Sunday Posts

It is easy to overestimate the potential impact of urban development initiatives, public or private. Because as high level concepts, we delve in a culture-free world, assuming that everyone will do what makes best economic sense; or, more accurately, we treat those who wouldn't pursue economic prosperity as outliers - oddballs - and keep them outside our calculations. But this is where culture gets in the way of our best intentions. More so, if a City needs regeneration, at the heart of the problem there is, more often than not, a 'culture trap', a negative feedback cycle of despair and denial. Any effort of new thinking must acknowledge the cultural challenges first and foremost. But while culture is important, it is also hard to change. A culture emerges and solidifies over time, and it is inherent in assumptions and behaviours of a given people, hard to scrub out with a few conferences here and there. This is the other mistake well-meaning initiatives often make - ...

If this blog needed a purpose, I have one now. I started writing just for the sake of writing, and later, used this space for reflecting on my experience as well as exploring ideas and connecting with people. It was a serendipitous journey, with twists and turns of my wandering mind suitably exposed, and I assiduously avoided being boxed, or turning this blog into a commercial promotion of myself. And, this is not a holier-than-thou stance - I indulged in usual narcissism on Facebook and tried to do desperate social climbing on Linkedin - it is just plain love, of words and of ideas and of conversations, and I wanted to keep this one space uncorrupted of the other 'social me', in order to welcome them as they came.  But then there is something I love. And, all my wandering is really a quest for that one thing, in a way. My otherwise pauseless life may not allow me the space to love anything except for the socially mandated, all the middle class stuff about careers, mortga...

Kolkata is India's third largest city, its former capital and a desperately poor one. It is home for me, and whatever I write about it - and I keep writing about it - is never impartial. I can see, like everyone else, its broken politics, its stilted society, its broken infrastructure: However, if there is one city I would live in if all my wishes are granted, it will be Kolkata. This is indeed more about me than about the City, which has perhaps changed far more than I did, despite my life abroad and all that. However, this is more than nostalgia: I have never been a resident of Kolkata, living all my life in a suburb, and while I went to college in the city, I didn't know the city that well till fairly late in my life. And, this is not about its culture, which most Kokata residents are intensely proud of: While my cultural identity remains irredeemably Bengali and linked to Kolkata, I am also aware of the deep conservatism and class consciousness that pervades the Kolkata s...