In October 2024, we gathered in a living room in NYC.
About 20 of us. No structure. Just a question.
What could BlindianProject become?
Been looking back at that night.
Since then, that room has started to extend—
into other rooms, other cities, other conversations.
Most recently, co-presenting In Search of Bengali Harlem at @asiasociety .
Another sold-out room.
A quiet reminder that these histories,
and the spaces to encounter them are resonating.
This isn’t just about recovering history.
It’s about what happens when it meets people in real time.
And what begins to form from there.
Before it had structure, it had people.
And sometimes that’s enough to begin.
Some of the most important BlindianProject work happens off-platform.
In group chats.
Through hand-offs.
IRL — when someone lands somewhere new, needs to learn the lay of the land, and the work keeps moving.
Recently, Carissa traveled to Kenya for research on mixed Black/South Asian identities across East Africa and met up with BP family on the ground — Karibu. She later wrote about Nairobi as the first place her work felt truly understood — through diasporic recognition, care, and being taken seriously as a woman.
I met Aleya (@aleyakassam ), Rushab (@rushabnandha ) Karishma (@karishmabhagani ) and Eric (@ericwainainamusic ) through their work developing Pani Puri — a Black–Brown love story that illuminates the trials and tribulations of staying together across cultures, with music that invites us into Asian-Kenyan and African-Kenyan soundscapes. They’d seen the work BP was doing globally; it resonated. They reached out, and we’ve been WhatsApp family since — supporting, collaborating, and conspiring to bring our dreams to life.
This is what global solidarity looks like in practice.
Not spectacle — continuity.
Bandung wasn’t a moment.
It was a method.
And it’s still alive.
If you’re about the work and looking for a global, likeminded circle — DM me.
🎵: @rushabnandha Tear
These moments aren’t just photos.
These rooms aren’t just events.
They’re reminders of why we build—
living testimony that our ancestors’ work didn’t stop with them.
It continues in us.
In community.
In real time.
And in every room where we choose each other again and again.
This month, we filled two cities —
sold out Rich Mix in London, sold out Soul City Arts in Birmingham —
not because of hype,
but because people are hungry for stories that hold all of us.
What’s happening here isn’t accidental — it’s cultural infrastructure in motion.
Black × Brown audiences are gathering, listening, and moving together in ways brands rarely invest in — but absolutely should.
BlindianProject and SA4BL were never meant to be content.
They’re living infrastructures — made possible by real people, real stories, and the quiet labour of solidarity across Black × Brown worlds.
What you see here is not a highlight reel.
It’s lineage.
It’s practice.
It’s the work.
I’m pinning this series as a foundation for our next chapter —
a signal of the rooms we’re building,
the relationships we’re deepening,
and the futures we’re shaping together.
If you see the vision, lean in.
If you feel the energy, stay close.
We’re just getting started.
#BlindianProject
Came across this young couple @bonzandvachu the other day and their zest for life genuinely filled me with joy.
That feeling only lasted until I opened the comments section — almost predictably — and was greeted by the usual tropes, and by how genuinely miserable some people become at the sight of other people’s happiness.
Love across difference has a way of revealing the boundaries people still carry inside themselves, even when those relationships have absolutely no effect on their own lives.
It’s easy to speak about equality, freedom, or justice in theory.
It’s another thing when people actually begin crossing the racial, cultural, caste, or religious lines society quietly expects them to stay within.
And while the woman in this video is Indian and speaking directly to Indians, I don’t think these attitudes stop there. Versions of this exist across South Asia and its diasporas more broadly.
A lot of the discomfort around relationships like this has never really been about love alone. It’s tied up in ideas around family, purity, tradition, status, and who people think should belong to one another.
I believe everyone is entitled to love whomever they want to, regardless of race, class, caste, gender, or religion.
To the couple: keep living your life on your own terms.
some forms of colonialism survive not through flags or borders, but through mirrors. Thank you for resharing this deeply personal work, @mayakalaria
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Racialized body dysmorphia has been a topic I’ve spoken openly about over the last 6 years. And even though one day, I will naturally stop giving this part of my story as much importance, it still feels relevant now as a part of the wider reckoning we are all experiencing.
Sometimes, to lay a version of you to rest so that something new can emerge, it needs to have space to be fully seen and heard.
I can feel this part of me getting healthily bored and ready for full integration. But I went through it all for a reason, and if it could help others in any way, it would have been worth It.
I don’t feel that there’s anyone, particularly in the diaspora, who hasn’t experienced some sort of dysmorphic thinking - or the pressure to think dysmorphically - about themselves.
About their physicality, in the shadow of yt supremacy and the colonial tentacles that grasp at every aspect of our lives.
These extracts are from my article ‘the dysmorphic body of empire’ from my Substack ‘how we lead’, and was published about a year ago. Some recent conversations l’ve been having with a friend inspired me to share it again, as I noticed myself having some dysmorphic thoughts about my body, and feeling the limitations of that.
To listen to/read the full piece, click ‘how we lead’ in my link in bio. And feel free to share your thoughts with me.
This is the third and final piece in a trilogy following We Were Placed Next to Each Other and What Remains Between Us.
This final work turns toward reconciliation and repair.
Not as resolution.
But as practice.
As something incomplete and ongoing.
I’m currently gathering references, essays, interviews, archival materials, and conversations that wrestle with these questions seriously.
If there are articles, books, artworks, talks, or videos that have shaped how you think about:
repair,
forgiveness,
reconciliation,
memory,
or what comes after rupture—
I’d genuinely love to see them.
Please send them through.
@mo.rights
NO WAR BUT CLASS WAR.
Amiri Baraka on morality, power, and who gets to define both:
“Morality is class morality.
To the slave master, slavery was moral.
To the bourgeoisie, capitalism is moral.
Racism is moral.
The oppression of women is moral.”
Until WE organize against it.
If you keep returning to something, follow it.
Map it. Print it. Put it on a wall.
Digital is cool.
But in physical space, at scale, people start tracing the systems with their hands.
The body catches things language misses.
The BlindianProject started with a question around Black × South Asian proximity, but the work keeps pushing toward something larger: who gets represented, who gets flattened into “South Asian,” and who gets erased inside dominant narratives.
While our name reflects the coming together of two unlikely communities, the work has always been about the people left out of the frame.
What actually changes when representation becomes branding? Who gets seen, who gets absorbed, and who remains invisible?
No calls for cancellation from this corner of the internet, @mohuyaakhan . Nothing but flowers 🌺 🌹 🌷
The question is rarely whether conflict will happen.
The question is whether people have the emotional, relational, and historical infrastructure to move through it without reproducing domination.
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one I want to say I know that a majority of people are very kind and engage in good faith even through misunderstandings or even disagreements. the people who have been rude, projecting without reflection, and demanding are few. but I have to have boundaries after certain thr3ats (which oooh you will be dealt with, IP address exists!)
I have seen people become afraid to even engage these conversations because they are scared of getting involved, making mistakes, or being treated like a mistake means they are beyond repair. I have talked to many people who are afraid to explore what is coming up for them because other people do not know how to hold mistakes without turning them into shame, punishment, or controlling the situation. I get that we are socialized to do that behavior but also some of y’all a straight up mean and that is sad to see.
but also a reminder, this is instagram. i have conversations like this in person or face to face all the time. an IG post can not get into all the details that a conversation can. it simply CANNOT. and if your concern is always “other people are going to take this and then harm me because i have seen it done!” i would really reflect and see what issues you may have with control and why you don’t address your fears or experiences with the people you are around in REAL LIFE. because one thing about me is, i have done that, do that, and will always do that.
✍️: @nikeaurea
Black × South Asian conflict disappears.
The residue doesn’t.
Resentment.
Inherited silence.
Social distance.
Fear of rupture.
Conditional intimacy.
Things carried forward long after the incident ends.
