Sindbad, cassettes and Summer breaks

I remember the vacations we had in Dubai. Unlike in India, summer holidays there were in July and August…the hottest months. They only began after our first term exams. 

During the break, Mom and Dad would ask us to clean our cubbies. There wasn’t much to do apart from playing in the corridor with my one close friend who lived nearby. 

Honestly, vacations in Dubai were quite boring. We rarely went out, and for my mom, it was the busiest time of the year. She used to say that the rest of the year ran smoothly, but vacations turned everything upside down. 

One thing we all enjoyed was watching movies. This was back in the 1980s and 90s, when video cassette tapes were still around. We had a membership at a Malayali cassette shop. Every time we rented a movie, they would note the name and date in a big register. We loved rewatching old Malayalam comedy movies. The 1980s and early 90s were truly the golden years of Malayalam cinema- with unforgettable comedies and timeless classics by legends like Padmarajan and M.T. Vasudevan Nair. Back then, I wasn’t a big fan of classic films, but now I am a die-hard fan. “Thoovanathumbikal” is right at the top of my favorites list. 

My favorites in those days were the Mohanlal–Sreenivasan combo. I must have watched Nadodikkaattu at least a hundred times. And of course, movies like Kilukkam. Even now, I am a fan of those kinds of films, and I still feel they were the best.

Tom & Jerry was the best… and then Popoyee the sailor man, where the guy suddenly gets muscles as soon as he eats spinach, which was kind of yuck for me back then. But now spinach is one of my favorite veggies. 

Another fond memory is of Sindbad, an arcade zone for kids in Al Ghurair Centre. It one of the few big malls at the time. Every week, Dad and Mom would drop my brother and me there while they went for a walk. 

Back then, Channel 33 was the main TV channel before Malayalam channels and satellite TV came along. They aired Hindi movies every Thursday at 10:30 PM, and my brother and I never missed them. Fridays were weekends in the Middle East, so it was the perfect time. I also loved watching The Crystal Maze, a game show hosted by Richard O’Brien. It had teams completing challenges in different historical settings to collect time crystals. It was fascinating! 

But the best part of vacation? Not having to wake up early in the morning.

The crunch I still remember

In my childhood memories, there’s a bakery van that still brings a smile to my face. It used to park on the side of the road, across from a row of shops in Ghusais. This was sometime in the late 1980s though I must have been just four or five years old then.

The van was white, with the bakery’s name printed on the side, though I can’t recall what it was. It only came once a week, but that one day felt special. My family and I would walk over, and inside the van were neat rows of freshly baked bread, soft buns, and my absolute favorite freshly fried potato chips.

I was always fascinated by the sight of so many delicious things inside a single van. My parents would buy fresh bread and without fail, a packet of chips each for my brother and me. The chips came in a clear packet with a picture of a smiling baker and the bakery’s name printed in both Arabic and English along with the expiry date.

Those chips were something else. They were thin, golden, perfectly crisp, and just salty enough. You could even taste the light oil they were fried in, which somehow made them even better. To this day, I have never found chips that taste quite like those. Nothing ever came close.