The barber today was from Amritsar and an embodiment of Punjabi hustle. A barber from the age of fifteen and a dropout from grade 10, this smart looking hair kalakaar, has worked in Amritsar, Ras Al Khaimah in the UAE and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia for the past four years. The only Punjabi in a Tamizh Barber Chain across Bangsar and Brickfields, the Little India in Kuala Lumpur. His journey is inspirational as he has worked in Ras Al Khaimah in a barber shop before the pandemic, upon which he had to head back home. Upon a failed attempt to make it to Malta, well he jokes that half of Punjab is overseas as in Kanedda- he made it to KL for work, and paid a massive recruitment cost to make it here. After four years of back breaking hustle, he has renovated his home in Punjab, which is small but he says something profound that a home should have sukoon, or peace. Always inspired by fellow migrants who have made moves to secure futures for families.

The future of AI is not in AI, but in the hands of skilled workers who toil across the world, send remittances in the paucity of quality opportunities.

A lot of people ask me, regarding my cataloging of food pictures on the digital realm. I think food is a register of everyday cultural politics, that it speaks a lot about diasporas, which I am a child off.

Food is care, food is race, caste and socioeconomics. The politics of food, is loud and speaks about a place without speaking about it. As a food and travel writer, one can write about migration and worlds of globalisation intuitively by writing about Nasi Lemak cooked by Burmese workers in Malaysia after the coup, for instance

There is a lot of buzz regarding the impacts of AI on consulting, such as entry level jobs getting replaced and that head out needs to be reduced.

Two myths need to be shattered here- consulting was never a mass market employer, and search engines have been around for two decades.

And,

Consultants solve problems, and with AI – the generic consultant will give way to expertise and context, only the premium has been bumped up.

There is always a market to solve hard problems, such as where will the next wave of jobs be created where knowledge work gets offshored to cheaper and better locations. How do people redefine their moat?

The era of gig work is here, how do governments create social protection for knowledge gig work ?

The way that we know office work is already disrupted, with work being done from anywhere globally atleast in consulting services. AI is only a new layer of disruption which has been added to existing complexities.

Food still needs to be grown, doctors and nurses still need to treat patients and businesses need the next frontier market for growth.

The main thing that is disrupted is the comfort zone, and the template of work.

Listening to Mr. Eddin Khoo is a privilege that I do not take lightly, and have had the honour to listen in to his talks in KL for the past couple of years which are masterclasses on culture, history, memory and the politics threading them all in common. He speaks with an imaginative spirit that nourishes my intellectual soul as a writer on the Indian Ocean Tarikh. This particular talk at Bursa Malaysia in their Merdeka series, was on the cultural history and memory of Kuala Lumpur, a favourite of mine because of its wild character, in the words of Mr. Eddin Khoo. The urban real estate politics of Kampung Baru in KL was an eye opener.

Kuala Lumpur is geologically wobbly, but culturally a creole space which truly makes it a melting pot of the Global South. Singapore is the pristine global city, but Kuala Lumpur is a city with a soul. An evening out in Petaling Street or Brickfields can attest to it.

History is a wound in Malaysia, and is a contested space as it should be- but there are many ways to read a place, against the grain and a counter cartography is possible. A remapping is a work in progress and I look forward to Mr. Eddin Khoo’s history of Kuala Lumpur, a personal memoir of a Bangsar Boy who grew up playing in the Pantai forests of Kuala Lumpur.

A trip in an Mumbai (Auto)

The feel of getting on a long trip on an auto, renders an embodied journey through the city, the deafening noise, the exhaust fumes and the vibrations which is an akin to a back massage, especially when one encounters a speed breaker. An auto is able to deftly navigate the interstices of the clogged roads on a public holiday, and able to zip through backlanes where an uber car would not attempt to tread, as it is off the GPS route. Occasionally it cuts to the wrong side of the road, and overtakes vehicles the many multiples of it’s power grade. As a homage was paid in the Himesh Reshamiyya move, Aap Ka Saroor to an Autowala in Switzerland, and many a Tamizh film- the auto is an urban institution in Mumbai, with its own union.

Autowallah’s are erudite social commentators who have the ground view on urban planning, local machine politics climate change. As they bear the brunt of the weather in the trenchant Mumbai monsoon each year, they are the last mile connectivity for many. And they have a pride, with any Mumbaikar can vouch for, as we have all encountered at various stages of life.

For a decade, I was pursuing a mirage and lost a whole lot only to realise that one only has the time, talent and the opportunity to make the most of what one love to do the most. I lost my voice thanks to the virulent critiques of seniors who made me feel worthless.

The destruction only makes one realise that what is left is what I had, well only what I had. Were the pursuits meaningless or the broken relationships in which I gave my all? The answer is no, as it is only the journey which matters. And the journey is the endgame.

The birthday month is a time of renewal, of hope and of reflections. In this era of great flux, conflicts, technology, and tariffs- it’s time to reclaim our humanity, to understand and to serve and to do what we love.

Be kind, give and love more. We all land up in an ICU ultimately.