Academics consider me too Market Wallah, Private Sector considers me too Book Wallah. I am just a hustler who sees art in the ethos of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial ethos in an artist trying to make a living. World is too messy for neat silos ?

#ThursdayGyan

All the folks screaming the N Card aka Nationalism Card on social media on the NRC issue are those from states which have not experienced the birth pangs of partition as inter generational trauma. It was Bengal and Punjab who paid the steep price for independence seven decades ago. The Bangal lost his home. I grew up in Muscat with the stigma of a lost ‘Bari’. Nostalgia as a weapon knows no geographies. The Maharashtrian Brahmin in Nagpur would see the episode as history, not lived experiences.

The balkanisation for the Bangal started in 1905 and continued through 1946-47, 1965, 1971, 1985 and now 2018. The landed Ghoti will not realise the pain either. The century plus affair with proving the right to remain in the middle of a global migration crisis next door in Sitwe to the Levant to Niger does not require any more theatres of pain.

The NRC debacle is a powerful signalling tool as it cements a tiered citizenship for minorities with Assamese Cultural and Linguistic Sub Nationalist thought as the epistemic basis. The devices of instilling tiered citizenship continues its thread from low intensity violence to lynching. I am not mentioning larger episodes of violence such as Amdavad and Muzaffarnagar.

Human tragedy harvested as political fodder is an old dog’s trick. State led disenfranchisement of citizenship rights has led to horrors in Sitwe. Rwanda and Bosnia were not too far back. The battle for 2019 will pass through Fancy Bazar.

The challenge in the easy information retrieval and dissemination era aka digital is the ability to search for the right data point, analyse the importance and place the analytical data point into the larger narrative through meaning making. How does the needed data point fit the client need?

How many colleges teach that?

Instagram and to a limited extent Facebook are digital exhibition platforms which are moderately democratic based on the typology of the followership (religious term in its origins). There are so many wonderful places where I can’t physically be present but the feeds of numerous scholars and visual artists offer a slice of life previously limited to the white gallery walls in metropolis. In the post text world, which I personally abhor as it dumbs down the story, visual is a powerful medium to solicit immediate response however the ethical minefields of representation.

Good street/documentary photography needs an educated mind. The filters on Instagram are aesthetic choice architecture at best. Choices determine the form and character of the artistic endeavour. Fake news and good photography are defined by empiricism, empathy and a commitment to making the world better, one frame at a time.

The phone and familiar

People across the screen

Video calling

Chatting

Instructing

Showering care

The mobile unites

Albeit fleeting moments

Where oceans collapse

The grandfather wanting to hug

The little one

Can’t, but those moments

Are the most precious

The migrants lifeline

The communal space

Intimate yet aloof

A duty

A brief interlude

Feel human

Rather than a disposable tissue

I miss Blk 708 A Kopitiam

My dreams were ignited over a Teh Halia

Had genuine friends

Had a life to build

Chatted with Singaporean Police Officer OP Uncle over Rafi in Hindi

Spend many evenings watching Channel 8

Cried when Ah Kong Passed Away

I need my Teh

My noodle soup

Truly soup for the restless soul

#iphone7 #nofilter #karakchaitales

Some days there is simply the image

As sorrow drowns out the story

Then a painful silence dawns

Which itself is the story

We are all data points

Digital tracks us into trends

The outliers are zoomed out

What was the research question

By the way?

The inherent capacity to react to inequalities is itself a privilege. Many just internalise it, as the power to react is just erased. The migrant state of being is one of perennial negotiating as the inequality is simply foreground as a forward in a book. The #metoo or #blacklivesmatter is a signifier of that privileged capacity. Many don not possess the potential to execute their intent to retort.