‘It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously’, and this was quoted by Oscar Wilde more than 100 years ago, which brings me to the whole widely celebrated idea of ‘taking oneself too seriously’.

Having lived and worked in Dubai for more than 15 years, I’ve met a whole lot of people who’ve worked their way up, becoming corporate bigwigs and successful entrepreneurs. Sure, bravo to them for having ‘made’ it, but wearing your job title everywhere you go, is probably taking it a bit too far.

I was at a high-profile event last week, and within five minutes of conversation, I knew almost everything there was to know, about some people — their job, their address, their cars, their children’s schools and yes, even their holidays.

Since April is the ‘month of comedy’, I called my friend, stand-up comedian Nitin Mirani to get his usually hilarious take on this subject.

Nitin starts off by telling me that he makes sure he enjoys his time waiting for his car at the valet service — because a business proposal or even a marriage proposal — may take a drastic turn if your Honda pulls up before the other person’s Range Rover. He says that he has spent more than half his life in one of the most congested areas called Bur Dubai, or as we residents called it Bar Dubai, but in the last few years, Bar Dubai has become Far Dubai with swankier residential areas being developed in the ‘newer’ side of town. Nitin remembers a girl saying to him “It’s not going to work between us ‘cause I don’t believe in long distance” — what she meant was JLT & Mankhool could never be happy together.

OK, I admit that there have been times when I too have taken my role as a television personality too seriously, and have worn my designer stilettoes down to the neighbourhood grocery. And there have been times when I have gone out fine dining when all I wanted was a wholesome biryani in Satwa. So I do get it when people do stuff like this. After all, Dubai is so unique — no matter how long or how hard we work, our visa will eventually expire and we must head back ‘home’. It’s almost like the city says, “you can live here so long as you are working’. And hence a large part of us becomes what we ‘do’ here.

But is it so important to always be so important? What if we give ourselves one day in the week to feed our souls instead of our ego, and truly let our hair down? That’s be worth a try, I’d say!