Selamat Hari Deepawali/ Deepawali Nal Valthukkhal

As a child of the Indian Ocean Diaspora, it fascinates me to read/observe festivities as a cultural register of resilience and resistance, as many Malaysian Indians whether Tamizh or Sikh are fourth generation, have never been to Madurai or Amritsar for Pilgrimage and yet are rooted in an Indian-ness which is seen on Deepawali, which is my third in a row here.

The Mukukku or Mysore Pak on Deepawali takes on a salience in spaces which are a negotiation of a diaspora identity in a post colonial sense.

An absolute honor to have attended the 1st India-ASEAN Strategic Dialogue in Kuala Lumpur organised by the International Institute of Strategic Studies and the India Foundation.

As a Southeast Asianist, it gives me great joy to see India engage with the ASEAN, where i have invested a quarter of my life so far.

Thank you to Dr Yanitha Meena Louis, PhD for the kind invitation!

A truly outstanding level of discourse, with the best minds in the business of diplomacy.

#ASEANIndiaStrategicDialogue

At the heart of all ESG, BHR and Sustainability interventions is social licence to operate aka trust in a post truth world.

Trust is very pricey in the era of great wars and tariffs, and no longer tick box for the construction permit.

Life in the diaspora is a flicker of feeds
A life that is postponed on a Google Calendar
Like my Father said, i will do it when i retire
Now he enjoys Pujo, but i am absent
The Rial becomes the Ringitt
The Dollar Peg of Life Continues

As a second generation peripheral academic, i find myself at home in university campuses, having worked at three top universities globally as a researcher that happens to be in SE Asia!

This is holy ground as a BHR professional for me, as a practitioner for almost two decades making it to an UN RBHR conference is something of a dream come true, thanks to very kind partners in the ecosystem whom i work with.

This is akin to a executive course in the prevalent debates in BHR, engaging with standard builders and the communities who have been part of movements to build equity.

Look forward to two more days before it’s time to step up, back in the base camp.

Thanks to many for the kind solidarity in the journey.

There is a lot of reasonable chatter regarding AI and the impact on jobs in consulting. But consultants were meant to be experts, no? Start work where the LLM stops, as the client has the same LLM, right ?

Let’s go where consultants were supposed to be, as experts with decades of expertise, solving hard problems. I think there is still a business case for that.

Thank you very much for the kind opportunity, to
@redlanternanalytica team to allow me to
share my thoughts as a person who grew up and still works in the region, my dearest Khaleej.

Foreign Policy is lived by the diaspora, is not some conceptual framework in an IR textbook. There are things which operate at the scale of subaltern spaces rather than flying at 36000 feet on an Emirates Flight.

Time for a ‘Gulf Turn’, for the Desi Khaleeji, i guess! (Prasad, 2023).

The Banana Leaf is a truly Malaysian celebration of flavours where there are more Chinese lining up to eat the Saapadu spread than actually ethnic Tamizh’s.

As the Shankar of @firebyshankar says, Malaysian Tamizh food is very different, The Saapadu on the Banana Leaf, is very Malaysian with sambal, tahu and tempe which we don’t get in India.

For a country so green with plantation cover, the Banana leaf is an apt metaphor.

Selamat Hari Merdeka, Malaysia- a post colonial success story.