Killing Tanhai

For most gelf mallu men, the months of July-August are the most trying of them all. It is vacation time for the schools and the (un)lucky ones have their families packed away for a rain soaked lazy staycation back in Gods Own Country.

Sending away ones family does bring in an illusion of freedom that one always wanted to have, but as it does, even this illusion of freedom comes at a price. And the current one brings along with it tons of loneliness, longer days with shorter working hours (due to Ramadan), and a scorching sun followed by humid evenings which forces you to confine yourself within the four walls of your house. You cannot venture out due to the heat and no restaurant or movie would be operational before evening as it is Ramadan. Which means you’ll be forced to cook and watch soap. What can be worse, now you have to do your own dishes, wash-dry-fold-iron-fold (again) your cloths, polish your shoes, sweep and mop the floor and to make matters worse, you wife’s BFF, Mr. God might just put your patience to the test by breaking the AC.

Loneliness is a bane if it has to be endured, and the best way to kill loneliness is the obvious. To not be alone! So here’s my set of five which can surely rescue you. Pick one that suits you:

1.    Set up a booze party

I guess most of the mallus, who are I possession of a liquor permit have made the best of QDC’s quota hike for the last month and have now stored more than a month’s quota of liquor in their bar. So, it’s just the right time to set up a booze party with your other forced bachelor friends.

Experience freedom first class as you go about tippling the whole night without the fear of expecting your wife’s calls on the mobile “Where are you man? It is past midnight!”

Better still, next day when your head reels under the hangover and you sloth away in the cosiness of your bed dreaming about Sunny Leone and her Jism no. 2, you can be rest assured that there will be no interruptions in the form of urchins jumping in between or the old witch spanking your ass screaming and informing you that it’s already past noon.    

2.    Take up some sport

Team up with a sports oriented friend and get fitter in the real sense.

Especially in Qatar, there are many places where one can play indoor games during the day time. Try any of the clubs, where you can play Squash, TT or even badminton. Play Tennis in the evening till very late in the night. Playing Tennis in the floodlights has its own charm.

Go on a fishing trip during the weekend. Fishing cruises (with fishing equipment provided) are available at www.qatartourism.gov.qa and if you are a team of four, the cost works out less than QAR 500 per person.

Again since you have all the time under the sun, why not enrol into a gym. The PTA meeting in most schools is scheduled in September, which gives you guys just enough time to shape up.

3.    Explore your culinary side

Why not try your hands on cooking?

Try a new dish without the risk of having to subject others to taste it. Invent a marinade of your own using one of your stocked liquors.

Post pictures of the food you’ve cooked on a networking site. And while you do so, just like those celebrity chef’s on the TV, act as if what you’d cooked was actually tasty.

4.    Pursue your academic goals

Again, with your wife and kids away, you are suddenly endowed with a lot of disturbance free time. Make good use of it. Enrol yourself into a course and pursue an academic dream that you always wanted to achieve.

Get a LEED or PMP or Six Sigma or whichever certificate that you’ve dreamt of holding.

If you are not one of the academic types, go ahead and learn to play a musical instrument.

This is the right time. Do it now, or you’ll have to wait for another whole year.

5.    Get tangled in the web

If you are someone who wouldn’t venture into any of the above, chances are that you are a simple down to earth mortal being who is skewed more on to the carnal side.

I’d recommend you guys to get a membership of an online dating site named Tagged. Needless to mention, this website is banned in Qatar. However, if you are keen and discerning, you’ll find a way to bypass the system. Out there, there’s enough material available to keep you busily engaged for the whole month and even longer.

Here you’ll find desperate women looking either for love or just plain money and also some African men trying to illegally sell gold and diamonds. Choose what you want.

My reliable sources say that this place is filled chock-a-block with desperate Asian single females willing to share anything as long as you treat them to a peg or two of Jack Daniels and bucket of KFC!

If you are of the high class types, you can hook up with a professional who’d fly down to live in for a month. All you’d have to do is, spend the money for flight tickets, a month’s maintenance and just a paltry $5000/- as a parting gift. Ah! That’s too much for a mallu to handle!! Now we know why these western expats are so highly paid!! ;-)

Tanhai – Urdu word for Loneliness.

Loneliness is an unpleasant feeling in which a person feels a strong sense of emptiness, yearning distress and solitude resulting from inadequate quantity or quality of social relationships (Courtesy – Wikipedia). 
Frankly, I never knew the problem was this serious, until I read the wiki. :-p