My Religion Story

Saturday, March 15, 2025

Let me take you down memory lane and share some observations. From birth until now, I have lived in three different localities, progressing from a neglected neighborhood to a somewhat clean one, and finally to a relatively safe and maintained area. Interestingly, in comparison, the neglected locality from 35 years ago was at that time safer than the “relatively safe” one today. You might be wondering why I am talking about localities in Karachi when the title is about religion. My observation is that the majority of people follow the religion of their family, which is expected. However, the specific variant of religion they adhere to often depends on the Masjid they goto—unless they have a strict version handed down from their family. This has been the case with my own religious journey, I will discount the first locality because i did not go to the Masjid except for some lessons, which were specifically for reading Quran. The 2nd Masjid were of Deobandi and the 3rd is of Tanzeem e Islami, they too are predominately Deobandi but quite liberal in excepting other schools especially Ahl-i Hadith and Barelvi. But they are openly critical of things which they do not agree with like asking for help for anyone other then Allah, or using weak Hadith for preaching, in fact they argue that peaching should be done with Quran as a base. …

Navigating Ramzan

Saturday, March 1, 2025

When navigating home, it’s a good practice to check which routes are open or simply set your home as the destination and let the phone do the rest. Initially, I thought GPS worked with the phone network—but I was wrong. However, to have fully functional navigation, you need map data. This realization came when I was looking for a GPS device for my bicycle on AliExpress and noticed that they didn’t have SIM slots. Later, I stopped cycling and never bought the device. However, I did buy a Mi Band, and it served me well. Nowadays, every weekend, I plan to start walking and going to the gym again but lack the motivation. At least I have the sense not to buy gear before changing my lifestyle—though some days, I do check Garmin’s website to see what’s on offer. …

Cricket Feburary 2025

Sunday, February 23, 2025

My wife asked to check when the match would start. I googled and found that 2 overs were already up, and there was a “Watch it Live” button! It took me to a Pakistani streaming service. I had already heard its name but didn’t know what else they offered. Unfortunately, other than the match, everything was buffering and losing quality. They probably dedicated all the resources they had to the match, which makes sense, and I am not much of an entertainment consumer anyway. Normally my feed consists of technical YouTube channels. I think the last thing I watched on Netflix was Money Heist, and that too was because my wife was addicted to it. I used to peek between scenes and had to figure out the whole sequence. …

Coding in 2025

Saturday, February 15, 2025

This post is for students who like programming but are uncertain of its future. I am not very good with arguments, but I have been in this business since 2000 and people often ask me about what the future holds, no one can know what that will be but we can speculate with past experiences. So, this is my take on programming in 2025, let me know in the comments what you think. …

Pulse

Saturday, February 8, 2025

In the rhythm of life, sometimes we need to pause and check our pulse - to see how far we’ve come and how much has changed. Today serves as one of those moments of reflection. Earlier today, I helped a colleague set up a blog. While WordPress seemed like the obvious choice, we opted for Hugo - a simpler solution that matched their comfort level. This interaction sparked memories of my own blogging journey, reminding me how our choices evolve with time. …

Staying at Home

Sunday, April 26, 2020

We’ve been under lockdown from 20th March here in Karachi, went to the office on 20th that is, it was Friday, also the last day I went to Masjid. Was in office due to a pending “high priority issue” which was on someone else’s plate, but he had to run back home to interior Sindh amid lockdown risk. From then on till now it is all work from home and our team has adopted it well. …

Coffee

Friday, April 10, 2020

Hello, Your uncanny faith in what we have, what developed along the way, to uncertainties ahead. Is most of my muse these days. I did not bring anything to the table, nothing beyond necessities. Yet you morphed whatever scrap we had, mold its concoction of an existence to a meaningful whole. You could have moved on, you could have ended it all, you can still just fade to a life of your own. Which is fine, I too will wither away, in parts, slowly, one shade at a time. …

Puppeteer

Thursday, April 9, 2020

Puppets! He mutters, not free, in a monolog, while unpacking the stage. Our biase, our presupposition, our belief, he continued. Its a story, add a pinch of salt at will. You can not see my harness, am I at my own will? with a concerned look on his face, while he sets two of his characters on the stage. These were not elaborate, those puppets, yet distinguishable, a male and a female. …

A Letter to Muse

Sunday, April 5, 2020

Dear Muse, Stuck in an endless loop of writing this letter and deleting it. Every time with a slightly different meaning, the goal? I am not clear on that. I simply can not get a grip on this untangled mess. Few of those letters had our differences listed, few emotionally charged, few aggressive, some more apologetic than others. That is not all, they even had profound shit like the utilitarian conclusion and stoic viewpoints. I am fragmenting things here, though this letter is about putting them back together. Life, me, everything is not perfect, nor I am expecting you to be. Hope there is some forgiveness left for me, and for my stupid puppets and their rhymes. In any case, I will be waiting here, behind this screen. …

Chaos

Sunday, April 5, 2020

In the midst of chaos I reside, a distant observer to my own life. I am on a thought created dungeon, this calm endless sea. Rowing voices of my oarsmen into the abyss, me expressionless, at the bow of this ship. Staring at the shimmering reflection of this star lit sky. Every time I close my eyes, deserts, mountains, lush green planes, life at its apex, all that is unseen. I guess its time for me to go, I need to sleep. A blurred vision of paper lanterns takes a fragile lift. Edge of this earth where stars are formed. A new moon is being forged, Sun waiting to take a plunge. You are late, Let’s do this. To a new day, dawn. dusk, dark again. Chaos never settles. It is we who will find a place. …