Was going through my home library in Mumbai today, and stumbled across a few works that I contributed to over the past decade on migration in the Gulf and SE Asia and was humbled to find this mention by Mohsin Bhai, by original migration mentor in Singapore. I am touched by his kind mentoring and is ever grateful to him.

I have often been cancelled by academics who think that they can easily cancel a non PhD researcher, but they don’t see that I do migration research in praxis as a calling as a second generation migrant, and not for the h-index. You know who you are, and the news is that I will around for a long time.

Another notable mention is Adrian Pereira, who has been incredibly supportive in the journey as mentor for the last few years.

Gratitude as always.

Airport is hardly a ‘non-place’ as these are spaces bubbling with affect and aspiration, of splintered dreams and quiet whispers of a u turn back. (Auge, 1995).

For the perennial migrant worker in me, airports are more than passages, they are windows to a world which are finite, and in many ways opens to the possibilities of the modern.

Recording reels has been a necessary transition from the sacrament of the written language and the visual text of the photograph, key resources of ethnographic work. These reels are spontaneous field-notes from the sidewalk of life.

I have been resisting the allure of videos which have already attracted attention across my feeds. I will record them when I have something important to share. This one below was my first video blog ever, which was recorded at a drop of a hat.

As a consummate consumer of content myself it was I guess only a matter of time. The I-Phone has a good camera, and records audio even in noisy situations. I have been blogging for 13 years now, so do let me know of this humble attempts.