In these craziest of times, in these worst of times, Dubai's grace endures

London: The 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson, and Omar M Yaghi for the development of metal-organic frameworks, remarkable materials that can, among other things, help create water from air.

Yaghi, a refugee from Palestine, who spent his childhood in different countries, would know the true value of water in the desert. And yet, people choose to bomb desalination plants - and children's schools, and whole civilian settlements - not just military installations, in West Asia.

I'm back in London after a couple of days in Dubai, my trip to Kolkata aborted by rising tension in West Asia and cancelled flights. It feels like such a naive question to ask, but it keeps circling in my head: why do we still wage war? Not in the grand, geopolitical sense, but at the human level.


If there is a city where 'service with a smile' could be an unofficial motto, it is Dubai. People come from everywhere... cleaning hotel corridors, stamping passports with a polite 'shukran'. And in the middle of real, rising tension, I saw not chaos, but order.

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When the first missile alert came in on my phone, instructions were precise: move away from glass windows and doors, seek shelter in basements or interior corridors, wait for further guidance. We descended into basements. In my case, the service apartment had a fancy basement bar, replete with fußball tables where Russians and Iranians, Kazakhs and Indians, discussed world affairs with their broken language skills.

Half an hour later, another message: it is now safe to return. People emerged, and went back to their counters, kitchens, check-in desks. Cafes hissed back to life. The metro was running.

Many of my Indian friends who have lived there for years had such faith in the governance that they refused to evacuate. 'We are safer here than in many places,' they said. Others I met - Syrians, Yemenis, Palestinians, and from areas of local strife - told me they felt safer in Dubai than in their homelands, some of which no longer exist in any recognisable form. For yet many others, Dubai is not an escape, it's home now.

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In the hybrid life I lead - part London, part Dubai, part memories of Calcutta and Bombay - I have grown to enjoy Dubai in a way I did not expect when I first arrived. I have learned to appreciate West Asian hospitality: the quiet ritual of offering water, an extra date with your Arabic coffee, the way staff remember your face even if they don't know your name.

The city is a melting pot. But not in the cliched tourism-board way. It's a place where privilege and precarity stand side by side in the same lift: a luxury watch on one wrist, a shared room by the smiling staff at the end of a double shift. Yet, there's a kind of civility that runs through it all, enforced by strong rules, but also carried by individuals who are determined to make a better life.

At the point of loading my bags in a taxi, the hotel concierge reminded me to check for my passport and mobile phone -- which my son had left in the safe the last time. Even on my flight back, I saw the same choreography of order. Dubai airport was quieter than usual, but far from paralysed. Cafes stayed open. Food was in full supply. Water flowed from every dispenser. Staff, many of whom must have been frightened for their own families, still greeted passengers with a genuine fake smile. This comes from years of building a service culture.

It's hard to reconcile that image with news alerts speaking of missiles, strikes, and 'strategic targets'. Among those targets are now desalination plants that pull drinkable water out of the sea in this desert region. Any successful strike could leave millions without drinking water.

As I left West Asia, two such successful strikes had already been recorded. You don't need a degree in international relations to see the insanity of war.