A litany of half homes

Or is it a quarter

Rented studios to hostel rooms

The backpack is belonging

Artefacts of life

More than placeholder

For another placeholder

Belonging is often a smile

An acknowledgment of acceptance

Than an ownership deed

#spokenword

It seems JNU ( in South Delhi near to the media offices including NDTV) is the only place people get to study. The future of work seems to be an alien concept in the Indian Imagination on Education. Let’s have a conversation on how the socioeconomically marginalised can get a future where livelihood security is possible.

sense of being Indian is carved by being the ‘other’ migrant all my life in different parts of Asia. I understand the value of the blue travel document at the immigration as not only a access card but as a representation of the post colonial nation state, which stands for a set of ideas.

A strong foreign policy makes me glad, although we have much work to do in other areas. We are a sub continent of various sub nationalities, tied by the sense of being Indian. However this means various things to various people, and we should allow space for that articulation. It is a dynamic construct, allow the evolution.

I understand why people migrate. But they all remain Indian, searching for the ragda patice on Friday in Muscat.

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.