteen adult khaleeji males who do not sport at least a stubble on their chins. it would be harder to find eighteen who do not enjoy a good football game. it would be impossible to find eighteen who do not walk (regardless of their frame) as if they were either strutting around for a mr. olympia contest or as if they were wearing extremely uncomfortable underwear. in short, they are from a world where men look like men and rohrshach images look like ink blots and cucumbers look like cucumbers because that is what they are.

so a guy in a pink nissan patrol in red skin tight jeans and pink form-fitting teeshirt with a hairstyle that looks like a bird of paradise’s tail was, to put it mildly, unexpected. unexpected, but not inexplicable. after all, every man has an inner rainbow –  it just shines more brightly in some (especially if they’re from makran) – and his was just one of those tragic cases. except that you do not expect a guy like that to be able to snare a flaming hot french chick who pops out of the other side of the patrol making the nissan patrol look like a jack-in-the-box designed by yves saint laurent. but we all know what makes the world goes round….

ladies, follow the money if you will but, for the sake of everything holy, follow it to the kind of guy who looks like hes trying to get you not trying to be you! i mean, red jeans? red jeans??!!

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in other news sure to shake you to your very core, i have started the mission to obtain a driving license. someday this will form the basis for a whole series of very funny posts (if you find my brand of humour funny, that is) but right now its just too painful to write about.

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i have no clue why i started this post. let me know if you do.

Filed under: fashion issues, ramble, the father of dhabi   |  11 Comments