Third Anniversary of the tectonic event that changed New India. History gives the luxury of looking back and eventually politics loses meaning and sense prevails.

When I said the same regarding people losing income on BBC and Forbes three years back, I saw the birth of a digital delusion. The feeling of watching the middle class suffer delighted many as the very people lost their jobs in the informal sector. Perverse thinking at best.

Cities are spaces where people live and breathe. Some photos from Pune Rural;

Cities are spaces where people live and breathe. Some photos from Pune Rural;

It’s a challenge not to fade into oblivion

Some are scared by failure

But not doing anything is oblivion as well

#haiku

We live in an ironic era where five Bengali Muslim Workers are killed by militants in Kashmir, a Muslim majority state, sorry UT. They would have been under the scanner for NRC if they would have been in Assam or Karnataka and their Indian ness made suspect, but they died as one

As a stakeholder engagement specialist in the Khaleej working on social impact assessment work, forms of public consultation in the region are hardly understood under a western democratic lens.

Twitter discourse in the Khaleej is robust and people are highly intelligent and opinionated. The Majlis is informal and nuanced, should not be read as a counter to western style democracy, as cultures of participation differ influenced heavily by tribal norms and political economy of the country.

It is easy to breathe, to live

Although, much harder to be alive

Life is more than a checklist to tick

When was the last time

We world wait to read the paper

And drink chai

As if it was 1999?

You can take the desi khaleeji out of the Al Jazeera Al Arabiya, but not the Kabsa out of him. Pune has a large Arab student diaspora here, studying including Omanis and a large Gulf Return population as well.

Gulf in South Asia. Wagid Zain.