an itinerant observer

If you are lucky you may come across a book that challenges your assumptions, upends your convictions and knocks down your indoctrination. If you are really lucky then said book may present an alternative and limitless world view of possibilities that generates a warm fuzzy feeling within, perhaps because your assumptions have been challenged, convictions upended and indoctrination knocked down. I can safely say this has happened to me recently. After several years of sporadic reading of contemporary fiction, creative non-fiction and general non-fiction, I present to you….drum roll….Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari! This remarkable book belonging to the genre of ‘popular science’ per it’s cover is certainly that but goes far beyond. It is a highly evocative, provocative and candid outlook on Homo sapiens (modern human beings, in other words) – where they’ve come from, but more importantly where they are headed (hence, Homo Deus alluding to humanity version 2.0). All that, ...

Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free. -Rumi “Dhum-dhum-dhum…” The drumbeat started plaintively at dusk. I felt someone tap me on the shoulder. As I turned around, the sights were to behold; orange, purple, yellow, green and blue fairy lights adorned the tomb creating a riot of colors. The chadors being handed out for draping around our necks were lal – red – the color attributed to the Saint. It wasn’t just the sights and sounds that were captivating. Incense sticks generated a pleasant aroma. Typically, I would’ve been irritated by the cloying Metro Milan  agarbati  – but not this time. The nasal senses were heightened as much as the others, if not more. As if the sights, sounds and scents weren’t enough, a tingling sensation made itself felt all the way from my fingers and toes to my center. It felt like a warm embrace. ...

My daughter Alaiyah was born in Karachi and she was born with Down syndrome. We had received a post-natal diagnosis, although there had been some suspicions before her birth. She had a cardiac arrest a few hours after she was born, had to be resuscitated and was put on a ventilator. Countless complications and blood transfusions later, she finally managed to pull through. We held her for the first time exactly twenty days after she was born. We brought her home after she spent a month in the NICU. She's had several surgeries - some major, some minor, and quite a few hospital admissions in the past 6 years but for the most part, is doing very well.   If you ask any parent of a child with special needs, they will tell you that having such a child changes you in ways you could never have imagined. You start looking at the world from a different lens. There are many joys and many rewards. But there are so many more challenges too. There are reminders in every day of what could h...