The current edition of The Entrepreneur’s from The Monocle stable, is on entrepreneurship in the Emirates, which is really the start up hub of the Middle East, South Asia and Africa. May be the history of the Trucial States has to do with it, as Dubai became a Free Port in 1905, prompting the first wave of migration of Persian Merchants from the rule of the Shah who had raised taxes for merchants from southern Persia, to increase revenue.

A lot of the trade in gold in South Asia was mediated through Dubai until the 1990’s. Culture is downstream of History and is vital for turbocharged entrepreneurship.

A good reference is Prof Todd Reisz ‘s Showpeice City and Temporary City by Prof Yasser Elsheshtawy

I was missing Masqat and the fare at the Arab World and the Mandi places in Al Khuwair, Ghala and Azaiba, so what does as ‘Desi Khaleeji’ do in such circumstances? Head to Wadi Hadramout, for Adeni Tea and Mandi Rice in Jalan Ampang. The place feels somewhere out of Dakhliyah, with a space-time compression identical out of Oman.

KL has a large Arab student diaspora and refugee communities, and I often speak Arabic here with Malaysians and Indonesians, and is a lingua franca of the Nusantara. The jawi script is Arabic and Indian Ocean circulations dominate.

The sensory scapes of the place, is deeply familiar and satisfying.

On the business end, this edition of The Entrepreneur’s from the Monocle stable is on entrepreneurship in the Emirates, which is the embodiment of the free port ethos of Dubai since 1905, which prompted the migration of Persian merchants, traces of which can be found in current day Al Fahidi in Bur Dubai.

This screenshot speaks of the deep civilisational ties between Masqat and New Delhi, via Mandvi. Sheikh Pankaj Khimji, the influential Bania businessman greets the Indian President on His Majesty’s state visit to India.

Mr. Khimji is an Advisor to the Sultan of Oman and a top honcho of the Asian Cricket Council. I was there four years back in Muscat when Modiji visited Muscat and spoke to the diaspora at the Sultan Qaboos Sports Stadium in Bousher, next to my then office next to the Royal Hospital. I was the only analyst who had blogged on his visit.

I had presented on this connection in my Middle East Institute NUS talk in 2018 and had co written a paper too.

Oman is India’s maritime neighbor with an influential merchant diaspora from Kutch, who are Hindus and are custodians of the temples in Muscat. Oman was an invitee to India’s G20 Presidency as well.

Yallah!

As an ESG consultant, policy think tank researcher and writer from a hard engineering background, we have to think with methods all the time- sources, analysis, writing styles in presenting our deliverables.

This is the third methods class in the social sciences at the graduate level I am studying across three top universities in ASEAN, and each class refreshes the lens.

Most consultants who are from engineering and MBA epistemic background have not read any qualitative methods class or writing courses prior to entering consulting, where they are expected to research and write. And this is an uphill battle, and impacts productivity.

The purpose of good art is to suspend time in the midst of performance. The Grammy Winning Sahrawi Desert Blues Band, Tinariwen took KL to a tour of the Sahara Desert through the exhilarating music. I grew up on Rai Music in Muscat, and the melodic vocabulary was familiar this evening.

KL is a major cultural hub of the Nusantara, and the Palestinian flag shash around the lead singers neck, showed solidarity in with the humanitarian crisis.

Excellent work by the @senipusaka team to bring KL back on the cultural map of the region.

The energy on the floor was infectious.

@ek.isatsea @pauline.pusaka

The hidden transcript of the transition should be considered on a day which was historically significant in terms of calling for a move away from fossil fuels.

There is a brazen tendency to sweep the problematic resource politics feeding the transition, the lithium and the copper that goes into solar panels, transmission wires and the long storage batteries.

Recently, I had the honour to speak at the International Conference on South East Asian Studies at the University of Malaya on a session on food! I presented my research from my long term research project on Subaltern Migrant Infrastructures. My paper was based my work in SE Asia and Mumbai over the past year.

A traditional mess, with the best Ghee Thosai ever. A space time compression which transports one to a mess in Kumbakonam or Viruthanagar.

Tamizh Transnational Food Scapes in the Nusantara.

A master class on writing in the form of an hour long conversation between the legendary English Author Geoff Dyer and Mr. Eddin Khoo, the Founder of Pusaka (and a huge inspiration). The discursive dialogue on the ‘un process’ of the craft of writing resonated with me, the lack of structure, the spontaneous character, the role of non work time in the creative process.

Now I need to read his works with a new perspective especially the essay on Photographer Dayanita Singh in Varanasi. His readings were funny and gloriously English.

As primarily a writer, I appreciate these spaces of learning as doing a MFA in creative non fiction at East Anglia or Iowa for my generation was out of the question.

Food that heals. I grew up next to a Saravana Bhavan in Al Khuwair, Muscat in the beautiful country of Oman and Saravana Bhavan here in KL to CP in Delhi is what good food looks like. The Sapaad meal and the filter kaapi was legendary.

The Saravana Bhavan index of globalisation is a neat way to determine where the Indian NRI populations are concentrated.