Lamborghini dreams

What would a minibus driver from Kerala do with a shiny new Dh750,000 Lamborghini Gallardo? Why, sell it to pay his debts and build a house and help his family at home and donate to his mosque, of course.

That's Soupi Abdullah's answer, and he's the one to ask: he just won the 550-horsepower supercar in a raffle at Al Jimi Mall in Al Ain.

As The National reports today, the 44-year-old drives a not-at-all-souped-up minibus for his employer. He has never owned a car before, and, he suggests modestly, couldn't really use one that can do 323 kph, since "I always follow UAE laws and regulations". (We have long suspected that there might be one such driver in the country.)

Mr Abdullah won't even get to drive his new toy once for fear of reducing its resale value. That little fact reminds us of the wide gap between different income groups here.

What makes Mr Abdullah's story so charming is that he has, for a moment, jumped clean across that divide. He sounds like an unassuming man with a hard-headed plan for doing good with his windfall. How many people of any background, in similar good fortune, would do as well?