Ever since I was a child, the airline status ticker at the airport fascinated me as the world converged on a tracker although only much later did I realise that on an Indian Passport I would need a visa to most countries including the country I grew up in, and emotional citizenships relegated to sovereign worth and Foucaudian Biopolitics.

As a second generation permanent gulf middle class migrant transience is reality, we belong to the places we belong to, inspite of the color of the travel document.

The salvation is the Shwarma at Istanboly at Al Khuwair, Muscat and the Dumpling Noodle at the Kopitiam In Clementi Block 708A.

My soul travels to these places when I sleep.

The Yogi’s appointment as CM is a shock doctrine application of a leader which staunch Hindutva credentials. Such a decision would be unthinkable even in 2014. This is keeping in mind the elections in Gujarat, MP and Chattisgarh as these are the fortresses to win again. A certain Hindutva politics is mainstream in these states, which border UP and each other. If Demonetisation was shattering, it was certainly ominous of the times to come. JNU, HCU and Ramjas are blips on a radar. 2019 and beyond shall see bigger reforms. The design of which we saw on November 8th @ 8pm and today with Yogi. 

These are interesting times for a majoritarian politics with a ‘growth agenda’ . Modiji has redefined politics. I see an alienation among voters in the Deep South though, particularly Tamil Nadu’s Dravidian heartlands. The new AIADMK will lease space to the BJP, if Rajni Saar comes on board with Tamil Nadu’s very religious ethic. Kerala with the largest number of shakhas, is another growth area. 

The spaces of resistance will have taken on a subversive, stealthy mode online as surveillance under the national security imperative will increase. India will have an aggressive foreign policy with defence getting a much needed push, started under Parrikar. The fish curry though lured him away. 
Mamata di will face the heat as Bengal is the final frontier with 42 seats. I am sure Amit Bhai, along with Babul Da is working on it. 
The game for 2019 is on. It will be fought on BJP’s terms.

In the era of now

Bringing money on the table

Buys respect

More people

Fewer Opportunities

In Academia, is grants

In the private sector

Is called Business Development

In the Non Profit space

It’s known as Fund Raising

The bottom line is the green back

Bitcoin or not

Money is the fuel of the engine

Of life

Scholarship is not a popularity contest. It cannot be equated with Facebook shares and retweets.It takes real hard work to publish a top tier paper. We cannot bring in reality TV metrics into academic life. Outreach and Scholarship are both vital.

In my limited sample size of a few dozen Bangladeshi cabbies spoken to in Dubai via non random purposive sampling, the majority don’t view the Hasina Regime as too progressive. That’s pretty consistent with Bangladeshis in the Gulf being not with AL Politics.

#urbanethnography

#SouthAsiainGulf

Kafteh. Syrian Restaurant in the Diaspora, Aroos Damascus in Deira, Dubai retains a semblance of a community with a shattered homeland.

No service staff spoke in English, which in a global Dubai is refreshing as this is an an Arab Muslim City, which is conveniently lost in the Tagalog and Urdu or Malayalam cacophony. Language can resist the overarching objectives of meta globalisation.

The old world Arabic charm was there as in a Turkish House in Muscat.

#aroosdamascus

#mydubai

#latergram

Home is a past

Where atrophied dreams

Seek empty reconciliation

Innocent, reckless aspirations

Who had told you to build castles

In the ethereal web of firing neural networks

Home is where one finds one

Let it be a dream, stunted

At least I am me

For a flicker of a thought

India’s Gulf Policy is not run through South Block, thankfully but through the souqs of the port cities, the entrenched Bania/Malayali Diaspora and power networks flowing through Surat, Mundra, Mallapuram, Trivandrum and Borivali and Dahisar in Mumbai.

JNU does not know a thing😊

The neoliberal museum is a space of selective cultural consumption where history with a capital H is packaged in to an experience, neatly sorted in to thematic areas. The Louvre Abu Dhabi was on my bucket list since I arrived in the UAE for my latest consulting gig 6 months back. As a weekend historian and full time social researcher, the Louvre Abu Dhabi is a style statement in crafting a new cultural economy for the oil rich emirate. Oozing with luxury and expansive in reach from the ancient to the rather recent, the museum has an international footprint. No expense has been spared to create a world class cultural experience.

From the Chinese to Arab to Indian to Latin American, with a heavy infusion of continental Europe with Louvre’s only international imprint outside Paris the Museum coalesces history into themes and packages the regional into the meta or the universal, it’s key motto.

In this era of divisive politics, the curative philosophy seems right like a ‘right’ balm.

There was an early photography exhibit which was illuminating as a person who does a lot of photography on the street, the gaze of the photographer is violent for communities where the act of image making is documentation in the project of imperial conquest.

The three photos chosen for this note, are paintings for Jackson Pollock (Black and White Abstractions) and SH Reza (Bindu, 1986) and an installation by Chinese Artist Ai Weiwei which work is distinctly political.

An act of curating the universal is also a well thought out act. The Louvre Abu Dhabi is a site for reaffirming the global project, where the liberal transnational elite sipping Latte from all over the world, find the space comfortable and common- as I felt the experience similar to National Gallery in Singapore or the National Museum in Oman.

#louvremuseumabudhabi

@ Louvre Abu Dhabi

A key aspect missing in the planning or sociology literature about the Gulf is the absence of the backlane as a typological entity in urban space. The backlanes of the cities have unique sub cultures with informal spaces not listed on Zomato.

I found plenty of eating places run by various communities which are lifelines, captured nowhere. These social interstices are voids within binaries framed by western intellectuals of the past, a future of futurists and a transitional labor force, which is more permanent transient.

Writing about the cities needs to have these archaic frames dismantled and written afresh. Where does Al Hamriya in Muscat and backlane ecosystems of Bur Dubai fit in these writing and photography of these spaces?

#Gulf