Thanks a ton to the Red Lantern Analytica team, for the invite to engage in a dialogue with the Indian diaspora topic with Dr Sonali this evening from Singapore, from the NUS campus.

Migration is embodied, in the meals we eat and the transnational lives we live. Over the last year in Malaysia, Indian migrant workers can be seen from the unlikeliest of places which we were not traditionally migrant sending areas especially in diaspora Malaysian Foodscapes in the Nasi Kandar- Mamak, or Tamizh Muslim eateries from Thanjavur to Karnal to Tripura to the outskirts of Kolkata.

I have also met folks from Panchkula in a Pakistani restaurant in Singapore. There are plantation workers from Bihar and UP as well as from West Bengal especially Muslim.

The presence of migrant workers in the diaspora, often is a sign of the economy at home, atleast for vulnerable communities. Food workers are often missing from the literature, the theorising often misses trends on the ground as academics spend more time in faculty clubs than with communities.

The photo is from Seremban in Malaysia, where I was served Madras Coffee by a young man from Haryana in India, who is an electrician by training.

A town which looks like KL thirty years back, and even Mauritian.

Excellent presentation at the Sustainable Development Soutions Network, Sunway University today afternoon on Transparency in Voluntary Carbon Markets in Malaysia by Mr. Yi Jian. Lots to ponder on integrity issues in Global Carbon Markets!

The social licence to operate is critical for any carbon project to be trust worthy.

As I write on Migrant Foodscapes in the Indian Ocean for the past few years, it’s fascinating how restaurant workers have worked across the region, in the same places as one has been. Mr. Ganesan from Saravana Bhavan Petaling Jaya has served in Oman in particular Sohar and in Muscat – the Al Khuwair outlet next door to which I grew up and the Ruwi outlet. I was probably eating around the same time as he was working in the year 2017.

An Indian Diaspora space where is configured by restaurant chains such as Saravana Bhavan, where the taste of the set meal is exactly the same across the world.

One does necessarily not need a grant or a scholarship to work in the areas one wants to write as a researcher.

The Canadian Cricket Team is a post colonial, immigrant dream. And an embodiment of the Punjabi diaspora aesthetic across India and Pakistan.