Holi/Day 2024, PJ

I walked in to a Hindu Diaspora Supermarket, and was pleasantly greeted by the staff who is from the badlands of UP, came to Malaysia through an agent via Thailand. The working class in North India is slowly making its way to Malaysia and the Gulf for jobs which were popular in Kerala and Tamil areas in a previous era. The barber from Delhi greeted me as well.

In another Tamil Hindu Restaurant, Happy Holi greets me from a migrant worker from Tripura, who is looking forward to head back home. He said that he was home for Holi last year which struck a chord. I was home last year as well.

KL is a charming city, with amazing food and the best malls. One can move from Mamak to Michelin Star, across the street. The street art is understated, and has wonderful murals on the walls.

The global and the local are enmeshed, Bangla is spoken in China Town and the Punjabi man makes the masala chai in the Mamak. The juxtaposition of the layers is stark and yet the visual vocabulary is visceral.

A deeply rich city, with much to offer. An ethnographic journey at each turn.

Malls are the cathedral of late capitalism, and as banal they are they are contact zones of cultures. KLCC is like Dubai Mall, a wonderful melting pot of the global south and for the Ummah.

The traditional link with ESHIA’s had with public and environmental health, made it a clear case for public policy and safety. ESG or Rational Sustainability with its financial lens dilutes the purpose anchor which needs to be regained in this climate zeitgeist.

So glad to have the equity in evaluation report commissioned by the Ford Foundation, worked on by stalwart non profits and think tanks from the global south finally on the venerable Ford Foundation website. It is a proud moment for the North South Initiative team to have worked on this collaborative initiative. I am thankful to Adrian Pereira Sir for the kind opportunity.

A shout out to Pradeep Narayanan, Cecilia Milesi and Tarini Shipurkar for the south-south solidarity and the courage to ask the questions that move the paradigm towards the arc of justice.

Superb fare, the best Kerala fare had in a long time. A fine dining experience, with a nice vibe.

A Den of Agents as a friend in the civil society quipped recently about a particular south Asian embassy.

It was an honour to learn about Nepalese Geopolitics and Foreign Policy from Dr Pramod Jaiswal at his talk at IKMAS, UKM. He is a dynamic think tank founder whose work I have following on the digital realm for years.

So many takeaways from his session with elite scholars about the Nepali politics between China and India.

As a sustainability scholar it did hit me that Nepal has enormous potential to export low carbon power both to India and Bangladesh.