For all the experimental work I have done across the sectors, engineering, environmental, non profit, public policy and creative practice, I sometimes feel the space for trying out new skills and techniques is shrinking as the age of the specialist is inhibitory. Problems are multidisciplinary and several approaches need to be taken to understand how … More Polymath Tales.
A technology is an imagination, such as the Digital which is hoped to be a silver bullet to all problems. Every technology creates externalities, and should be perceived as a lens to shape the future by understanding the present deeply. A digital lens is political as it is not just science but commerce undergirding the … More What is real tech transformation?
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 … More The Children of Gold
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 … More Dr M back at the helm
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 … More Energy.
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 … More The Wet Market in Oman; B&W Photo Essay/Poem
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. … More Field Notes from a Farm
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. … More Writing Ourselves: Karak Chai Tales Episode One
