Fun Fact: Bangladeshi Migrant Workers, aka subaltern in Singapore all become Managing Directors or owners back home as can be gauged from their progression on social media. The migrant worker scenario needs to be assessed in nuance and depth rather than going by rhetoric.

Pre Pandemic Normal: You are not focused, you do so many things at the same time Moni. You have a diverse cv so where do we place you?

Pandemic Semi Normal: You have done so many things Moni, moved across countries and industries Moni. Can you tell us how to navigate change Moni?

It takes grit to move contexts, and take losses as data points. CV is a reflection of the past and certainly not a blueprint for the pandemic present.

As a writer and entrepreneurial doer, we start from a blank screen, and the article or the business is a zero to one journey always.

The Great Indian Dream. Remembering Siddhartha Deb’s book out of which his chapter was smudged out in the Indian Edition. My hard copy was purchased in Singapore.

Luck finally ran out of a person who at one point exemplified the post liberalisation small town global aspirations.

History informs me the silences to write voices in to the voids and Ethnography tells me how to detail the texture of the story. Writing is as much about workmanship as about the big idea. The big idea is all written up, however there are ways to write the small.

We need a more productive definition of who belongs to the region in these radical times of pandemic peace.