The Manager, the Telex, and a Small Theatre Called a Bank
The Manager, the Telex, and a Small Theatre Called a Bank Denzil Jayasinghe 4 min read · Just now A recent story about a bank in Dubai in the seventies brought back a memory of my time with Peter Rawlings — those days when even the smallest task seemed to carry a curious weight, especially under his watchful, forward-leaning gaze. Dubai in the seventies was not the city people know today. There were no glass towers competing with the sky, no vast highways humming with restless traffic. The city was still discovering itself — half trading post, half promise. The creek was its lifeline, and along it stood a handful of buildings that seemed, at the time, important enough to hold the future together. Our bank was one of them. Inside, the world was smaller, slower, and yet, in its own way, intensely serious. Peter Rawlings was the manager — spectacles firmly in place and a permanent forward bend, as though he were always about to catch a thought before it escaped. One had the impressi...