Author: changethinker

Born and raised in Mumbai, India with an undergrad degree from Oman and a masters degree from the National University of Singapore. I am an Environmental Professional with a passion for Sustainability, Social Innovation and Governance related issues. A Change Agent in the making who believes that small is beautiful and that impact can be achieved -one soul at a time.

Invisible Muslim Bharat.

On a Sunday afternoon in Sayeed Nagar, Pune I follow a friend into the back lanes of a Muslim Neighborhood as he head to buy meat. Beef was clearly one third the cost of goat meat, affordable for low income India. My friend is a caste Hindu. I saw an Abaya store after a year and beef was sold openly in a homogeneous space. These are invisible spaces of a public which are hidden behind residential townships that are inhabited by NRI investors and the IT Elite. Yet, these low income minority areas are valuable to the mainstream as votebanks.

The Beef Shop.
The Abaya Shop.

I could not imagine any savarnas to be here. There are multitudes in every city.

Writing Philosophy in a Blurb.

My writing practice is undergirded by the ethic of representation and recovery, a response to the chaos of the everyday mayhem where where things seems just about ‘normal’. Writing ethnographic archives is the core of my written word artistic practice. Long term projects are painstakingly hard, takes a lot of time, yet the series of conversations with Autowallahs and Cabbies are a glimpse in to urban life, entrepreneurship, tech innovation and the view from below. It is a chronicle of agency more than any other tangential impulse.