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Peons, Clerks and a Cadillac: Pakistanis in a Dubai Bank

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  Peons, Clerks and a Cadillac: Pakistanis in a Dubai Bank Denzil Jayasinghe 6 min read · 19 hours ago 1 T his story is for the Pakistanis who kept a certain Dubai bank running in the seventies, long before anyone thought of “shared services” or “offshoring”, and when hierarchy was as visible as the nameplates on the doors. Akram Mohamed Akram was our “chief typist”, a rank that never appeared on any organisation chart but lived securely in our minds and in his confident stride. He commanded a small empire of keys and carbons, assisted by two loyal lieutenants: the ever‑earnest Ashok Hinduja and the boyish Sunil Kataria, both from Mumbai and both condemned — so we thought then — to a lifetime of typing letters of credit. Akram himself was unforgettable: tall, with lips a permanent red and a passing resemblance to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto that made us feel vaguely geopolitical just walking past his desk. He spoke in a rich Pakistani accent, opening every conversation in a musical tone, h...
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Yasryn

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  Yunus A shy Indian bank clerk in 1970s Dubai, a daily walk to the Central Bank, a curious holiday in Thailand, and one kind colleague named Gagan. This is Yunus’s story — pint sized in stature, quiet in manner, but carrying a surprising share of humour, humility, hardship and human warmth. Denzil Jayasinghe 6 min read · 4 days ago 3 Chapter I — Yunus the Wanderer Yunus was a wanderer by habit, if not by map. He was a tiny fellow — a shade under five feet, as though the tape measure had lost interest halfway and gone off for a cup of tea — and so lightly built that a good desert breeze might have carried him from Deira to Bur Dubai without the help of a bus. His glasses sat permanently on his nose, and his hair was parted neatly down the middle like that of a conscientious schoolboy who had forgotten to grow up. He was an innocent Indian lad adrift in the great adventure of a Dubai bank in the mid‑seventies, older than most of the young clerks around him, yet looking younger becau...
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Gagan and the Rajesh Khanna Haircut

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  Gagan and the Rajesh Khanna Haircut This is the story of Gagan — not just as the man everyone laughed at, but as the quiet, forgotten soul behind the laughter, whose life slipped between the lines of ledger‑books and clerks’ gossip, like a blot of ink no one ever bothered to correct. Denzil Jayasinghe 7 min read · 1 day ago 2 Chapter 1: Entry This is the story of Gagan, not just the man everyone laughed at, but the walking entertainment channel of the branch, whose life slipped between ledger books and clerks’ gossip like a blot of ink no one ever bothered to correct. It was the late 1970s in Dubai. The bank smelled of black ink, tired air-conditioning, and Lipton tea carried in by a tea boy who moved with the calm assurance of a man who knew nobody would ever hurry him. Into this atmosphere walked Gagan every morning, a little late, a little rumpled, and looking like someone had inflated Rajesh Khanna with a bicycle pump. His hair was his pride: thick, wavy, and gloriously exces...
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