The person on the right in this frame from an Instagram reel is Chacha, my neighbor from Muscat- a reminder of a life lost when my parents moved back to Mumbai, due to retirement of my father. Chacha runs a legendary paratha shop, and his chicken cheese naan was a staple of my childhood. I grew up in the neighbourhood over two decades plus. The paratha is truly stuff of an entire research paper, of transnational ties over stuffed paratha. South Asia gets forged in the Gulf, in its Karachi Darbar restaurants in Al Khuwair and Karama. Chacha from Lahore runs the bakery for the last three decades with his sons and the extended family.

For many Gelf kids, home is a place in the past, a country which we had to renew visas every two years. Muscat fortunately is a home which I follow closely even if I have not travelled for four years.

My stoic economist father, who was a civil servant in Oman for the entire time for the Ministry of Manpower saw the reel and got emotional. Alas, Bayt is an emotion.

🇴🇲❤️