This project that started off as a critique of the infamous golden latte follows turmeric & the role that it plays in the functioning of the Indian diaspora in Dubai. The city is home to a massive Indian population. In the absence of formalised spaces of congregation, rituals become the means through which the diaspora is created & maintained. Turmeric is a commodity that holds intimate value for the community and plays a crucial role in these ritual ceremonies - a far cry from its use in the golden lattes, supplements and skincare products of the global north. The Gelf Indian Souvenir Shop is a "shop" that is run by Indian migrants for Indian migrants, that infiltrates the city as a Trojan horse, working within the confines of the city’s legal and economic framework to support the Indian diasporic community in a realistic and pragmatic way. It provides a safe space for the diaspora to carry out their rituals, supplies them with ritual kits necessary for those and allows for diasporic networks to be formed and strengthened through these rituals, other communal activities and public programme events. The shop is also an archive for a diaspora that is still learning how to define its identity in the city in the absence of an assimilated Emirati-Indian option. It is a collaborative, healing and self-reflective space to trace our history, share our stories and collectively shape our future in the city through these networks of solidarity.

This project centers the Indian migrant community in the UAE – a population often confined to living in a state of permanent temporariness tied to their ability to economic contributions to the nation. I am particularly interested in the legitimacy of multi-generational migrants who have built lives and homes for themselves over decades. Through the project, I aim to build an archive of Indian histories that can then act as proof of our rights over this land, and dispute the overarching narrative of migrant relationships with the land being entirely economic/extractive/opportunistic and devoid of emotional attachment. To collect and curate the narratives and counternarratives that populate the archive, I ran workshops with my interlopers – first and subsequent generation-migrants – that addressed different notions of belonging for each of them. In these workshops, my tools of remembering were sculpting through fabric, and drawing. These then came together in a large-scale storytelling fabric installation in Dubai.