
Diaspora Store as Creole Place-Holders
The devotional music paying homage to Sabrimala and Lord Ayyappa sonically enveloping the community centric diaspora store with a Puja offerings section and the spices section stocking up on MDH and Shan opens the possibility of the transnational as a local site of familiar sensibilities. The emotional switchboard in the words of Prof Ato is electric and immediate and transports me to temple town Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu being present physically in Singapore, which is a global site for Tamil Culture.Cultural bubbles in the everyday are the placeholders of the creole in the multicultural global city.

Tamil Supermarket: Cultural Switches.
Lifeblood.
Sublimation.
Since the past year, there has been an evaporation of ambition and the dream has been a blur, which i feel is normal in a world which has undergone so much loss.
Or the sublimation creates a new frame for the dream, where new rules are created?
Le Thinnai Kreyol, One Year.
Congratulations to the Le Thinnai Kreyol Project Team, @banglarmeyeajk Prof Ananya and Ari Anna etc on one year of globally remote yet intimate conversation on Creole circulation. I have learnt so much over the past year from Pune and now Singapore. As a writer and now as a PhD scholar at NUS it does matter.
The project now has a holding page and journal- Thinnai Revi which will be a fascinating site for knowledge production and dissemination.
It is a fascinating online community of thinkers which is creative, critical and analytical. The founders I may add are very kind!
I plan to scribble on Kreyol Muscat\Khaleej soon! Creole is a concept which is interesting to frame the Gulf, often seen from a linear lens.
Thank you for the shout out, as a second-third generation migrant it means a lot to write about the places I write on from Dubai to Singapore which do not find a spot in the archive.
Congratulations once again ! Be ambitious, please!

Diaspora Store.
The Gulf Fueled Kerala Model
There is a sense of valorisation of the Kerala Model among the secular, liberal community. However, there is an amnesia regarding a rather small positive externality; the decades of Gulf remittances that pads up the over all quality of life.
The hard work should not be erased of the Malayali who would do jobs which they would not do at home. There is a social cost as well. Having watched Asianet while growing up, Malayalam saturates the desert shamal of the littoral port city.
You will find a Kerala Kada in the middle of the desert with news playing in the background.
Jobs To Be Done.
Follow your passion is a really good way to be poor. Work is meant to move the needle, as someone is paying your salary as there is a job to be done. More than any degree ‘How can the job be done’ should be the only metric in the post pandemic world.
Apologies, Singapore
AAP is a party built on NRI donations and talent, is hell bent on spoiling relations with Singapore- a dear friend to India.Many Singapore NRI’s also have worked with AAP. They should ask for accountability from AAP. Kejriwal should apologise to Singapore. This is just terrible. I still carry an Indian Passport having grown up in the Gulf, and am thankful for all the support the country and its people have given me over the past 12 years. I am sorry for all the stupidity. The Delhi NCR Government, a glorified municipality does not speak for India.










