Children who grow up in the Gulf are a cocooned species, within the family, community events and schools. The Father is usually overworked and too worried about his next mortgage payment to worry about his kids. The kids of south Asian decent grow up speaking better English and Arabic rather than Malayalam. Hometown visits once in a year or two are rituals in growing up non resident in the Gulf. The play station and FIFA become his best friend, or the latest series on Netflix. The weekly trip to Lulu or the Church/Temple is the extent of social interaction in physicality. The brief playing around in the clothes section at Lulu in a very impromptu manner is one of the simple pleasures of Gelf life.

There is a hollowness about growing up here, I did and I did not love it until I realised way later in life that my parents bled their rials to raise me up. My father did not make it to my commencement at NUS nor at Waljat, but he paid for my education. The precarious life of the Temporary People has its unique characteristics. The children of the Gelf expat bears it in his or her lived experience.

I had read Dr M’s biography ‘The Doctor in the House’, in 2012 while in Singapore. A voluminous read with plenty of anecdotes, very usual for a biography published by local imprint MPH. I remember this line however, which has got printed on my mind. I am an accidental doctor, I was always destined to be in politics.

His decision upon starting his own clinic in Kedah, and upon becoming successful, hiring a Chinese Driver spoke volumes about him. I have heard that he is half Malayali. A complex man. Back in action at 92. His biography certainly needs an update.

The Doctor back at the helm. Malaysia 🇲🇾 Boleh.

Malayali Owner, Bangladeshi staff, cook from Kolkata. Mixed clientele from the truck driver, the daily wager to the office worker. Businesses navigate the everyday. #karakchaitales

Youth means dreams are audacious

Adulting means bills increase

Aspirations contract

As the current account

In the last days of the month

Dreams, are energy

Colonial thinking is’nt merely Geography, but in imagination as well

Reality shrinks our dreams

Shrinks hope

In self Prophecy, our potential

In income

As everyday, materiality

Hence, the audacity of hope

The Middle Aged Filipino Lady

Jostling for space as she buys Samak

For her curry

The Bengali from Chittagong

Selling farm fruits

In a wet market

In the heart of a Gulf Capital

These days,

Informal spaces as far from available

These days every inch is urban planned

The geotagged cartography

And food quality control regimes

Have no space for the informal

Wet markets have character

More than economics

Adds meaning to the terrain

The fish, fruits and the sugarcane juice

Beyond the Carrefour’s

A supply chain of the original kind

Where a bunch of bananas

Are a rial

The ethos in the shared space

Is however,

Priceless

The history of the Indian Diaspora is not one of software engineers in USA, UK and Canada, and sometimes an occasional entrepreneur or businessman….. but of a subaltern history in Africa and the Caribbean: Ram Guha in the NIF conversation with Amrita Shah

With Moinul, who has worked on a farm in Suwaiq, Al Batinah North for eleven years. From Dhaka, he has worked in the farm sector only in Oman, and is far more fluent in Hindi rather than Bangla. He was kind enough to take me and my colleagues on a detailed tour of the farm.

#experienceoman #migranttales

We take the everyday in the Gulf with a pinch of salt, as something mundane and insignificant. When i announced the #KarakChaiTales series, I was met with the quintessential snigger, as something so minor that it is not valid enough to document, to write to bring it out in to the public discourse on ideas. Small things are interconnected with the larger canvas. There is very limited literature on the GCC except a handful of scholars whom I know very well. The life of the South Asian Migrant is worth noting down and making a story out of it. We are not, just remittance nodes?

#changethinker #KarakChaiTales #episodeone

IPL is the prime time summer theatre of ‘New India’ created by a certain Modi. Gripping, Delusional and Rootless, exemplifies the consumerism in the country. The franchises are companies with no local base and as a seasonal commodity, at times it seems that foreign players are playing against each other aimlessly. IPL destabilises the notion of loyalty in sport. It is a made for TV/Digital product with little of team sport. The tournament creates celebrities as commodities which are ultimately auctioned off. Commodities are products in the marketplace. IPL is a simulacrum, almost WWE-esque, scripted but the saving grace is the young talent which get the platform and the money, otherwise where would we find Rashid Khan from Afghanistan?

I am starting this series called #karakchaitales where so much happens over a 100 bz chai in the Gulf. Melting pots of banter, these are places to socialise in the region where affordable places to hang out are mostly in shopping malls where the beverage is 15x more pricey.

So what has been your Karak Chai story so far?

#changethinker #migranttales #nofilter