When festivals become feed on Social Media

Life reduces to likes

Then you have truly become a post on your loved One’s timeline

Life becomes a public post

Random interesting conversation with a Singaporean Indian from Lakeside who is an Auditor here in Dubai. He was at Wagamama with his son for ramen. We chatted for a few minutes in Singlish about the inability of recent Indian immigrants to Singapore, to integrate with local Indian Tamils and the propensity to reside in east coast ghettos.

The manager of the restaurant was from Bali, so chatted up in Bahasa as well.

I also took a recommendation from him for a good Malaysian place here.

#dubai

The Gulf Middle Class is a vernacular extension of the psycho geography of South Asia, a global Mofussil never at ease at home and the home overseas. This liminal life however has the cover of low end globalisation but is a model of multiculturalism, the only constant being survival and the pay check at the end of the month. Folks will watch Republic TV on Metros but never want to head back home to work and eat Sapaadu for lunch. It is a marginal existence of its own making.

The Gulf Middle Class as Global Mofussil is my take on Gulf Modernity as the Middle Class out here with origins in South Asia don’t live mentally in the Gulf, they are in a hybrid bubble, drinking Al Marai Milk but will reminisce about brands back home. This is a self manufactured liminality, projecting a global self outside but will head back to 19th century when he or she is back home. Technology enables this fluid state permanently

The Gulf Middle Class is a vernacular extension of the psycho geography of South Asia, a global Mofussil never at ease at home and the home overseas. This liminal life however has the cover of low end globalisation but is a model of multiculturalism, the only constant being survival and the pay check at the end of the month. Folks will watch Republic TV on Metros but never want to head back home to work and eat Sapaadu for lunch. It is a marginal existence of its own making.

It was a near end summer evening at the plush and airy environs of the Art Jameel, which is a premier exhibition space in Dubai and had a really nice niche bookstore and cafe. UAE’s Culturati had arrived and it was a packed house as New York based Photographer Farah Al Qasimi with Art Critic Shumon Basar engaged in the most beautiful conversation on photography and space over an hour which felt essentially more than the actual 60 minutes.

The backdrop of the discussion was Farah’s exhibition on Dragon Mart, the mammoth Chinese export market which Shumon called an ‘Empire of Sign’s and Tastes’ and the central strand of the discussion revolved around this pic

The exhibit had many hidden portraitures which captured a tension which is well thought about. Farah called photography, a radical possibility fuelled by attentiveness around oneself, rather than the technology. She teaches a class called Anxiety and the radical possibilities of photography to her students in New York. She delves in to issues deeper than the image and cited Sontag quite a bit in the discussion. Photography is about capturing reality for instance and thinking about dignity in representation rather than violating the subject.

Farah was critical of western photographers who come to Dubai and shoot lazy caricatures rather than think incisively to up their art. She was not keen on crafting a counter narrative through images as the onus of labelling a counter narrative is on the outsider rather than the artist herself.

It was refreshing to attend as a sociologist of space the discussion as such conversations as few and far in between especially when the artists are based overseas. I was glad to pick up a copy of the essay by Shumon on the exhibit on Dragon Mart and also meet Mr. Sultan Al Qasimi, preeminent public intellectual of the region currently teaching at Yale.

Badla is Mr. Bachchan’s film. The thespian actor still commands a presence. Tapasee is the most natural actor, as she holds her screen presence with respect to Amit ji. Red Chillis Entertainment did not have to invest much clearly as it is shot in a couple of rooms.

The Spanish IP clearly worked, and Sujoy Ghosh’s adaptive screenplay has its strengths. Simple and strong , worthy of a watch.

#changethinkermicromoviereviews

Life

Is a dance

Between negotiating

Small and big flops

And small joys

Spoke this morning in a cab with a Bangladeshi Catholic, who was reminiscing his stay in Kolkata and Nadia district 25 years back. He was talking about the difference in cultures between the two Bengali speaking regions as distinct cultural spheres. He was wanting to send his son to a Bible College. Aspirations undergird a migrant’s life.

He has many relatives in West Bengal and wishes to visit them soon and was acknowledging the liberal visa policy of the Indian Government. His hometown is Gopalganj, Awami heartland. He was playing Bengali songs in the cab, and begun a conversation which was bordering on a cathartic, nostalgia trip for him.

I am feeling a freedom

At the edge of failure

Which liberates

The fear is a trap

Expectations are traps

Freedom is in the head

Always

This morning as Delhi crossed the borders, I was in a taxi driven by an elderly Chacha from Lahore, a good man was giving me tips to navigate the city’s taxi system and the ERP system here called Salik. He was talking about Rahmat, Halal and beautiful things.

Do migrants afford nationalisms?