Writing which connects to the soul, is the essence which remains as a residue somewhere. That writing articulates unlocked/unsaid emotions about a place or a feeling of a place. Normally exceptional writing is simple, and self organises a vocabulary which is not present in discourse, such as how do you write about a city which is in the peripheral vision of a regional imagination? Does its coffee shops and Karak chai corners anchor a non existing articulation of a place? Is the non place important enough? Or is the economic core, the engine of communicative infrastructure. Not having a palate of words, leads to erasures. Spatial discourses are fluid and the past is recorded in some vocabulary, in some archive.

Writing in to action a place is an art. Amit Chaudhuri’s writing on Bombay has an archival feel. Sadly cities of the Gulf are not written yet in that vain.