In Favor of ‘Comfort Zone’

| Daily Blogsby

So you are telling me to “come out of my comfort zone,” to “explore life,” because “you only live once.”

But my question to you is: why?

If I am fulfilling my responsibilities, then let me enjoy the comfort of my comfort zone. Let me relax, recharge, and basically be comfortable.

Don’t tell me that you wake up at 3 a.m., pick up heavy boulders, swim in a freezing river or lake, kill a bear with your bare hands for breakfast, and then you do this and then you do that, and then finally, at night, you sleep out in the open with hard rock as your bed, leaves as your blanket, and the sky as your roof.

I don’t care if you sleep with the lions.

After my 9 to 5, I am happy to eat freshly prepared, tasty, home-cooked food, lie down on my bed, read a book, and sleep with my head on a comfortable pillow, under a blanket of just the ideal weight, with the room temperature set to just the right centigrades.

Thank you very much.

I, and millions like me, have spent a considerable amount of time and effort making our lives comfortable. So when you come and tell me to leave that comfortable life, then sorry, I would simply say that you are yapping.

Maybe one day, if I decide, after all my calculations, that I feel like taking some sort of risk, then I may leave my comfort zone, dip my toes into the freezing water, and see if I am interested or not. If not, I will wear my socks and shoes again and come back to my comfort zone.

But if I like it, then I will make plans to extend, not leave, my comfort zone to include whatever new thing I want to add to my life.

You might ask: what will happen if life throws me a curveball and I am pushed out of my comfort zone?

Well, that is a possibility.

But then why make my life uncomfortable today on the assumption that it might become hard tomorrow? Why not enjoy the wonders and beauties of life while I can?

And who knows whether my assumption about the curveball is even correct? Maybe I make my life uncomfortable to prepare for financial losses, but I get health losses instead.

I am truly sorry, but I am not interested in challenging my comfort zones, only to get stuck while climbing a mountain and die of hunger and thirst. Good luck to all the daredevils out there. But I am frankly not very interested in it.

Till then, I will enjoy the comforts that Allah has bestowed on me. Be thankful. Be gracious. And even ask for more.

Chow. Chow.

Where Lies the Power…

| A Better Muslim, Daily Blogsby

In our recent Taleems, I was reading this Aayat:

Inna al-hukmu illa lillah
إِنِ الْحُكْمُ إِلَّا لِلَّهِ

It is hard to find a single English word for hukm. It can mean order, rule, decision, judgment, command, or authority. So perhaps one way to translate it is:

“The final rule and decision belong only to Allah.”

And then, as often happens while reflecting on the Quran, I started having a conversation with myself. I started piecing this Aayat together with some other unsolved equations in my brain.

The Quran is like that. You can go as deep as you want, and the deeper you go, the clearer the picture becomes. I do not know how deep I have reached. Maybe I am still in shallow waters. But these questions are my attempt to understand these words of the Quran a little more.

Does this Aayat mean that all political struggle is a waste? That rulers and heads of state, whom we consider the most powerful people in the world, are actually not powerful at all? In many other places in the Quran, Allah says that He gives mulk — power, kingdom, authority — to whom He wills. So should we blame rulers for our state of affairs? Or is there another question before that? When we are not doing our duty to Allah, can we expect rulers to do their duty towards us?

When we are not obedient to Allah, why do we expect others to be just, obedient, merciful, and responsible towards us?

Am I waiting for society to change, while society is waiting for me to change? Is there a link? Will society change when I change? Or at least, will my part of society change when I change?

Maybe this is why many of the learned scholars stayed away from positions of power. Even when power was offered to them, they refused it. They chose instead to focus on learning, teaching, reforming hearts, and preserving the principles of Islam. Perhaps they understood something that we keep forgetting: power is not always where we think it is.

إِنِ الْحُكْمُ إِلَّا لِلَّهِ

And maybe this is also why so many “impactful” leaders — those whom we call great, cruel, wise, foolish, successful, or disastrous — often set out to do one thing and end up doing something entirely different.

They planned. Others reacted in ways that they didn’t expect. And history moved forward.

But finally, whatever happened was whatever Allah commanded to happen.

Inna al-hukmu illa lillah.

I wonder, but if I can only wonder.

Take care and till next time.

Assaan Naikiyyan – Easy Good Deeds

| A Better Muslim, Daily Blogs, Faith & Lifeby

I read this book, Assaan Naikiyyan, by Mufti Taqi Usmani, many years ago and found it very helpful. So I included its reading in our daily Taleem after Isha.

The premise of the book, as the title suggests, is how to do deeds that carry the highest reward with the minimum effort. Till now, we have read three easy good deeds.

Intention. For any action that we do during the day, we should make the intention that this action is purely for the Raza of Allah. Even for work that is purely for our duniya, like going to the office, going to the gym, or going out to dinner with family or friends, as long as it is not a haraam activity, we can make the same intention. It does not take much time, but it converts the entire action into a form of worship and therefore becomes a means of earning a great reward.

Dua. Ask Allah. Speak to Allah. Before any action or after any action. When you succeed or when you fail. When you are scared or when you are confident. When you are happy or when you are sad. Ask for His Help. Tell Him what is going on in your life. What is good and what is bad? What you liked and what you did not like.

Often, Ulema explain dua not only as “asking Allah” but also as “talking to Allah.” And Allah is the only One who encourages us to make duas and ask Him for everything and anything that we want. Even our Prophet ﷺ guided us to ask Allah for help even if the lace of our shoe is broken and needs to be mended.

Again, this does not need much preparation or any big effort, and the rewards are so many that they cannot be counted. The biggest reward that the book mentions is that dua builds a strong, unbreakable bond between Allah and us. Is that not the biggest reward one can hope for?

You only need to remember to do it. And the more often you do it, the more natural it becomes.

Masnoon Duaein. These are the duas, or invocations, that our Prophet ﷺ used to recite before starting his daily activities. For example, waking up, going to sleep, entering the washroom, coming out of the washroom, eating, drinking water, looking in the mirror, wearing clothes, leaving the house, returning home, entering the masjid, leaving the masjid, starting a journey, etc.

There are many books available that contain these duas. If we can memorize even one dua per day, then within a few days, all our daily work will start with the blessing of Allah, because it will begin with the prayer that our Prophet ﷺ taught us. And hence, the rewards would be much higher, while the effort would not even total more than five minutes per day.

Well, that is where I have reached in the book so far. As I read more, I will add more.

Till then.

Take care!

Switching to ‘A Blog A Day’

| Daily Blogsby

So last year, i.e., 2025, I published a total of …. wait … (drum roll) … 9 blogs. Yaaaayyyyyy.

Yeah, okay, I know it’s not much. But I was just mocking myself for writing 1 blog every 41 days. Well, I wrote more but published less, but who is counting those, right?

And it is not that my blogs are being shortlisted for Pulitzers and whatever writing prizes are out there in the world.

So this made me wonder about my blog writing process. Which, if broken a bit further, is writing, editing, writing, editing, editing, editing, writing, editing, deleting everything, writing, deleting that, then recovering what I had deleted 3 edits ago, then reading, writing, editing, editing, editing… Well, I know you get my point.

The worst part of my entire process is reading what I have written. If it was once or twice, then it is supposedly fine. But reading whatever junk I am writing close to a million times is not fun. Not as fun as writing. Which makes me pity the total number of zero readers that I have there for this blog.

Sometimes I stare at the last sentence I wrote as if I stare long enough at it, I would discover the magic sequence of words in the sentence that would make Hemingway blush. But what do I get after staring at the sequence and looking like a zombie for hours? NOTHING. NAATA. ZERO. No magic sequence. No Hemingway breaking his pen.

Well, Hemingway is to be blamed for this predicament of mine. I read somewhere that he said he rewrote the ending of A Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, thirty-nine times before he was satisfied. When asked what the problem was, he said, “Getting the words right.”

“Getting the words right”. The “Magic Sequence”!!!

And although he didn’t say, but I do wonder whether he felt that the final combination was right or still was ‘just no right’. Maybe he got bored after trying 39 times. Maybe he thought that now the combination is getting worse rather than getting better. Well, I don’t know whether he felt that way or not. But I do.

For me, after creating drafts after drafts after drafts. I often feel that maybe draft 4 was better than the current draft # 32. And then it makes me feel. UUuuggggghhhhhh.

So I have decided to stop going for the perfect combination and ‘just start writing’. No MS Word. No reading my blogs out aloud. No changing the fonts and background colors to make me wanna read the draft again. Just type my words directly into the blog space here. And read it once (yes, please, allow me to read and edit once. I am not that confident) and then hit Publish.

And I will do this every day. Every single day. What comes out of it? I don’t know. Do I get more readers or less? Although what can be less than 5? I should hardly care.

So the metric right now is ‘A Blog a Day’. Maybe I would still be writing bigger and more nuanced blogs with N to the power of n drafts (where n is the number of words in the blog). And most of these blogs would never get published. But maybe the ones that do get published would make Mr. Pulitzer stand up and notice.

But for now. ‘A blog a day’. And this one for today. Till then

Cheeku Paanta.

A ‘Documentary’

| Daily Blogsby

Dear Blog,

Yesterday, someone sent me a link to a “documentary” and urged me to watch it because, apparently, it was “very well made.”

Nowadays, hardly anything in the media is “very well made”, but I decided to watch it anyway.

I could not get past the first five minutes.

And there were many reasons for that. Frankly, I was surprised I even lasted five minutes watching that crap. Maybe because the sender belongs to GenZzzz, and I try to humour them whenever I can.

So it started with a few faces flashing on the screen. Media people. Their mouths were moving, but I hardly registered anything they said, because, to be honest, I do not respect them enough to lend them an ear.

Even those few flashes of their faces were enough to ruin my mood.

But I continued.

These media persons — or “anchors,” as they are politely called — are famous for taking money and selling any product to their viewers. I do not know if there is a specific name for such people. Maybe one day I will come up with one.

Anyhoo, I moved forward through the filth, sorry I meant the ‘film’.

There were some slick drone shots. Then a few more people appeared — even more cringe than normal. That is when I paused and checked the channel owner.

The channel was called “PakistanTV – Digital.”

To tell you the truth, that was the first thing I wanted to check, because this GenZzzz sender is, in my book, pretty biased. But I thought, fine, whatever. Maybe PakistanTV was some new YouTube channel. Maybe some upcoming YouTuber had decided to make documentaries.

But then I found out.

PakistanTV is PTV.

More cringe.

Which meant this was not a documentary. This was a paid media PR campaign, promoting all the cringe people as “saviours” of the nation.

The video had been uploaded three weeks ago and had reached only 96,000 views.

Imagine that.

A state-sponsored video, made with state resources, slick editing, nice makeup, polished accents, and all the fanfare in the world — and the reach was what?

Ninety-six thousand views in three weeks.

I mean, it would have been better not to make the video at all. Better to disappear quietly than go through the humiliation of unpopularity and zero traction.

If you are calling something a “documentary,” and that too a “well-made” one, then at least check what kind of reach actual “well-made documentaries” get.

Frankly speaking, the topic itself was of interest to me. Maybe that is why I lasted 5 minutes. It was about the war with India in 2025. We did kick some ass there. But there are still some questions that remain unanswered, mostly because of the blanket blackout of truth from India. Which only shows how badly bruised they still are.

But things will remain hidden, as they usually do nowadays.

And these stupid “documentaries” will keep coming out. Stupid people will keep forwarding me stuff. Five minutes of my life will keep getting wasted. And then I will have a headache for the next three or four days because those stupid faces will keep flashing in front of me.

Anyhoo, that is life, isn’t it? 

If I did not have such experiences, I would not be coming here and blogging about them.

And regarding this topic of interest, I probably would have to wait for a book that comes along, and I am able to fill in the missing pieces. Till then.

Cheeeku Paanta

The Four Noble Traits of Hazrat Jaffar Tayyar ؓ

| A Better Muslim, Faith & Life, Personal Growthby

The four noble traits that made Hazrat Jafar Tayyar ؒ beloved to Allah, even before the advent of Islam (during the age of Jahiliyyah).

  1. Avoidance of Alcohol. He says that he never went near alcohol because he saw that alcohol destroys intellect.  
  2. Avoidance of Idolatry. He says that he avoided idol worship because he saw that idols could neither provide benefit nor harm.
  3. Avoidance of Adultery. He says that because he possessed a strong sense of honor regarding his wife and his daughters, he never committed adultery.
  4. Avoidance of Lying. He says that he never lied because he regarded lying as an act beneath the person of a high character and an act lacking any moral worth.

The importance of the traits, besides being beloved to Allah, can be assessed from the fact that they were specially revealed by Allah on Prophet Muhammad ﷺ through Hazrat Jibrael ؑ

In my journey through life, I’ve realized that character isn’t built all at once; it’s assembled piece by piece from the virtues we choose to honor. I blog about these traits to ‘collect’ them and try to integrate them into my own life and identity. For me, Hazrat Jafar Tayyar’s ؒ story is a reminder that true integrity begins long before the world notices.

#NobleTraits

And then there is you…

| Faith & Life, Insightsby

A son reflects on his father’s life, lessons, faith, and final days — a deeply personal tribute to Abu Hazur (1934–2025).

I close my eyes, and I open them. I breathe in, and I breathe out. Sometimes I speak, but mostly I stay silent. I spend my day in meetings, handling escalations, assigning work, coaching my team, and coding my dreams – always trying to do what is required of me. The daily hustle becomes tough, and I want to stop, but the world is not kind to people who stop. Minutes would turn into months and months into years without me realizing how far back I had fallen. So I put one foot in front of the other, move from one task to the next, and keep going. But sometimes everything comes to a grinding halt. The world keeps on spinning, but I just cannot move. I know that I should move and work and dream and travel and read and write and code – there are still so many things to do… but then there is you… 

Your giant palms are scrubbing Nivea on my tiny 8-year-old face to protect me from the dry Abu Dhabi weather. You and Ammi are going out for a walk, and I, taking advantage of being the youngest, want to tag along. ‘It is a long walk, and you will get tired,’ warns my mother. I don’t know what long and tired mean, but halfway through, I am dragging my feet and dreading the remaining part of the walk. Suddenly, in one big swoop, I am in your arms, my head on your big chest, totally relaxed and comfortable. 

After retirement from the Pakistan Air Force in 1977, you were commissioned in the UAE Air Force. That is where you worked for 17 years till you retired and moved back to Pakistan in 1994. You spent most of these 17 years alone, sacrificing for the education and health of your children. It was only after having kids of my own that I realized how big a sacrifice you made for us.

***

I am lying on my bed sick with Hepatitis and missing you. In the beginning, I didn’t feel much, but now it feels like something was eating me from the inside. My mother is also worried; her brother, my Nasir Mammoo, had succumbed to that same disease a few years ago. The doorbell rings, and you are here, now sitting beside my bed. I still feel weak, but I know that I am going to be fine. You are here. As soon as you had heard about my condition, you applied for leave, booked a ticket, and simply appeared. I needed you, my mother needed you, and without a second thought, you were there. That was the essence of who you were: never hesitate when your family needs you. 

In 1994, you retired from the UAE Air Force and came back to Karachi to live with us full-time. It was the first time in my adult memory that I was living with you for more than a few months. You maintained a very active and disciplined life: waking up early, having breakfast, reading the entire newspaper, and then taking a light nap. After the nap, you would always find something that needed fixing or repairing. From car detailing and repairing broken appliances to AC servicing and fixing shelves, you loved doing things by hand. Often, you would sit and stare at your tools and your latest project, imagining the solution before starting the work. Your projects would often take you to Saddar to hunt for parts in Electronics or the famous Empress market. Instead of a laid-back retirement, you had a very active one.  

If you did not have an active project, you would spend time reading books. I can still see you lying flat on your bed or a sofa with a book on your chest. You could read a book for long hours without getting restless. Once, I remember, you read all eight volumes of Maariful Quran in a few months. You always read non-fiction; politics, current affairs, and history were topics you were most interested in. You loved to watch many sporting events, but snooker and cricket were your favourites. 

***

I am sitting in front of you with my Urdu textbook. One of the things that you were passionate about and I was not was Urdu Ghazals. You used to attend Mushairas, often quote ashaars, and even check and correct the work of some of your poet friends. Meanwhile, I needed to memorize, for my coursework and good grades, explanations of ghazals and essays on the life and works of well-known poets. And I was bored to death doing that. I had made the mistake of thinking that was all there was to Ghazals. So here I was sitting in front of you, hoping that you could transfer some of your poetic skills to me, and I would start getting good grades. 

You asked me to read a Ghazal from the textbook, and I did. There is a smile on your face as you sit semi-reclined on your bed with your hands resting on your chest. Gently, you correct my pronunciation and wazan, i.e., the weights with which some words had to be delivered, especially the radeefs and qaffiyyas. Then you explain the meanings of the difficult words, and then you explain the meanings of the meanings of those words. That is when the magic of poetry starts to reveal itself to me. After a few more repetitions, I am sold on the art of poetry. The next day, I read the Ghazal in my class and stunned my Urdu teacher. She immediately calls out to the class ‘This is how Ghazals should be recited‘ and asks me to read again.  I never got good grades in Urdu, but from that day, I never stopped loving poetry.  

I still read the Ghazals today, not for their deep meaning or the enchanting imagery of their words. I don’t read them for the revolutionary spirit they produce inside of me or the flowers that their romanticism blooms in my heart – I read them instead to maintain a connection with you. To feel, once again, the same way that I felt all those years ago, sitting beside you, with you reclining on your bed and with your arms on your chest.  

It was around those years that the world was beginning to open before me, and with it came the struggles that confront every person from a middle-class background. Without generational wealth to fall back on, whatever we hoped to earn – and whatever comfort we wished to build for our families – depended on gaining admission to good colleges and universities. That was the only path available to us.  

But my educational performances started going South as soon as I left school. From 1992 to 1998, I was performing poorer and poorer with each passing year. I was getting rejected from all the major universities that I applied to – medical and engineering, both. I felt ridiculed, degraded, and started losing faith in myself. You accompanied me through all these failures but rarely showed any frustration or disbelief. I am sure you would have been frustrated on the inside, but on the outside, you kept on nudging me towards the next possible options with your customary phrases, ‘The ball is in your court’, ‘You are the architect of your future’. And all through this time, you never were too close to influence my decisions nor too far for me to feel alone.  

Finally, I got admission in the computer science programme at Bahria University in the middle of 1998. I was a bit apprehensive about being three years late in joining a university. And my anxiety was doubled when someone close said, ‘Kya saari zindagi parhtay raho gay, kuch kamao gay nahee?’  To which you immediately replied, ‘If you want to do computers, you will do computers. I will sell my skin for your education’. A bit dramatic, but that settled all debate. I could feel that invisible swoop and immediate feeling of protection and comfort that I had felt years ago from our walk in Abu Dhabi. Completely protected. Completely safe.  

In all this struggling time, I learned one important lesson for fatherhood. Be not too close and not too far from your kids. Guide them, but let them make their own decisions and then support them.  

The next few years at the University were one of the best phases of my life. Learning subjects that I liked and was also good at, establishing life-long friendships, and also the extra co-curricular activities. All these things played a very positive role in shaping my personality and my future. Once I graduated, I got a job in a start-up without much waiting.   

***

It is sometime in 2006, and after toiling in the garbage, also known as the public transport system of Karachi, I return home. I left home at 8 AM, and it is 9 PM now. I crash on the bed beside you and stare at the roof. Life is fun when you don’t have any responsibilities; life is hard when you have. Besides a gruelling but fulfilling job, I have too many things going on in parallel – I am married, just shifted to a new home, doing Masters and best of all – we are expecting our first child!  

I, staring at the roof, am inundated with emotions of frustration, worry, tiredness, and even elation, wondering how long I could keep up with it. But then I feel your big palms as they gently squeeze my forehead. It was as if you were taking all my worries away for me. You never liked touch, but you liked me. I feel relaxed and want to stay there forever. And in one form or another, I still do return to that safe, relaxed zone – staring at the roof and feeling your palm on my forehead.  

Things kept on moving at a fast pace. By the end of the year, I am a father and also have a new job. The new job has eased my short-term financial worries. Soon, I got a job offer from Kuwait. I am not sure whether to accept it or not. Kuwait only considers wife and kids for family visas, so I cannot take you and Ammi with me. Free video calling is still far away, which practically meant that I would have to forget about my family, which I was not prepared to do. Also, things are financially stable, and as everything new confuses me, I am not very keen to accept the job offer. But you teach me about inflation and how the cost of living will keep on increasing. And how important it is to consider the future of my children over my own emotions. Reluctantly, I accept the offer and move to Kuwait. Within a few years, I found out that it was the right decision that you had made for me.  

It is 2009, and it is your and Ammi’s first visit to Kuwait. Noor Uddin is 2 years old, and you have brought many toys for him, including an orange push car, which all his brothers used. We are a bit worried as he still does not speak. Initially, he was a bit shy, but within a few hours, he is on your lap and even started speaking, and that too, non-stop. He refuses to let go of you throughout your visit. And in many ways, he is still inseparable from you and your memories. There are so many things that I see in him that I saw in you. His reading posture, his usual relaxed, laid-back person, quickly converts into a busy gait and assured steps when work needs to be done.  

During your visit, I also got my driving license. We both go and shop for a new car. You were so proud and happy, and I was so happy to see you happy. I hope that all the anguish you suffered because of my failures is now remedied. I thank Allah for letting you see some of my success.  

***

The many perks in the life of an expat are often accompanied by layers of stress and anxiety. The hustle of a demanding career and a growing family were starting to take a toll on me. There were many times that I needed but was miles away from that swoop where you would pick me up and let me rest my head on your chest, or your giant palm on my head, or you putting Nivea on my face. 

More than anything, there was this dread that age and health would catch up with you like it always does.  And every visit to Karachi would start and end with me checking how older or weaker you had become. But every time I asked, you would always tell me, “Kyon? Mujhay kya hua? I am fine”. And your confident and strong tone would always put me at ease.  

But time was catching up. Hip surgery, prostate surgery, and then multiple brain strokes had started to take a toll on your otherwise energetic gait. You were now walking with a stick. If not as strong physically, mentally, you were still very strong and would always try to walk on your own. But you still would reply, whenever I would ask, “Kyon? Mujhay kya hua? I am fine”. A part of me was always relieved. But now a part of me had started to worry.  

They say that men can never be happy with the present because they are always anxious about the future. My world started turning towards the thought that I might be losing you. While the fear and the anxiety just kept growing inside of me, you kept on telling me, “Kyon? Mujhay kya hua? I am fine’’ 

***

I am holding the door of the car for you. We have come for Juma prayers. I give you my hand so that you can use it to get out of the car. You refuse and signal to me to move away. You want to get out of the car by yourself. Your grandson holds your cane, and you signal him to give it to you. And then after stabilizing yourself, you ask for my hand. I immediately give it to you. You walk a few paces with me, holding your right hand. Your giant palm that once used to calm my nerves, now needed my small hand for stability. But it was not me holding you; it was you who were still holding me. I still needed the comfort and safety that you brought. Just after a few paces, probably realizing my fragile need for reassurance, you push my hand away and start walking on your own. Maybe you wanted to walk on your own, or maybe you wanted me to walk on my own. I would never know, but I stay by your side, not too far and not too close.  

***

It is the summer of 2024, and I am sitting in front of you. Ammi is worried that you have become very quiet over the past few weeks. So I, just like old times, read a ghazal for you ‘aik nanna say larka tha main jin dino’.  Ammi loves how I read it, but you shake your hand and head, signaling “No. Not good”. I laugh. I know I have been a bit off since it’s been a while since I last read Ghazals. But I am pleased that you still had the ear to spot the gaps, and you still loved ghazals so much that you would not accept a below-par reading effort.   

All through the summer, I had wanted to spend as much time with you as possible. Maybe I should have spoken more, but I was afraid that you would get tired, like you often did when you spoke. Maybe I should have gone out with you more, but I was afraid that something would break in your fragile body. I still needed you, I still needed the protection and safety that your presence still provided.  

*** 

It is early October of 2024, and I am sitting beside your bed in the ICU ward of Shifa Hospital. As soon as I heard, I came rushing to Karachi. Multiple strokes have caused your entire body to be paralyzed. You cannot speak or move your body – you cannot even open your eyes. The only thing that seems to be working is your right arm and right ear.  

I know that I am losing you. I know that I cannot do anything. But I refuse to allow helplessness to take over me. I am looking for solutions, I am reading, Google, ChatGPT, anything and everything. I am desperate to know what is going on and how I can fix this. I have to fix this. I cannot let you go. There is still so much help that I need. I am desperate. I hold your right palm, asking, maybe begging for you to stay with me.  

And then you squeeze my hand with your giant palm – not too hard to signal pain, not too soft that I won’t notice. I get up immediately, thinking that you need something. I go up to your ear and say 

‘Abu, you need anything?’  

Promptly, you signal ‘No’ with your right index finger. But then you signal me to speak like someone would gesture ‘come on’ with their hand. I try asking different things you loved and kept yourself updated with, like news and sports. You signaled ‘no’ but prompted me to ask for more. Finally I ask 

‘You want to know about kids?’ 

You give a thumbs up. And I tell you about them. I play their voice messages that they recorded for you. I’ll tell you about my job. About the projects that I am working on and the courses that I am taking. About the book that I am reading. You listen intently and calmly, and then you fall asleep.  

I immediately go back to my search. You can communicate. So all is not lost. Maybe you can open your eyes eventually. Maybe you can speak a few words. I am trying desperately to discover a miracle drug or some experimental research. I remained by your side, searching. Then you move your right arm. Maybe you felt my anxiety, or maybe you were bored. This time, you just take your right arm a few inches above your bed, make a fist with your palm, and then let it fall into my palm. I try to grab it, but then you take it back up and let it fall on my palm again. This is the palm game that we play for the next few moments. I try to understand why you would want to play this game. I don’t get it till I do. You cannot speak, you cannot open your eyes,  you cannot move any part of your body, but still you want to tell me ‘‘Kyon? Mujhay kya hua? I am fine”. This time, I am not ready to believe you. This time, I let my worry and anxiety take over me.  

I pray for more time. I was prepared to spend whatever was needed. I even whispered fall promises in your ear like ‘you would be fine’, and ‘You will be able to speak and open your eyes soon’. I am sorry. But those promises were not for you; they were for me. I wanted you to be fine. Maybe you realized that, as every time I  would say something like that, you would just start playing the palm game, telling me “Kyon? Mujhay kya hua? I am fine.“  

I am back in Kuwait, and your medical complications persist. The prognosis, as one specialist said, is not good, and chances are very grim. We just have to manage the ‘situation’. But I refused to accept. How can I accept the prognosis? Every day, I tried to find a miracle that, at least, you would be able to open your eyes and talk.  

***

We are sitting together – Ammi, Apa, Bhai, Noor, and me. Talking about you. Your room is empty now. A few days back, you peacefully transitioned from this world to the next. My brother tells me that when I left for Kuwait, you hardly spoke through your hands or played the palm game. It probably was a special effort that you made for me, just to tell me that ‘you were fine’ and that I should not get worried.  

***

It has been more than a year now since you left. A year should have been enough to get on with my busy life. But grief can never be cured. There is no medicine or magic to fill that empty void called grief. The only thing that we can do is to continue living with the void and build whatever life we have left around that void. I have learned to keep the grief of losing you in a separate place in my mind. And sometimes, when it decides to come out of that compartment and wreak havoc, I let it because in some weird, desperate way, it becomes a way for me to connect to you and to your memories.  

Your going away does not mean that you have left my heart or my life. You still live deep within me and deep within each of your children. I don’t know how the strange world of barzakh, souls, and the afterlife works. I don’t know how our dreams are connected. But you often come in my dreams, sometimes praying, sometimes talking, and sometimes silent. Sometimes you are enjoying food, sometimes you are walking and busy with some tasks that you have conjured for yourself.   

I still find that many problems can be solved from the words that you commonly used like ‘A man is known by the company he keeps’, ‘It is better to reach late then never to reach’, ‘You are the architect of your future’, ‘The golden rule of never losing anything is to keep things in their correct places’,  ‘The ball is in your court’, ‘I will sell my skin for your education’. Different phrases from different phases of my life. Different phrases that still provide guidance and help whenever I need.  

I still gain so much courage from your unquestionable commitment to following the true path of Islam, as derived from the Quran and Sunnah and as preached by the learned Ulema. I remember to stay not too close and not too far from my kids so that they learn to make their own decisions, and that I support them whenever they need. I remember to accept and work on my mistakes and faults. I remember you.  

Like a photo album, pictures of your memories come in front of me.

    You sitting on your chair, staring at your tools.
    Me, helping out, holding a shelf you are fixing. “Hold it still.”
    You reading for hours without restlessness.
    You, every night, recounting your day to Ammi.

All these memories will, I hope, stay with me for the rest of my life.

And I still see you everywhere. I see you when Saad is reading a book, when Zayyan sits still on his LEGO table thinking and developing a solution in his mind. I see you in the busy gait of Noor and in Saif when he refuses to budge from a thing on which he has decided on.   

I still close my eyes, and I open them. I breathe in and I breathe out. Sometimes I speak, but mostly I stay silent. I spend my day in meetings, handling escalations, assigning work, coaching my team, and coding my dreams – trying to do what is required of me. The daily hustle becomes tough, and I want to stop, but the world is not kind to people who stop. Minutes would turn into months and months into years without me realizing how far back I had fallen. So I put one foot in front of the other, move from one task to the next, and I keep moving forward. But sometimes everything comes to a grinding halt. The world keeps on spinning, but I just cannot move. I know that I should move and work and dream and travel and read and write and code – there are still so many things to do… but then there is you… 

… there will always be you… 

Abu Hazur 
1934-2025 

Why We Follow the Fiqh of an Imam 

| Faith & Lifeby

Whenever Muslims discuss the differences of opinion in the practice of prayer, fasting, trade, marriage etc. one phrase quickly emerges: “Brother, just follow Qur’an and Hadith directly.” It sounds simple, even appealing. But in reality, the path from Revelation (Qur’an & Hadith) to daily rulings is not that straightforward. Between the verses of the Qur’an, the thousands of authentic hadith, and the practices of Sunnah of the Companions, there lies a vast ocean of interpretation, reconciliation, and application. 

This is precisely why Islamic scholars gave birth to Fiqh by defining the Uṣūl al-Fiqh — the science of how to derive rulings with consistency. 

Revelation Is Abundant — And Demands Method 

  • The Qur’an has 6,236 verses. Roughly 500 deal with law (aḥkām). 
  • The hadith collection contain nearly 700,000 narrations, with around 7,000–10,000 considered rigorously authentic (Ṣaḥīḥ) across the six canonical books. 
  • Add to this the sayings and practices of the Companions — the people who learned Islam directly from the Prophet ﷺ — and we already have overlapping, sometimes apparently conflicting, evidence. 

How does a believer decide which narration to act upon when one ḥadīth says the Prophet ﷺ raised his hands multiple times in prayer, while another says he raised them only once? Both are authentic. Which one do you choose? 

Without a framework, one person will pick one ḥadīth today, another will pick a different one tomorrow, and soon Islam becomes fragmented into personal preferences. 

Uṣūl al-Fiqh: The Missing Layer 

The genius of the great Imams — Abū Ḥanīfa, Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, Aḥmad — was not only in collecting hadith but in creating a consistent logic of preference: 

  • Why should one narration be preferred over another? 
  • What if a hadith contradicts the continuous practice of the people of Madinah? 
  • What if a solitary hadith (khabar al-āḥād) clashes with a well-known principle? 
  • How does one reconcile apparent contradictions in Qur’an and Sunnah? 

This logic became Uṣūl al-Fiqh. And out of it came the madhāhib (legal schools) of Islam. They ensured that one ruling was not an isolated decision but part of a structured method that could be applied again and again to new issues. 

Why Not Just Translation? 

Another challenge in doing our own interpretations from Quran and Sunnah would be our understanding of the Arabic language. A ḥadīth in Arabic may carry an idiom, a cultural expression, or a subtle grammatical form that vanishes in English or Urdu. Without mastery of Arabic idioms, one risks distorting rulings by taking a literal but shallow reading. 

The Wisdom of Following an Imam 

Following an Imam is not blind imitation. It is recognition that: 

  • The Imams were closer to the sources, both in time and in mastery of language. 
  • They systematized the principles of preference (Uṣūl al-Fiqh), ensuring consistency across rulings. 
  • Their schools protect the Ummah from fragmentation into individualistic Islam. 

Just as one trusts a doctor to interpret medical journals rather than self-prescribe from random articles online, we trust an Imam and his methodology to interpret revelation rather than self-derive from translations. 

Conclusion 

Between Qur’an, Hadith, and Fatwa lies a vital bridge: Uṣūl al-Fiqh. 

It is this science that takes us from raw texts to coherent law, from scattered narrations to consistent rulings. To dismiss this layer and attempt direct interpretation is to ignore centuries of scholarship, language, and methodology — and to expose oneself to inevitable contradiction. 

Therefore, following a madhhab is not weakness; it is intellectual humility. It is a recognition that the ocean of Revelation requires the compass of Uṣūl, and the compass was given to us by the Imams. 

Monday Morning Meanderings – A philosophical look on modern life

| Faith & Life, Personal Insightsby

Is this what life is? Is this what we are here for? A few clicks here and there. Opening screens, closing screens. Thinking, deciding, delegating, taking ownership. Reading emails, replying to them. Sending some more emails and waiting for their replies. Eight hours per day – spent. Eight hours per day – gone from our lives.  

But this is what makes money. Money that pays the bills. Enhances my quality of life. Keeps me and my family happy and secure. I can buy stuff. Buy books and read them. I can explore fascinating places with my family. I can even help people with the same money. Poor people. Unhealthy people. I can support causes. I can build Masjids. I can buy shops. Start my own business. Give more jobs. Make more money.

But then what is money? A piece of paper. The entire world economy is built on this paper. Every country owes money to another country. Where is the value of money? Who decides which currency, which piece of paper, is stronger than the other? All of it is just speculation. We just assign a number and call it the value of the currency of that country. But if that country goes into war, the ‘value’ of that currency starts falling. But who decides by how much? The country with all of its resources is still there.

But why should I bother about the money? The paper. I didn’t build this paper economy? I don’t manage it. If I have enough of these pieces of paper, I will be safe. My family will be safe. If I, or my creator, keep me out of harm’s way, what do I care about the countries that go into war, or run into economic recessions? I am good and I am fine. Before, people used to work for rice and flour. Now we work for these pieces of paper. What is the big deal then? And when the time comes, when the powers that be decide to pull the plug, I will figure things out then. I will carry my skills to another company, another country. If Allah wills, I will survive. And if HE doesn’t, then who can fight HIS will?

But what if Allah wants me to do something about it? What if Allah is not happy with me just sitting and ranting and writing a blog about it?

This world is temporary. Why should I worry so much about a thing that is temporary? As long as I fulfill my obligations towards Allah, shouldn’t I be fine? Man was given limited control of this world by Allah, and man is crazy. Man will create problem after problem. And then take credit for solving those problems that he created in the first place. When the plug is pulled and the world ends, then we will realize that this was all temporary. This was all, not real. Those who had accepted the temporality of this world would survive and would be happy. And those who had thought that this world was everything. Would suffer. Heavily.

The Fifth Discipline – My Book Notes

| Reading & Writingby

These are my notes from the book – The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge

About the Book

Full Title: The Fifth Discipline – The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization
Author: Peter M. Senge
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Read On: Kobo Books (April ‘2005 to July 2025)
Year Published: 2006 (Originally published in 1990)
Short Summary: The Fifth Discipline is about how individuals and organizations can achieve lasting change by thinking in systems, challenging assumptions, and continuously learning together.
About the Author: Peter M. Senge is an American systems scientist, organizational theorist, and senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is best known for his work on organizational learning, systems thinking, and leadership development.

Book Summary

For individuals and organizations to deliver lasting positive changes and not be one-hit wonders, Peter Senge offers five disciplines, that need to be implemented in the DNA of individuals and/or organizations (whomsoever wants a lasting positive change)

These five disciplines are

  1. Personal Mastery → Lifelong learning and growth by aligning actions with personal vision and truth.
  2. Mental Models → Becoming aware of and challenging the assumptions that shape how we think and act.
  3. Shared Vision → Building a common, genuine purpose that motivates and aligns people.
  4. Team Learning → Developing group intelligence through dialogue, reflection, and coordinated action.
  5. Systems Thinking → Understanding interconnections and feedback loops to see the whole system—not just parts.

The Fifth Discipline is Systems Thinking, which, as per the author, ties all the other disciplines together.

My Notes On The Five Disciplines

The five disciplines are the meat of the book, so below is a summary of each of the five disciplines as I understood and learned from them.

Personal Mastery

  1. Commit to lifelong learning. Lifelong learning means, as my father used to say, A man learns from the cradle to the grave.
  2. Learning should not be random; instead, it should be aligned with my vision and purpose in life.
  3. Get out of your comfort zone. I should not spend too much time on things that I am good at and/or comfortable with; instead, I need to spend more time on things that I am mediocre at or not very comfortable with. This will enhance my learning.  Somerset Maugham said, “Only mediocre people are always at their best”.
  4. Stay between rationality and intuition. Rationality is the result of deep thinking and reasoning, while intuition is a spark, an idea, or a completely random thought. Stay between both of them. Don’t drop one for the other.

Mental Models

  1. Be mindful that my thinking and decision-making are heavily influenced by, and sometimes even dependent upon, my biases, my deeply ingrained beliefs, assumptions, generalizations, and internal pictures of how the world works. If the need arises, be prepared to challenge these mental models.

Shared Vision

  1. Vision is concrete; purpose is abstract and enduring. Purpose is where I want to go and why. And vision is ‘how’ I will get there.
  2. There is a tension and resulting stress because of the distance between my current reality (where I am) and my vision (where I want to be). This tension is good because it is the fuel that will drive me forward.
  3. Being a visionary leader is about solving day-to-day problems with my vision in mind.
  4. Having a vision is something that needs to be internalized. So that all my decisions, thoughts, and actions are aligned with my vision. My purpose (link) is to ‘get closer to Allah’, and my vision is ‘before doing anything, think how I can seek the pleasure of Allah in what I am doing’. The daily actions that I do concerning my family, myself, my job, my worship, etc., all should be aligned with this purpose and vision.
  5. It is not what a vision is; it is what a vision does.

Team Leaning

  1. When I am leading teams and even family, I should have open dialogue and discussion. Each member of the team should feel safe to have this dialogue and discussion with me.
  2. In team meetings, I should encourage silent members to bring their point of view and thinking to the table. This should be done repeatedly so that the team understands the culture and eventually feels free to contribute.
  3. I should not overpower my team with my thinking and my vision. I should let them evolve their own visions. As long as we are all aligned with the company’s vision and the greater good, we are fine to carry visions of our own.

Systems Thinking

This is the fifth discipline. And probably most critical to understand, because, as per Peter Senge, it ties everything together. The following concepts need to be understood, which I feel are beneficial about systems.

  1. Systems Thinking is the discipline of understanding how parts interact to form a whole, and how it helps to see Patterns, Connections, and Root causes.
  2. Delays are time lags between action and outcome. Delays often mislead people. They might think, e.g., that result c is because of action 5, but a deeper analysis of the system (systems thinking) would reveal that it was actually because of action 2. Delays are something that I should be mindful of and should not jump to conclusions.
  3. Leverage Points. They are small, well-placed actions in a system that lead to large, sustainable improvements. It’s like a snowball effect, but in the right direction.
  4. Systems usually fail because of ‘Shifting the Burden’ and ‘Limits to Growth’
  5. In every system, there are two types of internal systems – one that is trying to increase output and the other that tries to maintain stability by resisting change. They are known as
    • Reinforcing loops are systems that amplify change (growth or decline)
    • Balancing loops are systems that resist change (growth or decline) and maintain stability.

Understanding Reinforcing and Balancing Loops.

One of the reasons that systems fail might be due to the ‘Limits to Growth’ principle. Here is how it usually plays out.

  1. Reinforcing Loop (R): Growth leads to more growth. E.g., more customers → more revenue → more investment → more customers
  2. Balancing Loop (B): A hidden constraint begins to push back.
    E.g., staff burnout, supply chain bottlenecks, quality issues

The result is that growth stops or even starts to reverse. The solution is ‘Don’t push harder – identify and address the limit’. Remove the ‘dead pony’ from the well.

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle

Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, when applied to systems thinking, means that sometimes you cannot observe the system without influencing it. e.g., I cannot observe the engineers supporting the helpdesk system without affecting their performance. So sometimes, in order to observe a system, some different methods might be needed.

Power of our subconscious

An effective way to focus the subconscious is through imagery and visualization. For example, world-class swimmers have found that by imagining their hands to be twice their actual size and their feet to be webbed, they actually swim faster. “Mental rehearsal” of complex feats has become routine psychological training for diverse professional performers.

My Thoughts About & During the Book

  1. It was a good book. Some of my concepts were reinforced, such as what is called in the book ‘Systems Thinking’.
  2. The book was not a very easy read. I had to read and reread some passages. Sometimes I felt lost. Reading the table of contents and also discussions with ChatGPT helped reinforce my understanding and internalize the concepts.
  3. I do not see the five disciplines beneficial as a single framework. But I did find parts of the book very helpful. Especially the parts where it explained the System Thinking with (Reinforcing and Balancing Loops) and the ‘Limit to Growth’ and ‘Leverage’.
  4. The book is too heavy, meaning too many words, pages to explain simple things. Most of it felt redundant. I skipped the 2nd and 3rd parts (which were almost half of the book) as it felt more like marketing fluff to me. Some of the success stories revealed in these sections seemed to me were twisted to make them fit into one or more of the disciplines.
  5. I tried to understand Systems Thinking and feedback loops by linking it with Imran Khan’s and PTI’s rise and fall (and possibly another rise). That was an interesting discussion with ChatGPT, and maybe I will write about it someday.

Conclusion

Overall, it was a good book that everyone should read at least once.

About The Horrendous Book: Gray Man

| Reading & Writingby

Finally I get to use the word Horrendous for a book. Normally my policy is that all books are good if we are able to connect with them. But this book by Mark Greaney is absolutely horrendous. And if I may, wildly inaccurate.

I am not a big fan of pantsers

First of all, Mark Greaney is a pantser, and I am not a big fan of pantsers. Pantsers just wash their face in the morning and start typing whatever is coming into their heads. The drawback of this approach, especially if the author is not very good at crafting a good story, is that the writing is not very consistent. Each chapter or section probably matches more with how the author felt during the writing session and not how a story should be. You can forget consistency, character building, and deeply connected and intricate plots. Although I enjoy books from pantsers like Stephen King, because they are fast paced, but Mark is not a very good pantser.

Okay, we get it, Court Gentry is the best spy / secret agent in the whole world. But eleven chapters (and counting) to tell us about it is just too much

The horrendipity (I made this word so don’t bother searching for its meaning) of this horrendous book starts with the author detailing how great is the protagonist Court Gentry. He seems to have a crush on Court Gentry, and that crush lasted the first eleven chapters and maybe more, because I just couldn’t take the torture anymore, so I didn’t read the book after the first eleven chapters. But in reality, there is nothing unique, new, or special about this character. In fact, the first eleven chapters that I read (and the only ones that I read), showed Court Gentry to be a cheap copy of Jason Bourne and Jack Reacher.

Telling and not showing!

Maybe I would have been able to digest this extraordinarily long explanation of the goodness of Court Gentry if the author had stuck to showing and not telling. Chapter after chapter kept on telling (and not showing) Court Gentry’s skills and specialities. My conversation with the author while reading the book was like.

Author: Court Gentry is this.
Me: WOW!
Author: He is that.
Me: WOW.
Author: He did that.
Me: Okay.
Author: And that.
Me: Umm, okay, I get it. He is the best thing that happened to the fictional world of spies after Jason Bourne. Can we please proceed with the plot?
Author: Yeah sure, but you know what else he did.
Me: I will die if I read another page!

Don’t use global events incorrectly – the reader will feel stupid

Whenever you embed global events in your story, make sure to keep the context and background as real as possible. Otherwise, don’t use the global event to create a fictitious event. If you do use the global event without the correct context, you would look very stupid.

For example. Iraq War. His opening chapters paint Iraqis as the bad guys as they dance on the dead bodies of Americans while Americans were just going about their business. But the real context of the Iraq War was totally different. Americans attacked Iraq on the pretext of ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’, which was a lie. Americans entered Mosques with boots, and pictures from Abu Gharaib prison showed Americans doing satanic voodoo dances with prisoners in chains. I mean, how dumb can some authors think that their readers are? If you read these chapters with the actual background, then Court Gentry does not look like a saint as the author wants to show him. This throws the whole believability of the book into the gutter.

A few chapters later, the Gray Man, probably called Gray because he operates between black and white, is shown to have fought a Pakistani Mafia in the UK! (I couldn’t complete this chapter, and this is where I left the book, because this is where the stupidity of the book was too much to take anymore.) I mean are we supposed to believe that MI6 is failing to defend the family of a MI6 operative against the Pakistani Mafia in the UK? I mean, get real, please!! The Pakistani Mafia is not that strong in Pakistan. They are repeatedly smashed around by Pakistani Intelligence operatives, and you want me to believe that the Pakistani Mafia in the UK is stronger than all of the UK’s security apparatus and only Court Gentry is able to fight them! Again, how dumb do you think that your readers are?

Maybe if the author would have shown another world or a future that we have not seen, then I would have believed the plot. As a person who knows a little about current global events, societies, and politics, I felt like the author thinks of me as a dumb person.

Is the protagonist actually ‘Gray’?

Mr. Court Gentry called the Gray man because he operates between Black and White, is continuously shown to be doing the right thing, or in other words, the White thing. So why call him Gray? He is a Robin Hood who only takes on projects against criminals. He protects his friends, he protects Americans, and even twin girls. Awww. So Sweet! But this is all white, isn’t it? Why the hell is he Gray then? Either don’t tell me he is gray, or mix the white and black things that he has done in his past to make it more believable. Maybe he sold drugs, or he rapes women, or maybe he killed innocent men, women and children before repenting. I mean that would make him Gray.

This, in my opinion, is the worst side of Pantsers. The author might have thought ‘Oh, Gray Man, sounds good. Let’s keep it, even though Court Gentry does all the right things for the right reasons. The readers would just have to go with it.

Conclusion

If you like shallow action (and storytelling), are willing to ignore global context, and want to read about a cheaper version of Jason Bourne and Jack Reacher, maybe you’ll enjoy this. I didn’t. I stopped torturing myself at the beginning of the eleventh chapter. Best of luck to the author, I know that he is doing great and getting movie contracts and teaming up with other pantsers. But I have better books to read and intelligent plots to uncover.

Visit Visa Process in Kuwait

| Life In Kuwaitby

Recently, visit visas were opened for Pakistanis in Kuwait.  The visas were opened for everyone, including immediate family (parents, spouse, children), extended family (in-laws, brothers, sisters), and even for friends, cousins (not sure about that).

I applied for a visa for my mother, and the process was straightforward.

Documents Needed

Since I applied for my mother, I will mention the documents that I prepared and the process I followed for her. If anyone has called their extended family, in-laws, etc., and found anything that they wish to add, please mention it in the comments for the benefit of others.

  1. Documents from Pakistan
    • Visitor Passport
    • NADRA Identity Card
    • FRC (Family Relationship Certificate)
    • Family Relationship Certificate issued by the Pakistan Embassy in Kuwait.
  2. My (Sponsor’s) General Documents.
    • My Passport, since I am the sponsor.
    • My Civil ID Copy.
    • My wife’s civil ID copy.
  3. Documents from my company
    • Salary Certificate issued by HR (the one with Company Letterhead).
    • Izn-e-Amal (Salary Registered in Government) is also issued by HR.
    • Izn-e-Toqee (Signature Paper) was also issued by HR.
  4. Return Ticket from Jazeera or Kuwait Airways (valid for one month).
  5. Visit Visa Application Form.  

Process

  1. I prepared the entire document set mentioned above except for the ‘Visit Visa Application Form’.
  2. Visited the Pakistan Embassy with the document set.
    • From the photocopy shop inside the embassy, a form was given to me to fill in my details and the details of my guest and my relationship to her.
    • Some copies from the document sets were also made and attached to the form.
    • Once the form was filled out, I went to the attestation window for attestation.
    • The person validated the documents and copies, and after some time the form was attested. 3 KD were charged for the attestation.
  3. Visited Kuwait Foreign Affairs in Liberation Tower.
    • 5 KD were charged for the stamp fees, and the Relationship Form attested by the Pakistan Embassy was attested.
    • No appointment was needed.
  4. Visited the Typing Center at my Jawazat (Ministry that Issues the visa)
    • There, the Visit Visa Application Form was prepared with all my details.
    • The document set was also prepared.
    • The form has space for attaching a picture of your visitor (I attached the picture of my visitor, but I saw many forms being submitted without the picture, so I guess they are not needed)
  5. Book an appointment for Jawazat
    • In the Sahel App, go to Appointments > Ministry of Interior > General Department of Residency > Family Visit Visa.
    • Select Branch. Since my Civil ID is Ishbiliya, my Jawazat was in Riqqae. But in the branch, I didn’t find Riqqae or Ishbiliya. So I selected Farwaniya, and it worked.
  6. Visit Jawazat to apply for the visa.  
    • In Riqqae, the visit visa section was on the first floor.
    • I went, showed my appointment, and took a number.
    • After my turn came, my documents were checked. Then I was directed to have my application/papers signed by the Mudeer (Manager).
    • The Mudeer (manager), after signing, sent me to Mudeer Kabeer (Senior Manager) on the 2nd floor for further signing.
    • Mudeer Kabeer asked me about my salary, etc., and then signed the paper.
    • Then I came back to the same Mudeer (Manager), who signed again.
    • I went back to the same counter and he checked all the documents and asked me to come in three days.
    • Normally, they should give you a small paper with the reference number, etc. But he didn’t give me any paper. So don’t forget to take that.
  7. Check whether a Visa is issued.
    • You can check whether the visa is issued or not from the Sahel App. The option is Profile > Ministry of Interior > Visas > Select Visa Number.
    • Maybe this option will not appear if the visa is not yet issued or the documents are not yet submitted. I am not sure since I was searching for a way to check whether the visa is ready or not, but I didn’t find any option, although I asked many people. So I found the hard way 😊
    • Once the visa is issued then book an appointment at Jawazat to collect the visa.
  8. Visit Jawazat to collect the Visa
    • After 3 days, I booked the appointment again (although it was probably not needed, but why take the risk).
    • I took a number. It was not needed as well. I just had to go to a counter where the visas were being issued.
    • I showed the screenshot from the Sahel App, as I mentioned above.
    • Within minutes, a printout was given, and then I paid 3 KD.  
  9. You have the visa now, and your visitor can visit/enter Kuwait.

Some Notes About FRC

Family Relationship Certificate is a certificate issued by Nadra that mentions all your family members. This is needed by the Pakistan Embassy to verify your relationship with your visitor. This is not a requirement for the Kuwait ministries. In case of in-laws, I guess you would need the FRC of your in-laws (showing your spouse) and your FRC (showing your (sponsor) relationship with your spouse)

In case there are some issues in the NADRA database with respect to your family members, then there might be issues in generating FRC, even if all family members are registered with NADRA and have a NADRA Identity card. These issues need to be resolved from the NADRA offices in Pakistan before the FRC is issued.

FRC can be requested directly via the ‘Pak Identity’ App. The process is simple if each member of the family is registered with Nadra.

Notes

  1. I have heard some additional documents are needed for in-laws, sisters, wives/husbands, and children, like Birth Certificate, Marriage Certificate, etc. But since I was calling my mother so none of these documents were prepared by me.
  2. All payments in the Embassy, Kuwait Foreign Affairs, and Jawazat are made by KNET. Also, in the typing center I visited, they had KNET as well as Cash.
  3. There is some news about issuing one visa for the entire GCC, like the Schengen. This will be good in case we want to call our visitors and then go for Umra or other cities in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, or even Qatar. Not sure whether it will be allowed on the road.
  4. At the moment, there is no option for extension, but there is some news that extension will also be possible in a few months.

It is been a while since the visas for Pakistanis have been opened, so please ensure that you are a law-abiding citizen and follow the rules mentioned and abide by the set procedures and law.

For the general benefit of others, please mention in the comments any other steps/documents that are needed. Especially in the case of calling someone other than your parents.

Authentic Pakistani Food in Kuwait – Roghan Restaurant Experience

| Kuwait, Life In Kuwait, Travelby

I love Pakistani food because I find it to have multiple flavors. Previously, we used to go to Yaadgaar Restaurant in Farwaniya, but like most Pakistani restaurants, it was closed. After that, we tried many restaurants promising Pakistani cuisine and taste, but they were either not up to the mark taste-wise or ambience-wise. And then we (my wife and I) heard about Roghan restaurant and decided to give it a try.

Ambience & Staff

First up, I loved their idea of an open kitchen, which was behind a big see-through glass. It was great to see the various dishes being prepared without the aroma and smoke being forced on us. The ambience was good, and the staff was cordial.

The seating space might be a little limited. The first time we went there was not much rush. But the next time we went, it was full. Luckily, we got a table before it went full. Maybe it will be better to check for a reservation before you go. Especially if you have a big party.

Price and Helping

The price was neither too high nor too low. Frankly speaking, I am a bit weary of extremely low-priced food, as I am not sure how healthy the food might be.

As per some friends, the helping size was small, but my wife and I were not able to finish the food that we ordered and had to pack it both times that we went. So it might depend on your eating habits.

Food!

Sides & Drinks

Namak Paras (starters) (10/10) – Crispy & Fresh. Loved the sauce as well.
Shinkanjabeen (Lemon Juice) (12/10) – Oh my God! So refreshing and tasty. Just a perfect blend of all ingredients. It was so good that a 10/10 wouldn’t have justified how good it was.
Masaala Fries (10/10) – Really good! We have it in all our visits. Served free with Tandoori Chicken.

Main Course

Tandoori Chicken (10/10) – Absolutely loved it. Add a dash of lemon and have it with the Hot Naan.
Mutton Karhai (6/10) – We ordered a regular helping, and it was too much for my wife and me. I have had better Mutton Karhai in Kuwait, though.
Naan / Roghni Naan / Garlic Naan (10/10) – Hot and fresh. Loved all varieties. Roghani had a lot of Tils/Seeds on it, which kept falling all over the place. So if that bothers you, then go for the plain Naan.
Nalli Nihari (10/10) – Superior! I don’t like Nihari if it is not cooked well. But here it was cooked really well, and the flavors were authentic.
Malai Boti (7/10) – Good if you are a BarBQ Fan.

Desserts

Ras Malai (Dessert) (12/10) – Out of this world. Although I am not a big fan of Ras Malai but I absolutely loved it here. It was so good that my wife ate half of my share! And the second time we went it was already finished.
Gulab Jamun (5/10) – The Gulab Jamun was served with Ice Cream (probably Kulfi). I didn’t like the combo or the Gulab Jamun as much as I normally do. But I can see that some people are going to enjoy the combo. The helping was enough for 2 people.

Conclusion

The taste is absolutely authentic, and our whole experience was very good. I do hope that they maintain the taste and the standard.

Although it is available for delivery as well but it is better to go and eat fresh.

We loved the food and the experience. My wife and I have been there twice and will be going again to try the other dishes on their menu. They have a breakfast menu as well, so we would be trying that as well.

If you have been there and would like to share your favorite dishes, do mention them in the comments section. Otherwise, do try out Roghan Restaurant and share your experience. Till then, have fun.

The Wonders of the Limitless Sky 

| Faith & Life, Insights, Travel, Uncategorizedby

I have a special bond with nature – trees, forests, mountains, valleys, and streams, all have enchanted me for as long as I can remember. Don’t even get me started on my feelings for the ocean. In this blog, however, I will be talking about the limitless sky.  

Of all the marvels of nature, the limitless sky is the most accessible. You might live in a congested city and not have the time or the resources to go and live closer to nature. Worry not. The sky is always there to satisfy your nature-loving needs.

Shaped like a dome the limitless sky is set up like a giant canvas, where ‘Al-Musavvir’ enthralls us with various strokes of HIS brush. Sometimes clouds are arranged as straight lines, sometimes round and buffy, and sometimes a mixture – random and yet not looking out of place..

Besides the enchanting nature, the limitless sky also has something mystical. At times when I have felt helpless, overcome by sorrow, or burdened by stress, I have stood and stared up at the sky, calling to Allah Almighty. And immediately grief would be replaced by relief, sorrow by happiness.

In Tafsir Anwar Ul Bayan, Maulana Ashiq Ilahi narrates the 10 benefits of looking at the sky.

1. It reduces sorrow 
2. It decreases negative thoughts (waswasa) 
3. It eliminates fear and doubt 
4. It helps in the remembrance of Allah 
5. The heart fills up with Allah’s greatness 
6. It removes harmful thoughts 
7. It is beneficial during melancholic (Saudavi) conditions 
8. Provides comfort for the longing heart.
9. Bring closeness towards family and friends.
10. It gives a direction for us to make supplications (duas)

Even when the sky is clear it still manages to dazzle with a variety of colors merging into one another.

And then, as if providing a final crescendo of an already breathtaking performance, the sky decides to participate with other wonders of nature like the never-ending ocean and the strong as-ever mountains. The views are just Enthralling and Captivating.

The limitless sky is accessible to everyone. Rich or Poor. Busy or free. Traveler or nontraveler.  
The limitless sky is accessible to everyone – including you!

No matter how busy you are, I hope you can find a few minutes to pause your life and look at the sky (hopefully not while driving or crossing the road). And when your heart is filled with wonder remember to remember the ‘Al-Musavvir’ in HIS own words.  

23:14 So, glorious is Allah, the Best of the creators 

Fighting With Writing 

| Insights, Personal Insights, Uncategorizedby

Sometimes words are desperate to come out of my brain. They are protesting inside and shouting at me that they will not rest till they are on paper. And sometimes, like now, there is nothing. Silence. Nata. Zero.  

It is in this state that I am not writing but fighting. I struggle to find the sweet spot where ideas are translated into words, which string together to form sentences that combine into paragraphs. But in ‘Fighting with Writing’ that does not happen. Either the ideas or the words or both refuse to come out. Refusing like a stubborn child who wants ice cream.  

This whole ‘Fighting With Writing’ thing makes me wonder, ‘Am I actually the one who is writing?’ When the words are coming ‘automatically’ is it me who is putting the words on paper or am I just a tool through which someone else’s stories, ideas, and words are oozing out?  

When I am writing, almost automatically, I find myself doing fewer look-ups, less editing, and even fewer corrections. The whole piece just comes out and settles itself nicely on paper. Like when I wrote ‘Along Came A Virus’. The idea came to my mind when I was tired, had called it a day, and was on my bed hoping to sleep. But the eventual blog had other ideas. The words started shouting in my head, refusing to let me sleep. So grudgingly I came and sat on my computer and started typing. In just a few hours it was done. Posted and even published. It is in this state that probably the best of my work comes out. (Okay I know my best is not even good enough, but I am saying best of ‘my’ work, so the bar is set pretty low 😊 ) 

This fighting sometimes turns pretty violent, wherein, I am prepared to close the screen, toss the pen, and sometimes even delete my blog and everything I have ever written. ‘Oh how light would I feel if I did it’, I tell myself. So how to win the fight and write something of value. Something that at least I would like to read. Well all problems come our way for us to find a solution and in the process, become wiser. And not everything is in the books or YouTube videos. Sometimes we have to learn by experience.  

So I summon the answers from the vast spaces in my mind (which are mostly empty, dull, and boring), and I come up with these points. These would become a solemn pledge, that I promise to follow whenever I am ‘Fighting With Writing’. 

Write Anyways  

Open a blank page and just write. It can be a journal entry where I write manually or an empty Word document. Just open it and pour whatever is in my head.  

Follow a schedule 

Write after Asr prayers for one hour. When the time comes, no matter what I feel, I will write. It can be garbage. It can be intense feelings. It can be curse words or life-changing philosophy. But it would be words connected into a sentence. And sentences connected into paragraphs.  

I am not an impostor 

When my mind tells me that I am an impostor or who am I to tell the world what is good and what is bad and how to live their lives? My reply would be. ‘I am nobody’. And I am not telling the world what to do, rather, I am telling myself what to do. If anything, it is a cry for help.  

The guitar sobs 
The violin weeps 
I shout 
And the world sleeps 

Creativity has cycles 

Creativity might ebb and flow. It might peak and plummet. I shall embrace the cycles. Till the time comes when the words just burst out of me.  

Write I shall 

Write I shall, to calm my nerves. To find a solution. To evade boredom. To make the most out of my time. Write I shall and I shall keep on writing.  

In the end, I get some encouragement when I recall that this fighting with writing feeling, was also faced by a very accomplished writer whom I follow with dedication. The same doubt that my work is so bad that I should destroy it, was also faced by him. His solution was to ‘set a time for writing, prepare the pen, open the blank page, and sit. If nothing is coming it does not matter, just keep sitting till the writing time is over. I guess that is where my unimaginative mind came up with the pledges that I wrote above.  

The accomplished writer was Mufti Taqi Usmani Sahab, whose works I have enjoyed since I was a teenager, and I was surprised that he can also be a victim of ‘Fighting With Writing’. But apparently he was.   

So here I am signing off with a pledge to follow my pledge. Till next time. Chow.