JNU VC has an incredible cv, a soft spoken engineering educator (watch the interview with Anuradha Sen Gupta on Off Centre) from IIT D of a largely popular humanities-social sciences university (that might be a major cause of the heart burn) does not seem to be the devil incarnate painted by the teachers association. What is the issue then? Just mere opposition?

Arundhati Roy has her own seminar circuit audience in left liberal circles globally. She has a good livelihood from the incredible GOST royalties, and her lesser known, although powerfully written non fiction work which I am fortunate to have read line by line. Not all her writings are on the K issue, read Doctor and the Saint, in which she intellectually demolishes the myth of Mohandas. The Lancet talk is a good starting point at UCL a couple of years back. Folks might not agree to the entire basket of arguments she which makes including me, including critically questioning India as a political project by mocking it as an upper caste ‘Hindu corporate State’. Detractors do her a lot of good, by trolling her including a MP, Singer among others. 
The best way to counter public intellectuals is to engage with them, and ignore them where it hurts them the most. The hype is only helping her make more money by advanced orders of her new fiction book, a decade in writing and two decades after the seminal Booker Prize winning work. Suzanna’ s critique of post liberalisation India is the best diagnosis around. Read her long read on Antilla.

Practising Journalists need to speak to J School Academics in India. We are a generation which questions barely and shouts jargons at the drop of the hat. More power to independent voices such a power couple in Journalism/Documentary Film making today evening in Muscat today. Kudos to them regarding their documentary projects in Europe, Africa and Asia. So inspirational. Their recent travel book regarding Greece was a delight. Thank you for your amazing stories from the margins of metropolis Nadim Siraj Da-Ratna di

Ambition smoulders everything in its vicinity akin to fireFire is often the epistemological crutch for purification and progress

Wisdom and fire are antonyms 

The kinetic force often renders obsolete, the paths ahead 

Relevant for the caravan of progress

Cities of the Gulf are made by migrants over the past fifty years. More than three generations have grown up here with a semi detached relationship with home passport countries. Malls articulate this complicated relationship status quite well; chole bature, coexists with shawarma, kahwa with karak chai. The fare from the motherland, with the material comforts of the late capitalism of the Persian Gulf, fuse seamlessly. 
Long distance nationalism fails/falters at the altar of enhanced livelihoods for the migrant from the global south. Identities are a work in progress. The migrant is respected because of the remittances back home, while meandering as a free electron in the host communities. The acceptance is something he deeply yearns. 
#migrantnotes

Airports are melting pots of aspirations, compulsions and an embodiment of ‘the journey’. Budget carriers are status symbols of ‘we have arrived’ and not arrived as well, as the air steward sells tea at thirty six thousand feet, while cringing while counting the change. 6E sells masala chai at three USD/RO 1, on international flights while it is 100 rupees on a domestic one. 
Liberalisation’s child has been the air transportation sector in India. While the charm has evaporated, air travel is still very pricey in India with many towns still unmapped.

Libraries are like personal collections, take eons of all matter of resources to curate an exhibition. Rather, the functional transforms into the aesthetic, as motive, meaning fuse into something bigger than previously unimaginable.

Write because they is a story to narrate Not because there is a deadline to meet 

Market evaluates the outcome, as per monetisation potential 

But at the heart of the story there is an idea

Arnab is back. A single man brand who is defining right wing media in his own image, as he always did. The firmament of right wing media with Rajat Sharma, WION, NewsX and Republic is tilting the liberal media to take a backstage. The right wing intelligentsia is shaping up too with Swapan Da, Hindol Da and Sanjeev Sanyal along with the India Foundation crew going beyond ‘cultural exclusivists and unrefined nationalists’ in the words of the OPEN Magazine editorial, the May 6th edition currently on the stands. 
Republic. with its decentralised non Delhi centric news model is a distinct brand differentiator. Other English News Channels will have a run for their money, although I would have preferred a better design appeal.

Contacts, not relationships 
Transaction, not emotion 

Add/Connect rather than nourish

Facetime/Facebook rather than catch ups

Sales rather than organisation building 

Egos rather than learning 

Listicles rather than long reads

Tweets rather than complex arguments 

Fleeting, rather than meaning 

Record and share, rather than feel

Experience Economy, rather than Experience 

Development rather than diversity 

Rationale, is secondary to Rhetoric 

Second Life, rather than life

Nationalist rather than Syncretic beliefs 

Instant Gratification rules 

This is the ‘New’ era

Isn’t it?