Pizza By The Bay on Marine Drive is a Bombay Institution. Have been fortunate to have a couple of long weekend brunches over the past month gave me the opportunity to have some of the fare on the menu, which is exquisite – the pizza to the tapas.

It is an uber popular place due to the location, makes it a go to eatery despite its 5 star price tag. The ambience is calm, and the patrons are the well off sort.

I have been coming here since 2012 and have memorable catch ups here from Singaporean climate diplomats to friends from the gulf.

Perfect place for long brunches with friends over bubbly.

It was splendid to walk with a passionate group of food and heritage enthusiasts led by @beyond_heritage and @raunak_ramteke through the by lanes of Fort, known for it’s Parsi cafes in corner plots, not inauspiciously located to the eye of the trading community. The Parsis known for their entrepreneurial zeal have given the micro minority a stature beyond it’s mere numbers. As Prof Leilah of SOAS has written in her book on Parsi trusts and the politics of burial, the Parsis are all over from Hong Kong to Toronto, with the Bombay Parsi Panchayat, the most influential.

We started at Cafe Excelsior with the chicken pattice, perfectly done with bun maska and chai, with the hundred year old space adding to the conversation as an invisible character. The long shadow of the Indian Ocean Tarikh is a character framing the inherent cosmopolitanism of the city. The pav, chilli and potato of the famed vada pav is Portuguese, with Estado de India, aka Goa next door.

We crossed the road, passing the Sterling Book Store, a memory of my teens via Camera Gully over to Ideal corner to savour mutton kheema, cutlet and more chai to wash down the fare.

The next stop was the iconic Yazdani Bakery with its old school bread and mawa cake. The serendipity of the fortune cookie was fun.

We then strolled to our final stop, Cafe Military with ice cream soda and laganu custard to round off the tour for the evening. Cafe Military is tucked in the streets of Fort where lawyers and accountsnts jostle for space in the heart of Bombay Capitalism, the Stock Exchange. Not much has really changed since the Opium Wars.

Wonderfully curated tour, filled with banter and reflection over great food, where food is more than what it is on the surface; a living analytic for history and Bombay culture.

The important questions are what will ultimately remain after a decade, in a city of redevelopment and what is prized as heritage within the UNESCO framework and the zoning laws of the city, where land is capital.

Many thanks to my Mumbaikar friend TC @tanayachakrabarti for the heads up for such a history soaked evening.

One person scribbling away for 14 plus years across Asia and Africa. Because research outside the realm of formal ivory towers matters, long before content creator or digital nomad was even coined.

No SEO or content strategy, no funding or research proposals. Just global from below research, on sustainability, cities, entrepreneurship, migration and more.

In a world of flux, frameworks are diagnostic and post facto. Useful mental models but are hardly cut out for the world of turbulence with full of air pockets such as pandemics, tariffs, erasure of ESG, geopolitics stemming from wars, AI, dilution of democratic values. Where is the anticipatory work which harvests weak signals which leak through the noise.

ESG frameworks are diagnostic, and don’t capture forward looking risk, and are Eurocentric in nature which hardly accounts for the machinations of the frontier markets.

Will the real risk please stand up?

The Tiny Red Dot goes to polls. The rallies after a decade are refreshing, as candidates in the hyper amplified era of the digital speak to actual voters. I attended rallies in both 2011 and 2015, while the last one was the pandemic poll, and a remote experience.

PM Lawrence spoke about the PAP way in the Marseling rally with Pak Zaqy, who spoke in Malay regarding the issues of the Malay community.

Punjabi Harpreet spoke in Hokkien, Arab Alia spoke in Malay regarding the Palestinian conflict to Pritam who spoke with passion about the Hougang spirit. Chinese speech by Alexis was pro mode, and it helps being photogenic in the era of reels. Another WP candidate spoke in Cantonese. The dialects survive in the Nanyang.

The SDP sounded like an academic event apart from Ariffin speaking in Tamil quoting a Bharthiar poem. SPP tried to put on a presence as well.

The slate of opposition candidates is solid, and gives the Singaporean electorate options with a super majority PAP government orready a foregone conclusion.

The first day of rallies gives a good idea of the momentum until Labour Day.

Public Spaces are rare in Mumbai, are a previous leveller for citizens who wish to walk and exercise, young couples to snatch an odd moment of intimacy in an atrociously pricey city as well as for home makers to catch up on gossip calls back to the maika while walking.

The argumentative Indian is on display as there is a constant chatter of sociopolitical commentary while people engage in loud discussions.

Mangroves are natural climate adaptation mechanisms and am grateful for this particular one in my vicinity.

Climate adaptation is often not seen as social spaces of dialogue, as GHG Scope 3 emissions do not capture the social cost of carbon. This is where carbon markets fail to animate the public imagination, as if the capital markets are greatly enthusiastic.

Mumbai has a robust climate adaptation plan and has integrated disaster management into the equation. Mumbai needs to gear up for a heavy monsoon this year after a warm summer and a non winter.

After years of being a good Singapore- phile following the tiny red dot for two decades, and having researched and studied there for a good part of decade, I can see three people whom I have been fortunate to meet, speak and follow make an entry into the mainstream of electoral politics for this #GE2025 , Prof Elmie from my researcher days at NUS CNM, Cai from my migrant work days and Harish from when i was doing engineering at NUS! All three of them are the wonderful minds and compassionate people.

This will be my third election that I would be following, having covered the last election for the Indian media as well.

Always good to meet folks who are the future of the sustainability profession in India. Taufiq started his career with me as an intern and happy to have tracked his amazing developments in the sustainability in the supply chain space. He has interests in air quality and climate risk domain having published research papers at his young age. And the best part, always willing to reach out learn.

Glad to have met him to convey my Eid Greetings in the month of Syawal over Arabic fare in Mumbai.

The last month through Bombay has been fantastic from Ghatkopar to Juhu, from Fort to Versova. This city has many sides to it. Such a tremendous joy to travel within, as Bombay has many cities as fractals in it. A city of opportunities, a melting pot. Bombay also is a hard place, for each cafe chat is peppered with deals, upcoming opportunities for the struggling actor and the threat of the outsider, always looming to dislodge the incumbent.

A city which welcomes a SRK and a Kartik Aryan, as well as gives space to a Vicky Kaushal.

Growing up in Muscat, the presence of the Al Barwani’s, Al Rawahy’s and Al Kindi’s were pronounced who spoke Swahili with many Omani’s of Zanzibari descent, given the Omani Maritime presence until 1964, when violence drove Omanis and Banian’s to find new homes back in Muscat, Dubai, Bombay, Portsmouth.

These wonderful transnational histories have been brought to the fore by books by Nathaniel Matthews and Anne K Bang.