After one plus years of zooming about Khaleeji Tarikh with Sana Quadri from Dubai with Revati; it was surreal to meet Historian and Writer Revati Tiwari herself in Mumbai over pav bhaji to discuss the role that South Asians have played in the trade histories of the Gulf.

Revati is fresh off her Fifty-Two article success on Dubai Bania Histories which is her area of doctoral research too. I have a long-term intellectual interest in the Bania Oral Histories Archive in Masqat with Hardik Ramaiya Bhai.

Histories of a Desi Gulf can be written from Bombay too as the ‘Informal Raj’ was run from here (Onley 2007).

To more conversations among Gelf kids on the region we call home.

#research #dubai #trade #mumbai #home

A lot of things which I did not expect to be sincere I was a teacher’s kid, who grew up in a relaxed Gulf capital, where the social and the racial differences were visible. Life since I was a pre-teen has been a hustle to be better and punching above one’s weight category has been the norm rather than the exception as doors were slammed as one was considered miskeen. The choice was not there at all, fight or accept the mediocrity. All the things I have done from engineering to winning three prestigious scholarships in Singapore and Holland (for my masters which I did not take up), have been one start up after another.

A nonlinear career is not one with complete agency, but a way to do the things which I wanted to do as an Ivy League or an Oxbridge education due to financial reasons was out of reach at points of my life. Entrepreneurship and hustle are a state of mind. Each day still happens to be day one after having contributed to nurturing a couple of turnarounds and a couple more start/scale ups in the Gulf and SE Asia.

When i started writing, I was shown the door. But i stayed on long enough to have a hundred plus media articles and thirty odd journal and conference papers. The superpower sometimes keeps writing each day. A lot of kind souls (you know who you are) are angels in disguise.

The Art of the Sale is the most important skill, we are selling subtly a value proposition all the time. It is not a bad word.

Keep Building.