Whispering Shadow

Alisha, one of my ever-curious students, came up to me and asked me if I was a Muslim. I asked her how it mattered. Immediately came the next question, "Bhaiya, do you believe in God?" she asked.  Knowing Alisha, I knew she would remain relentless in her interrogation. In the spirit of maintaining transparency with my students, I honestly told her "I don't in most cases, I do in some." She continued her inquiry by asking me, "What do you believe in then?" I told her I believe in reason, logic or science in most cases. She asked me then, "When do you believe in God?"  I thought for a few seconds and then asked her "There are many questions to which science does not know the answer. For example, from where did the first things in our universe come from? When it comes to questions like this, I think there is God's magic at work somewhere." She finally stopped asking her questions. As is the case with all religious conversations my...

It is Diwali. I woke up at 7.30 AM today. I woke up not because of my endeavour to see the break of dawn on an auspicious day (anyways, that happens way to early for me). I woke up because of the noise of firecrackers and the blaring sound of my neighbour's speakers. Today, like many other festive days in the past, it was just a question of my sleep, which was far more disturbed anyways due to the allergic sneezing from the smoke of the fireworks. I can live with that as I have in the past. The photography keeps me going, but unfortunately there is far less light and far more noise during Diwali these days. That is my personal regret and not the objective of this post. However,  there could be an old lady suffering from asthma who had an attack that ruined her Diwali. There could be a mother trying to put her baby to sleep, only to find it has woken up yet again to the sound of a chain bomb. All her festive preparations could still be pending. There could be a person d...