For those that know me quite well, Russell Brand is one of my personal heroes. It’s a long story, but you can kind of find it here, in an essay I wrote three years ago. A lot has changed since then i.e., I have more people I look up to, but the sentiments remain the same. I’ve done my best…
Author’s note: I use the term Hindi films, in the place of Bollywood films for personal reasons. For more information, check out Margaret Redlich’s blog and her book, that touches on why we should no longer call Hindi films, Bollywood movies. Also, for my non-Desi readers, the term Desi (THEY-SEE) is an umbrella term to describe people of South Asian…
I’m not a religious studies scholar by any means. I honestly, have a limited understanding of what I practice myself. Nonetheless, it doesn’t interfere with my status as a believer. Furthermore, when I do read (as I often try) my faith only becomes reaffirmed. However, it still baffles me when I hear people hold strong to these weird ideologies and…
It’s not unusual for people to romanticize the past. Older generations always tend to look back on the most menial of things and proclaim, “oh, back then, we had this and it was great.” Or if there’s something that looks bleak, they’ll look back on the past as if it was better somehow with, “this kind of thing would never…
This past week, I was at the Asian American Journalist Convention in Houston, TX; my hometown. I was privileged to meet some wonderful people and hopefully, future employers. I also was invited to attend NBC University, a day long workshop, sponsored by NBC (obviously). We were asked to produce a script on a particular story and we would get critiqued…
Around the end of June, I was able to go to Seattle with my fiance. I hadn’t flown in a plane since I was about 11 or 12, so this was an exciting time for me. Also, because the last time I “travelled” was when I was 16 and went to Atlanta. The lights from the downtown skyscrapers illuminated the…
Mash’Allah I ran into my former boss today from when I was 18 years old. I worked at an Indo-Paki restaurant but we also had pizza, burgers and Mediterranean food. It was my first job and I loved it so much that I would often come during my off days and help out cause I was bored and had nothing…
This is a late post and is pretty irrelevant. It’s just shameless self-promotion of my work as a scholar. This was a reaction paper for my Theories & Methods class I took in the Fall Semester of 2017. My professor praised the paper so much and I think it was also a pretty good start to a successful semester (shukarAllah)…
I did an essay a year or so ago for my Senior Seminar History class and I decided to revise, edit and post it here. This is my contribution to the History of Emotions. Determining the ethics of actions taken by humans is a challenge and narrowing it down to intentions, helps it seem less complex. Judging the intentions of…
This essay was inspired by my beautiful and supportive fiancé, Emily. A couple days ago, my lady was in town and she told me she heard this quote on NPR and was curious what my response on it would be. In all honesty, I tried looking for the quote albeit not very vigorously so you’ll have to bear with the…