I have discovered that podcasts accelerate my learning journey apart from the 50 plus books I read a year, mostly on soft copy, and numerous business press reads (HBR/Monocle every month).

These are my favourite so far this year:

– Polis Project

– Inside the Strategy Room by Mc Kinsey

– Monocle Daily and other Monocle Radio podcasts (The Entrepreneurs especially)

– Recode by Kara Swisher

– Outliers by Pankaj Mishra

– Ezra Klein

– NPR

TV/ Web Shows:

– Anuradha Sengupta’s Off Centre

– Film Companion by Anuradha Chopra

– Rajeev Masand as usual

When one is not born with a high enough IQ, one has to be a hard trier 😊

Please feel free to suggest others.

Ambition leaves detritus

Friends lost, families scarred

Bank statements reflect the state of life

Often healed by chemical broths

From one vision statement to the next

KPIs leave the being hollow

And the celebration lasts an evening

The next moment, the google calendar

Schedules the next contact

As ambition reduces

And power replaces the North Star

Rachid Taha, passed away today. The North African Rai Music Pioneer who sung with Khaled and Cheb Mami. I grew up listening to him, when I did not understand enough Arabic nor French in Muscat, but felt the loss in the melody, of a land lost. Ya Rayeh was my favourite.

Wish to visit Oran, Rabat and Tunis. And Marseille.

There is too much importance on paper qualifications. In the 4IR era, learning, relearning and applying the knowledge is critical. The keyword is application, and clear thinking is paramount for this act. All the data is available, how are we processing the data is the literacy of this paradigm, not knowing.

Interest, curiosity and grit with a vision is all that it takes to win.

My icons have been Polymath Medical Doctors such as Atul Gawade, Siddhartha Mukherjee and President Kim of the World Bank who is a physician-anthropologist. Siddhartha and Atul are writers par excellence and practising doctors.

As a biotechnology major, global health has been a passion as it is a critical aspect of Social Development.

I was able to work on Health Communication based advocacy at CARE under Prof Mohan @mjdutt in Singapore. I later led healthcare at a market intelligence firm in Delhi. I wrote up a paper on the myth of big data in healthcare then.

While eating my lunch, a restaurant staff came to me and asked where I am from in Bangla, and i answered for a matter of convenience, Kolkata. I understood that the person who asked me was from Bangladesh, and was asking me about Jorasanko, Netaji Subhash’s home, Jibananda Das as these were the topics from his school days, his youth. The interest in poetry was palpable and was quite disjointed from the surroundings where he worked. South Asia and the Bengali ethos is very much alive here in the GCC.

#migrantscholars

Faith is the residue of home we carry in our souls when we are earning dollars in the pardes, to feed mouths. From the Coolies in the Caribbean to Chettiars in Malaya, temples are vital to preserving the self.

Analysis is more than data points, it’s understanding the textures of a phenomenon leveraging imagination, critical thought and nifty risk communication without operating on spivak mode.

This Yemeni man was injured in the conflict in his country and is in town for medical treatment. There were quite a few of them soaking in the twilight sun in the evening outside their hotel. All of them without legs and amputated. We can sometimes see the cost of war in the neighbourhood, in person rather than on Al Jazeera. It was uncomfortable at the least.

A Good Samaritan told me ‘when countries fight, Oman helps’

This is Oman. Respect. 🇴🇲