Qatar : Then my father got a good job in Doha, Qatar (a tiny country in the Arabian Gulf) and moved there in 1988. He works as a corrosion and materials engineer for Qatar General Petroleum Corporation, an oil and natural gas firm in Qatar. My mother and I joined him two years later. My most vivid and my clearest memories come from my years in Delhi and Doha.

I did all but the last four years of schooling in Delhi. When I was 13, we moved to Doha, Qatar. I spent half of Class 9, Classes 10, 11, and 12 (high school) in Doha in an Indian school called M.E.S Indian School. The years in Doha were very pleasant. School work was back breaking but there were many fun moments with family and friends. I am full of praise for Qatar. I had a wonderful time there when I was living in Doha with my parents for 4 years before I had to come to the US to study. Qatar has a strong Indian presence, like many countries of the Middle East. With its beautiful sea, hot climate and picturesque buildings whose architecture clearly shows the Islamic influence, Qatar is a tourist's paradise. The people are quite friendly and English is sort of like a second language there. So much so that I did not feel the need to learn Arabic while I was there for all those years. It would have been nice to pick up a new language, though.

There is no tax of any sort in Qatar and taxis are abundant and dirt cheap. Crime is very low in the city of Doha and the standard of living is high. There is a lot of affluence there, as in the United States, but unlike in the United States, where most people tend to forget their roots after living in the US for a long time, in Qatar, traditional family values are well-guarded by Indian parents and children grow up with a strict sense of Indian family values.

Nationalities such as Qatari, Indian and British hold high-paying jobs and often bring their families to the country. On the other hand, there are many low-paid laborers who labor hard and long on the streets, doing mostly construction work. They toil in the streets during the day. In the summer, the sun is merciless, but you can still see these laborers sweating and working under the hot sun when temperatures reach up to 110 degrees F. Others who work equally hard are men who sell newspapers at intersections and roundabouts in the hot summer sun, especially at noontime.

Many Western tourists visit Qatar every year. The white population in Qatar is mostly constituted by the British. There are few Americans there too. The population of Qatar is a very diverse mix of people. There are Qataris, Indians, British, Filipinos, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Iranians, Jordanians, Palestinians, Egyptians, Somalians, Sudanese, etc.

I was in school in Doha for four years. Then my friends and I all had to part because we were going to college. Some of us were going to India and some of us (like me) were coming to the US to study at the college level.