In recent times, I enjoy reading independent, progressive boutique platforms rather than mainstream media which carry mainly syndicated news feeds. The exception is Wade Shepard’s writing as a Forbes contributor where he travels the world covering the impulses from the ground.

The main issues of the day get invariably lost in the cacophony of news, instead of covering real change makers and the issues which make an impact. Padmavati, Love Yudh and some leaders belief system are not issues to grab national mind space, nor does CNN’s obsession with the Trump Presidency.

Narratives covered by platforms such as Riot, Cafe Dissensus edited by Bhaswati Ghosh and Mosarrap Hossain Khan as well as The Polis Project Founders Asim Rafiqui and Suchitra Vijayan are doing amazing work, and captures by imagination with Indian Cultural Forum and Kafila.

Swarajya of Amar Govindarajan share a different perspective. The questions raised are relevant and pointed/focused by these different voices. Scale of these voices for me is not a deal breaker, the quality of the data and the analysis is certainly.

Ofcourse the New Yorker and the Paris Review and its tribe is classy. The digital era has made mainstream problematic and questionable. What is exactly mainstream? Is a blogger with credibility not mainstream enough, if he/she writes well, only because it’s reach is not wide enough?

The business model might be broken (FT and Monocle make money though), but the canvas is larger. I would like more meat (carbon light certainly) in the Sustainability thought leadership space.

The best Ideas come from the interface/intersectionalities of praxis and preceding theory. Walking the streets, and having feet on the ground helps. Read widely, and speak humbly. Kill your own ideas, if needed.

There are impulses of the rational and the creative/whimsical

In every event that we see

Only, the frame of reference differs

Paradigms collapse

New lens emerge

Binaries are meaningless

Complexities are beautiful

Life is a melange of flavours

Equity as rhetoric (in the democratic left context) is the yeast to knead the neoliberal dough. The academics of the card carrying Global Left do enjoy the wine and cheese after the pricey conferences (which they should and rather privilege should not be limited to bankers and tech VC’s)

Money makes the world go around, even the pro market NITI Aayog Vice Chair went back to his secure job in New York while he supported neoliberal policies.

Real world activism has a price. Nifty theory is just incredible intellectual stimulation. Just limited to that.

Vashi, Al Khuwair and Clementi

Areas, in three cities

Three countries, rather

We belong to places

Memories, images, nostalgia

Globalisation does not meaning a thing

Hyper local, is the identity

The tapri, The kopitiam and the tea corner

Cutting chai, Tea Halia and Karak Chai

Zoom in on the human experience

The consciousnesses is a tapestry

Of sounds, attachments and flavours

Niall Ferguson for all his conservative follys has taken History to the Wall Street and now to Silicon Valley with the ‘Square and the Tower’ with mapping networks. When History is conversing with Neural Networks and Social Media, we know interdisciplinary thinking has moved STEM to the Humanities. Power, Digital, Fake News, Networks, Reformation, Enlightenment, Kissinger, Trump all converging in one Networks Narrative.

Prof Parag Khanna has taken the networks thesis to international relations with Connectography, with amazing mapping with the liberal assistance of AutoDesk. It is really encouraging to read theories/frameworks which have an implication in the real world.

It would be interesting to imagine how historians would write about fake news and alt facts, and these digital algorithms impacting electoral discourse, as democracy in mainstream politics revolves around the ritual called elections. Brexit and Catexit were elections too.

Some exciting reads are out to read up:

Blind Spot by Teju Cole

The Bengalis by Sudeep Chakravarti

The ants among elephants

Tishani Doshi book of poems

Dr Parthiban Muniandy book on Migration in Malaysia

Satya Nadella’s Book

Sudeepa Chakrabarti’s book of essays

Suggestions welcome in this crowd sourcing exercise to curate titles!

While sipping Karak Chai this evening in the midst of a cool breeze, feeling the gulf winter; something struck me as I watched something eerily familiar on a large projector screen, usually utilised for watching soccer games. It was a Lebanese eatery, and the projector was screening an Arabic channel from the Levant. The only difference/familiarity was that it was a young SRK on the projector. The film was the cult classic DDLJ with Arabic subtitles. It warned the cockles of my heart and reminded me of the mid 1990’s when watching films: Hollywood and Hindi, on Arabic channels on a Friday evening was the norm as we did not have a south Asian cable connection at home, it was too pricey. Having grown up on a diet of LBC, MBC and Rotana; today evening brought back a flood of memories. These days, with the TATA Sky and Dish TV easily available in the gulf and YouTube having all content, those days were very limited indeed.

Speak

For all the lives, spent in the rat race

Race for survival

The numbers

The mute images

These images silently make

Late capitalism run its wheels

Images are lives spent

In making cafes clean

Run smoothly

While the MacBook Elite

Sip artisanal coffees

Life’s though are not that straightforward

Lived at intersectionalities

Class, Caste, Race

Write to breathe life

In to these evident lives

As to write

Is a responsibility

As much as a gift

#SpeakLife