folio

I try my best not to take on freelance work — an odd thing to say, perhaps, in the midst of what many describe as the world’s worst recession — but somehow these jobs seem to find me. A couple of years ago a very amiable chap pursued me for weeks in an effort to [...]

I am glad that multiculturalism enables Abhijit Pandya to contribute to the Daily Mail‘s RightMinds blog. But then I’m from a place noted for religious dissent for the past five hundred years: Lollards, Quakers, Baptists, Methodists. Multiculturalism runs right through our veins. Meanwhile, a reader in the comments beneath the article quotes from poorly paraphrased [...]

As usual, my mother-in-law has been busy knitting all year round in anticipation of a cold winter and I am duty-bound to share such delights… http://folio.me.uk/patiks/2011/11/december-2011/ A description of this hobby of hers can be found here: http://folio.me.uk/patiks/about/ Lest any of your gadget-hipsters think there is nothing here for you, here is proof that she [...]

I have become rather passive of late. The practice of my deen has been confined pretty much to the performance of the five prayers; I don’t think I am in a very good place spiritually and my relationship with my Lord is strained by the sins I willfully pile upon others. All those passions that [...]

Once again the biting cold dismantles another piece of my romantic vision of premodernity — those dreams of the self-sufficient homestead farm fed by spring waters and warmed by the wood burning stove that account for many a wasted moment of my youth. Here I sit in the kitchen before such a stove, warming myself [...]

Have we become driftwood? I know I have.

What a splendid typo… a play by Peter Jukes Insha’Allah. Thought it was a funny name.

Every day I wish I was a better person, but wishing is not the same as trying.

The reality of this road is that it is difficult. It may be straight, but it is steep and at times rough, and often vulnerable to the molestations of bandits. As anyone who journeys to the highlands of any nation will know, the easiest route to the top of a mountain is via the winding [...]

I’m sorry for alienating you too.

How easy it is to lose one’s roots, to become disconnected.

On my way to Istanbul Ataturk Airport this morning, my taxi driver — breaking the silence wrought by my woefully meagre Turkish vocabulary — reached into my soul and began blasting Brooklyn Funk Essentials’ Istanbul Twilight from his dashboard. Had my wife been with me, she would have requested a rendition of a Noble Recitation, [...]