Is the story, for yourself

Or that, you have an audience to explore

Is authenticity created

Or manifested, along the

Creative Journey?

What is sincere

For an artist?

I am really piqued by the imperial routes of forced/economic migration during the heydays. Tamils in Reunion to Morocco Soldiers in Vietnam in the 1940’s during the world war to Bhojpuri speaking Guyanese to Hindi Speaking Fijians. Fascinating stories, not captured, not known, and not disseminated. How many of us know of the Gujarati traders in present day GCC or East Africa? The History behind the pravasi should be known as Prime Minister Modi visits the Khaleej.

The flavours of South Asia are boxed up in a plate called the Biryani. A Malayali owned eatery with Bangladeshi service staff, with a Cook from Kolkata.

A RO 1 is a good bet.

Hossain and his friends are from Chittagong, Bangladesh working on date farms and gardens in Wadi Tiwi, Wilayat of Sur. They work for OMR 60 per month which is 12000 Taka per month. This place is 130 kilometres from Muscat, the capital of Oman. Wadi Tiwi is fairly inaccessible through the mountains and 30 odd kilometres from the Town of Sur. These guys supplement their income by playing your guide through the rocky terrain from the main road to the Wadi Tiwi springs. Hossain has been in Wadi Tiwi for six years and he and all of his friends wear the lungi, a draped garment for men, popular as a home attire in Bangladesh and India. This is unusual in the Gulf, and they wear the lungi only on the farm rather than in the Town area of Sur.

They were very keen to chat up with me in Bangla, especially in their dialect which is not very clear to me. But nevertheless it was informative to speak to them and understand that the blue collar migrant manpower in the governorates of the country, the non capital areas are manned by brothers from Chittagong and Dhaka, where the good Malayali from Kannur used to rule. But cost dynamics have slowly overshadowed Indians, and Bangladeshis have taken the lead to make my mother tongue, a dominant language of conversation in Oman and the wider Gulf.

#migranttales #latergram

Canadian Poet Rupi Kaur, is a marvellous communicator. The visuals are as important as the words. The Protest to Project mode as an artist is common. She is certainly disrupting literary structures of English Literature Academia. I seen a Chetan Bhagat in Her. Insta Poets matter as I write spoken word poetry too and I have has criticised by folks who are professional English walas. Emotions are important and we connect and narrate.

The city tour is the mantle piece of any tourism experience. In this age of Instagram filters and stylised aesthetics, the tourist imagination is framed by them. In my creative practice, responding to the themes and times we reside in is the core value as a writer. So, today thanks to a couple of good friends visited Muscat, on their way back to Kuala Lumpur. They were in town for less than 12 hours, hence how does one pack the drift of the city, in such a short time?

Well, the Big Bus Muscat Tour Bus came to the rescue. An international franchise, they are professional and have all the luxuries on board; wifi, water and availability of multilingual commentary. This ofcourse comes at a steep premium. The bus started at Mutrah Souq went around the city, in a crisp overview of the city. Marina Bandar Vantage Point snd the Royal Palace were popular draws for photography feeds. I went to parts of the city which I had not been in the last twenty years. This was special. It also prompted me to question our notions of the places we have lived in. The tour bus is a disruptive lens. It problematises the notion of the home town. Do we really know our cities? Or do we know the city as a sequential array of places constituting our daily lives? I have taken city bus tours in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Mumbai. All of these tours were small starters of all these three cities, out of which Singapore and Mumbai have been cities that I know well. The first time I took a tour bus was in 1994, as a kid where Baba and me took the Mumbai Darshan tour from Vashi in Navi Mumbai. Baba took the bus as wanted to show me Hanging Gardens and Juhu Beach.

It was also a way to show Mumbai to our relatives wanting to see the city upon visiting us; absolving us of this serious moral responsibility.

The tour bus gave me an opportunity to revisit my hometown and understand it from the vantage point of the visitor. My friends found Muscat to be clean to a fault, beautiful and inadequately marketed. Some major pluses for an Oman keen to promote tourism, as an alternative to the hydrocarbon economy. These are authentic voices that are paying tourists.

Today the tour, made me recognise my blind spots. It ruptures the routine of everyday life. Although the tour bus route is a familiar drill; the experience reboots the vision of the location.

Muscat is a marvellous city with tremendous natural endowments. These should be leveraged to promote a tourism based economy, as Muscat is just a trailer for Oman!

#ExperienceOman is more than a hashtag, rather it is a call for the world traveller to experience a special place, many of us call home.

Just spoke to a Filipina Muslim in a mall in Muscat who is here for 6 years from Mindanao, who is a die hard supporter of President Dueterte, as he is from the south as well and that most of his administration is from Davao City instead of Visayas or Luzon; she said emphatically ‘in the History of the Philippines’. She loves Oman for the quiet and lack of opportunities to spend money, so she could save more. She spoke very good English, with a clear tonality, and must be having a college degree.