A pair of hired hands

ATM back home

‘Guest Worker’ in adopted land

A citizen of nowhere

Watches festivals on YouTube

And Watsapp calls back home

Salvation is his/her paycheque

Even if one leaves a place

The place lives within

The sounds, the flavours

The connect

To the Supermarket Auntie

The 108A Food Court

The ABC Park Connector

The Walkways

The Micro Geography turns into emotions

The emotional citizenship

Beyond visas

Is a life

In the head

In the dark times

There are silver shimmers

Horizon, naaaa

The depth within is more like it

I am enamoured by migrants who are micro entrepreneurs, who have their feet on the ground, understand the dynamics of the local market better than any macro economist. The dissecting of the contraction of the market in the light of the low oil prices, although the prices are high enough Hallelujah, is stunning as these guys operate coffee shops, garages and drive people around. These folks are always looking for brand extensions to their usual work; as handyman’s, service staff or home drivers. They have sponsored visas paid for by loans and cars which are purchased on informal credit, as most are not eligible for banking loans.

Most low income migrant entrepreneurs mostly don’t have access to insurance nor banking products. This is an untapped market. In the event of an accident or an emergency back home, they done have the money for a ticket. These entrepreneurs are proactive, running these micro shadow businesses through Watsapp and are nimble and agile, and need no framework or theory to understand the market.

One micro entrepreneur driver whom I have been ethnographically studying for a year now, has a translation app, on his smart phone, to gauge the meaning of texts as most of his clientele are Filipino women who work as household helps or in restaurants. He is an Urdu speaking man from a North Indian metropolitan city, sharply dressed gym rat who started his career in the gulf as a cook. He moved to the transportation sector by investing his savings in an old car, and maintains his vehicle as his family. He learnt spoken english from his East Asian clients, and speaks passable English in the kababayan intonation.

His USP is availability at all times, and punctual in his manners, a special value in this region. Costumer Relationship Management is cutting edge with a smile, always on the look out for new customer acquisition. The ideal entrepreneur, a risk taker with a vision- he plans for market disruptions such as regulatory changes such as visa changes a decade down the line.

He will surprise his clients with complimentary meals, which they like and will do every thing for ensuring repeat business. For a person who did not even go to school, the migrant micro entrepreneur creates opportunities where he does not see one as he needs to support large families back home. He has built a large villa for his family. Entrepreneurship is innate as I can gauge after studying it for a year.

City Scapes at Night

Gleaned by Lights

Dark Spaces are proxies

For expanse

One Gleaming Minaret

Makes up for all

Seminar room is sacred, a site of intellectual production, a space of and for discourse, whether the conversation moves ahead or not is rather not the objective, but the sheer space where the breath of neoliberal drivers, have not convoluted the conversation.

Response to New Technology

Dude Bro: Great idea, can this tech get actualisation through Block chain now and monetised through an early stage investment. How many early users can we get?

Artsy Dude: What is the community implication of this technology intervention in the receiving community? Is this tech even needed? How many jobs will be lost?

(Con)sultant Bro: Both responses are valid and we need to do an market entry analysis for this tech through a proprietary framework we have developed? This is our Vale based billing for the engagement.

Entrepreneur: when are we launching the product?

Environmental permitting spends are mandatory spends for business continuity, however there is hardly any effort to extract more strategic value from them by the procurement folks of industries. It can rejigged to obtain insights for resilience building, extend an ESIA into a flood risk assessment to understand your insurance premiums in a climate unequal world. Leverage environmental monitoring data as an entry point to map your ecosystem footprint, and then utilise the data analytics via models into actionable intelligence for gauging product supply chains.

The context varies, but an extra dollar worth of value can be extracted from existing spends.

Writing which connects to the soul, is the essence which remains as a residue somewhere. That writing articulates unlocked/unsaid emotions about a place or a feeling of a place. Normally exceptional writing is simple, and self organises a vocabulary which is not present in discourse, such as how do you write about a city which is in the peripheral vision of a regional imagination? Does its coffee shops and Karak chai corners anchor a non existing articulation of a place? Is the non place important enough? Or is the economic core, the engine of communicative infrastructure. Not having a palate of words, leads to erasures. Spatial discourses are fluid and the past is recorded in some vocabulary, in some archive.

Writing in to action a place is an art. Amit Chaudhuri’s writing on Bombay has an archival feel. Sadly cities of the Gulf are not written yet in that vain.

Tell your younger self

It’s ok to be slow

It’s alright to fail

And fail again

Parents,Teachers and Friends

Are not the finale

They are after all

Waiting for you to get off

Their laundry lists

Chart your own journey

No one waits for you

It’s you

To tell your story

Life will be your script