The Blue Passbook
He was being gently ushered into the curious, almost ritualistic world of passbook banking – not in a glittering tower of glass and steel with polished counters and soft instrumental music, but in a humble branch by the Creek, where the musty scent of old paper mixed with the warm, lilting flow of Hindustani street-speak. This was savings banking in its most earnest form. It was Dubai in the late seventies. The city had not yet grown into the restless giant it was destined to become. Still, cranes dotted the horizon like skeletal birds, and roads stretched cautiously into the sand. Taxis were battered, buildings squat, and the people – like him – came from elsewhere: Bombay, Kandy, Kerala, Karachi. They arrived with letters folded into airmail envelopes, stories passed between cousins, and dreams wrapped in modest ambition. Inside the bank, it was cooler than the sun-blanched street outside, though never truly cool – just enough to make you linger. The old air conditioners, proba...