The Lawrence Wong Era in Singaporean Politics is here. A quick glimpse through the resumes of the cabinet members can inspire awe. The PAP state is technocratic with a policy wonk at the helm.

The commentator class is already chattering about 5G or the next generation of leaders. After his swearing in, PM Wong spoke about SG100, and that Singapore will prevail articulated with emotion.

The tariffs turbulence has set the narrative with an uncertain world, Singapore has an A Team with the intellectual capital to wade through the waves.

A P Sainath Masterclass on environmental oral history organised by the Qatar National Library live-streamed on YouTube is gold for researchers in climate change and environmental history as well as journalism.

A special shout out to Dr Sayeed from QNL for organising the workshop.

The whole day workshop touched upon archiving, decolonizing environmental histories as well as thinking of community research from below. Peppered with rich vignettes all through from swimming camels in Kutch to Seaweed farmers in Tamil Nadu the work of PARI, was shown.

P Sainath spoke on the value of looking at oral histories of migrants and the way climate change is really global warming, which opens itself to questions while climate change forecloses the potential to ask questions as there are four seasons a year, which normalises climate change instead of contesting the basis.

The various kinds of droughts was interesting to learn, meteorological, hydrological as well as a bureaucratic drought. The politics of data collection in the Indian bureaucratic system was an important reminder in to reading the basis of the data carefully.

The story of the Irish soldiers from Cork fighting the British alongside Indian soldiers in the 1857 mutiny, and how there were common colonial solidarities was simply mind blowing as an account. Mr. Sainath does not like the term best practices as well, as experts have caused a lot of damage in the realm of agriculture.

Oral histories matter as much as textual or architectural histories, especially in rural contexts where subaltern histories need to be recorded.

Art Galleries are repositories of the futures, beyond the violence of the present. From Art Jameel in Dubai to Ilham in Kuala Lumpur to the National Gallery in Singapore, galleries is where one learns visually.

The exhibition at Tarq is on environmental futures which captivated my attention. Art liberates, and creates new registers in the chaos around us.

Chemould Prescott Art Gallery is a space of heritage and of convening. The exhibition of repurposed Jaipur rugs had layers of meaning.

Art in the era of AI, creates an opening for high touch art once again which is personal.

The final instalment of the Mission Impossible series has it’s cinematic geopolitics eerily correct with AI, Nuclear War, Surgical Strikes, Non State Actors giving the cinema goers a sense of déjà vu, in the shadow of Operation Sindoor.

As the final swan song, the philosophical quotient is dense with questions of right and wrong, and a lady American President which looks like Kamala Harris. The film has got its preferred candidate at least on the screen if not in reality.

The movie dialogues in Intuit, renders the arctic colonial politics bare. The film is high on a DEI score with a female blonde East Asian looking character speaking French and non white characters having decent screen time.

Over the past quarter of a century, the Mission Impossible series has been a cultural constant in my life, with the MI 2 OST still ringing in my years. I was excited to watch the episode in Abu Dhabi with Anil Kapoor, with my desi friends in Singapore during graduate school. I had hoped for a silent jhakkas in the film.

The movie’s strength in its action set pieces are one too many and it stretches at times. It is a joy to watch never aging Tom Cruise in action. The cinematography is breath taking and the series will be missed by die hard fans. Old school James Bond-esque movies have a charm.

This historic hole in the wall eatery in Colaba, is a trip down memory lane to an Indian Ocean aesthetic where Parsi eateries used to dominate the social life of everyday Bombay, the only real Mumbai to be candid.

These spaces are all over the Indian Ocean World from the Karak Kadas in Bur Dubai to the Warungs or Mamaks in Islamcate Nusantara.

These spaces are community care places where neighbourhood uncles banter over commissions and contracts and the taxi wallah comes in for a quick egg bhurji, pav and chai.

celebrating a life in Public Service.

Aruna Roy’s book discussion at Asia Society India at the historic art gallery, Chemould Prescott at the Queens Mansion in Fort, Mumbai.

Aruna Roy with MKSS Rajasthan, has been the force behind the RTI and MNREGA. Her anecdotes on solidarity building with the villagers for ground up action was priceless. Living with them rather than visiting once would not create any trust. Her views on the syncretic nature of our polity is an important remainder in these polarised times, although she did state that her generation of activists failed to engage with religion unlike Gandhi ji.

Nikhil Dey, her colleague and stalwart, spoke about their work with platform workers and the unravelling of RTI under Digital Public Infrastructure where we are all data and that data is behind administrator login. RTI brought government information to the public, and that powerful legislation which challenges power has resulted in the death of my people.

MKSS has been behind the gig worker legislation in Rajasthan and works for legislative redressal for the worker in the platform era.

MNREGA often criticised in urban areas has brought decency and dignity to rural India and has bipartisan support.

The audience had the legendary P Sainath, founder of PARI and actor Richa Chadha, both of whom i had the honor to chat.

True education is always in an art gallery where the aesthetics are critical to learn.

In order to understand the scale of potential KSA investments with the US during Trump-47’s visit, reading Ellen R. Wald, Ph.D. ‘s book on the role of Bechtel in the creation of the Aramco state is visionary, as well as Prof Vitalis’s American Kingdom would be informative as the US-Saudi relationship pre SOCAL and Dhaharan Well number 7 in 1938 is deeply embedded in history.

Write from within, something of worth always is created. Writing as a response to the fluidity of the chaos, the in between ness as a function of the times, while clutching at the straws of normalcy. Ask a family in Gaza, Patani or Kashmir – they have a vocabulary of life framed by numbing violence. Our job as writers is to give the language to lend cohesiveness to the chaos.

Ambassador Hotel

Desi Khaleeji Stories

Three plus decades ago a college teacher of English, went for a series of interviews for the Ministry of Education in Oman at famed Ambassador Hotel in Bombay (as it was called then) held by Jerry Varghese Manpower Consultants. That college teacher went on to teach in the Jabals, or the mountains on the Oman Yemen Border, right before the 1995 war. And went on to build a two generational relationship with Oman and the Khaleej which is still buffering.

That college teacher was my Mother (taken on her 70th birthday on a trip down memory lane).

Cities are mosaics, each part of the city lends to new experiences.

Travel within, there are so many places on our cities which deserves our attention. The sunset at Marine Drive which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is second to none.