It seemed strange that our belongings we had amassed while living in Dubai for 15 years are just objects that must snugly fit into a shipping container. I looked around the living room to see what could be given away or sold, and my wife pointed to my favourite red-coloured armchair to which I had retreated many a night with a book and a mug of steaming herbal tea.

We could not leave behind the huge Kenyan face masks and wood carvings that my wife had collected during her visits to the Global Village.

The Clavinova (digital piano) had to come with us, though the keys were stiff now. Our son had spent hours banging on the keys with the help of a music teacher from Kerala who got him to pass various grades of the Trinity College music exams.

I found a piano repairman to come home and look at it and he seemed like someone straight out of a children’s storybook. He opened his bag, brought out various tools, placed them carefully on the table and then took out a jeweller’s eyeglass and peered into the innards of the instrument.

“This is old but very sturdy. They don’t make such pianos today,” he said and quoted me a hefty sum to replace the keys.

My wife wanted to ship our washing machine that has started hopping around the kitchen on three legs, though her new employer is offering a furnished apartment with appliances.

“We can wash the cat’s blanket and her stuff in this,” she insisted.

“You don’t need a 20-foot container. I can pack your stuff in a 40-foot container with three other families,” said the moving company owner, looking at the ancient stuff we planned to haul across the Arabian Sea.

The mover later chatted and said he started his career in the UAE as a packer (the guy who paper-wraps, bubble-wraps and then boxes your precious things) and is now an entrepreneur in the business of relocation.

He promised our stuff would be moved wardrobe-to-wardrobe, meaning his staff would take our clothes out of the closet and pack them, and his men in Bengaluru (Bangalore) would unpack and place them in the cabinet in our new home.

The customs paperwork in Chennai would be taken care of and I would not have to travel to the port in the adjoining state, unless I was smuggling contraband.

“How is business?” I asked him. He said very few people were moving out of Dubai this year. Still, he makes enough to pay his staff and make a good living. “There is a lot of movement locally,” he said. (Apparently, people moving within the emirates for cheaper housing).

It seemed strange we would be going back to India, our country of origin, as expatriates. Over the years, we had become Canadian citizens and though we went back to Delhi for a couple of weeks every summer holiday, living in India full-time would be a new experience for us.

I was freaking out over pesticides and fruits and vegetables and about the quality of drinking water and decided to pose a few questions to my Facebook friends. Luckily, they did not think I was acting snooty and pretending to be a ‘foreigner’, and gave some helpful tips. (Wash the veggies and fruits thoroughly to get rid of any pesticides. Peel the wax off apples. Attach water filters to kitchen sink taps for clean, chemical-free water).

One Facebook friend said people purchase fish online. “Buy the river fish,” he advised as sea fish have high levels of mercury.

Traffic jams seem to be the one thing constant wherever I go. People shudder whenever they talk about driving in Bengaluru. But that does not faze me as I am a Dubai-ian.

Mahmood Saberi is a freelance journalist based in Dubai. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ mahmood_saberi.