Saturday 21 / December / 2024
I don’t like people leaving me because I hate goodbyes. I always associate the word "farewell" to abandonment. Perhaps it has deep roots from my childhood. I know there is no permanency in this world but at least people should make an attempt to stay around you.
We like to say that the world is now a global village with the boundaries engulfing most countries and their traditions. It has been evident here in Oman for many years and the country has been fortunate to enjoy many privileges of interwoven cultures, of course, not without criticism.
But the problem of imported culture is that they have the habit of slowly eroding when settlers start to disappear. This where the goodbyes begin to ring louder and resonate across the depth of social values. I am saying this because I have been overwhelmingly receiving calls from colleagues saying their farewells in an alarming regularity. It was good while it lasted, they say, but regretfully, it was time to leave for home. Yes, they would like to stay but the economy begins to bite deep into their pockets.
I don’t look this at the national view, I leave that to legislators, I see as a blow to my own private collection of friends who are fast walking towards the airport gates, perhaps never to come back again. I am not even going to tell you that it is fast becoming a brain drain of national level because I look close at heart. It takes too long to build anything meaningful but too precious little to destroy it.
Just the other evening , I sat on my favourite roadside cafe and a stranger came to serve me. I enquired about Raju, the man who knew exactly the tastes of my meals including the content of sugar and milk in my tea. Raju and I had been exchanging quick words about life in general whenever he passed my table to serve other diners in the last twelve years.
He has now gone back to his home country forever. I resent it and I am now seriously considering taking my eating business elsewhere as a way of protest. For me, though I try to be extremely courteous to strangers, I tend to be too loyal to familiar faces. Each time a friend wave a permanent goodbye at my direction, they take a big chunk of me with them. Whether I linger quite a long time in their memories after their departure is not important to me. But their absence in my memory is not something I take too lightly. I took a walk on the beach to drown my sorrows when yet another friend gave me a quick call to announce his exit.
I passed a flock of seagulls clucking quite happily on the sands, as the forms of the sea waves break on their webs. They suddenly flew over my head only to land a hundred meters behind me. I was the temporary hostility and they quickly solve the problem by just changing the location but not deserting the beach. The vast ocean in front of them provides abundance of food. That's the only place they want to be. I wish it could apply with my friends so they could stay instead of leaving me. They say they would 'stay in touch' by messages but I know too many of them in the past who did not. I don’t really blame them. They are many priorities in their lives and the need to get them right is always crucial. The theory is that other 'friends' will replace them but it is never going to be the same with some people.
