From Dubai to Dushanbe: My life REWIRED

If Dubai taught us what comfort looks like, Dushanbe taught us what comfort costs. And somewhere in that gap, I rewired my outlook on life.

In 2008, I swapped the keys to a Jaguar for a pair of walking shoes. I went from a salary that gave me options to one that gave me very few. From a city that ran like clockwork, to one where the tap water was brown, the gas pipeline was empty, and no one spoke a language I knew. Then there was this guy standing below our house, watching us, apparently something many expats go through. Eerie.

Welcome to Dushanbe, Tajikistan, the capital of one of the world’s poorest countries. Home for two of the most formative years of my life.

What I didn’t know then is that I had just stepped onto a curve, one that Elisabeth Kübler-Ross first drew to map how people move through grief, and which applies to every significant rupture in a human life. Change, loss, transition. The shock of arriving somewhere you didn’t expect to be, even though you chose it voluntarily. I was at stage one – SHOCK. I just didn’t know it yet.

When the world stops making sense

The Kübler-Ross curve begins with shock. The disorientating kind when you move through your days slightly outside yourself. Everything I had used as a reference point was gone. The big city, car, gym, dining out and most importantly, the familiar faces of friends and family. The ease of being understood, and proficiency in a language. A job that I loved, and that loved me back. 

I walked the streets of Dushanbe where strangers looked at me, this foreign, lost figure and sometimes broke into song. “Jimmy, jimmy, jimmy, aaja. aaja, aaja” they’d call out, grinning. It was a reference to an old Bollywood song from the eighties that was a perfect symbol of a place frozen in time. I would cringe and then, almost against my will, I would laugh. That laugh – warm and begrudgingly given – was the first hairline crack in the old me.

But that came much later. In the initial shock stage, I was still measuring, still comparing. My instinct at this point was pure resistance. The old circuitry firing on autopilot, holding up Dubai as the benchmark against which everything in Dushanbe was found wanting.

The gap becomes grief

Denial followed fast, to the point where I was in a daze. In my head I kept repeating, “this can’t be my life”. The roles that my husband and I had moved for were suddenly under scrutiny. We questioned whether it was the right move for us. I wondered if I would be able to spend the next two years in a city that seemed so far away from everything familiar. We took a leap of faith and then watched the ground shift beneath us. Every inconvenience felt like an accusation. The brown water, the cold mornings without heating, the professional uncertainty. It felt as if everything mocked me, and made me question my judgement. 

Then came frustration, when you know something is wrong but you haven’t yet found the motivation to do anything about it. And where there’s frustration, blame can’t be far behind. The energy that should go into adaptation was spent instead on the question of who was responsible for this decision, the move to this city, the discomfort. In those initial days my husband and I questioned everything. 

What nobody tells you is that frustration is also the beginning of engagement. You can only be frustrated by something you’re paying attention to.

The valley

I kept circling through feelings of anger and frustration. Every setback felt larger, every delay personal. It’s like the universe was conspiring against me. I was not exactly depressed, but I felt weighed down by the grey fog that settles on you when you stop fighting, but haven’t found your footing yet. The questions with no clear answers. The homesickness – not for a place, but for a version of yourself that you understood. It’s usually at this point that something needs to happen to shake things up. You know that moment? When someone or something snaps you out of your stupor to start afresh. Exactly that happened to us, but not anything dramatic. 

Mid-rant someone asked me, 

Who asked you to move here?

And for some reason the question was like an ice bucket on my head. Me. My husband and I did. Together. Nobody had moved us, we had chosen this. We had packed those bags, signed those papers, and stepped onto that plane because we wanted to build something. We wanted to grow into lives bigger than comfort would allow. 

That question forced me to look at the lens, not just the image. I had been seeing Dushanbe through a Dubai-shaped lens. That question cracked the lens open.

Curiosity – When you let go of the old normal

Something shifted after that. Slowly, then all at once. I started to notice things. The welcoming generosity of the people that had nothing to do with wealth, but everything to do with character. The men who sang Bollywood songs at me in the street weren’t mocking me. They were reaching across a language barrier with the only shared reference we had. That’s not ridicule, it’s warmth. 

I was part of the pre-opening team for the city’s first five-star hotel. It was a project that put me in touch with people across every level of the Tajik society – from government officials navigating post-Soviet identity, to young team members encountering professional hospitality for the first time. Every conversation broke a barrier I hadn’t known existed. Every barrier that broke made room for something new to grow. We started making friends and were known for our warmth and hospitality.

As I look back, I can’t really tell when I made the transition from shock and denial to acceptance. But I am sure that my very own rewire was driven by CURIOSITY. When my mind stopped filtering every new experience through the old normal and started experiencing the city on its own terms. I started to notice the weather, the dramatic central Asian seasons. I began to enjoy walking, the slower pace of life, the enforced presence that comes from not hiding inside a car. I began to appreciate the people, the friendships forged in the particular crucible of shared difficulty. And I learnt how to walk on ice, in heels, with confidence.

The posture of becoming

The decision to rewire is not a single moment. It’s a posture, an attitude, a choice made again and again –  to be here fully, rather than endure partially. Some of my colleagues stayed in the blame space far longer than I did. But I was ready to move forward. So I did, armed with curiosity. That’s where the real pivot happened. 

Dubai had installed invisible defaults in me that I didn’t really notice. Clean water, continuous electricity, wide roads, a comfortable living – all those little luxuries that we take for granted. But somewhere along the way I bought into the other extreme – the fast cars, the fancy watches, the branded bags. I thought these were just the facts of the world. And I had worked my way to it, right? Dushanbe revealed them as my settings, my privilege, not universal realities. Those two years just shook me. 

Cultural rewiring is the slow, sometimes vertiginous discovery that your normal was never normal, it was simply yours.

What I learned from my time in Dushanbe is that rewiring doesn’t happen to you. It happens because you choose to open yourself. You choose to be curious. You stop armoring yourself against the new and the unfamiliar, and instead allow things to happen. It’s not a passive occurrence. It’s an active choice, a real fork in the road. One that you cannot imagine, until you come to it.

The Jaguar was a comfortable way to move through the world. Walking Dushanbe’s streets, experiencing the rugged landscape, stubbornly falling in love with the place, was a different way.

What the rewire leaves you with

It leaves you with curiosity. I thought I was curious, but Dushanbe taught me different. I discovered that I needed more of it. 

We now have friendships in Dubai AND in Dushanbe that have endured despite the time and distance. My husband and I found out what our marriage looks like stripped of distraction –  just two people, time, and the rarity of actually needing each other, spending time with each other, without the noise. We both came back different people – more honest, happier, more in touch with ourselves and each other.

The Kübler-Ross curve may have started out as a map of loss. But it’s increasingly used as a roadmap of growth. Because growth always begins with loss. The loss of something you were using as a crutch for comfort. You cannot rewire from a place of safety. You can only rewire in the gap between who you were, and who the new situation requires you to become.

You don’t have to move halfway across the world to rewire yourself, your brain, your worldview. All of us have our own versions of discomfort and shock. It’s up to us, whether we meet these moments with resistance or resilience. Do we see them as opportunities for growth and curiosity? Or do we get pulled into the familiar narratives of denial, anger, and frustration? If you are at a similar fork in the road, I hope you choose curiosity. It’s a good place to start.

Hi, I’m Anjani. I am a Leadership & Executive coach and the Founder of The Bento Coach. I believe that coaching works, and I am on a mission to make coaching accessible to everyone. If you would like to explore workshops and coaching sessions on Authority, Culture, Diversity, Leadership and more, connect with me on LinkedIn.