Tag _sufidiaries
It was one of those mornings when the light seemed to arrive from a deeper place — not merely from the east, but from within the walls, the air, the very pulse of the world.There was no event, no proclamation. Yet, something had shifted. The kettle hissed on the counter, its rhythm merging with the … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
“Satnam Waheguru,” she whispered, not as a chant but as a sigh of weariness.Every night, when others slept, Bibi Harnam Kaur would sit by the hookah that had long gone cold and think: “The time I sleep is being lost. I should be in attendance of Nirankar.” No one in the courtyard heard her. The buffaloes had stopped lowing; R... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
I By the time the 9 a.m. bus honked past the chowk, Karol Bagh had already begun to yawn into life. The grocer pulled up his half-shutter, the temple bell struck its first note, and the smell of fried kachoris rose from the street corner. Beside the iron lamppost outside Rachna Book Depot, an old man … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
She is forty now. Meera sits by the kitchen window, brushing out her daughter’s tangled hair before school. The aluminum lunchbox clicks shut — the sound is identical to the one her mother once sealed for her every morning, back in Allahabad. Funny how metal remembers. Outside, her husband Raghav is calling out that the … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
I am a snake born not of forest but of memory, I tell you, stitched from the compost of other people’s wants, the ones they swallowed and could never digest, I am Nizam under the vinyl chairs and cat-5 rosaries of Seraphim Labs, I drink condensation from AC veins and listen to the city’s heart … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
On certain winter mornings at Jiratpur, when the estuary exhaled fog and the new cranes at the unfinished port stood like prayerless hands, time did not appear to move forward. It seemed to gather—settling as fine silt in window grilles, clinging to the smell of fish scales that would not leave the knuckles. The river … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Mahiwal did not leave his palace in search of God. He left because he was tired of concepts. He had mastered philosophy. People touched his feet. They called him realized. Inside, he knew — it was all performance. He heard about a woman by the river — Sohni — said to be “beyond knowledge.” He … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Zayaan Haleem stood at the edge of the diplomatic lawn the way one stands at the edge of a dream—present, but only loosely claimed by it. The evening was exquisitely composed. Strings of warm light hung from the frangipani trees. Waiters moved with the silent authority of long rehearsed order. The conversations—in accented English and … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
She did not wear the Mekhla to look beautiful — she wore it the way people light a lamp for someone who may never return, a quiet act of faith. The fabric did not flatter her, it remembered her — like a river remembers every village it has ever fed. It was not obedient like … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
In certain cities, dusk does not fall; it gathers. The lamps along the avenue learned long ago to wait for the hush that precedes power. That evening, the hush came first. She arrived neither early nor late. Time, obedient as a well-trained bird, perched where she wished. Those who watched her never said so aloud, … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
It began with a rumor. That the Diwali lamps of Ajmer Sharif — were being lit not by caretakers — but by the fakirs themselves this year. No invite. No hierarchy. No VIP list. If you had love — you qualified. Word reached Begum Zohra, last living courtesan of Lucknow’s vanished kotha culture — eighty, … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
At the heart of Mumbai’s most chaotic street — the one where Uber scooters, temple bells, election banners, and sugarcane juicers collided in a single scream — there was a small shop with no signboard. It looked abandoned. Except every evening at 7:03 p.m., its light would flicker on. And people would start arriving. Not … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
The lane leading to the dargah woke slowly — like an old man rubbing his eyes. The air was thick with the scent of ittar and frying jalebis, the hum of morning prayers mixing with the chatter of hawkers who had already begun to sing the day awake. Shahbaz sat by the steps, his patched … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
The train from Ahmedabad groaned into Hazrat Nizamuddin station just after dawn. The city was still half-asleep — a haze of smoke, prayer, and honking rickshaws. Five women stepped onto the platform, wrapped in dupattas against the chill, their ankles heavy with ghungroos that whispered when they walked. They called themselves The Daughters of Sama... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
(In the City of the Prophet) At dawn, Medinah breathed. A soft wind slipped through the narrow lanes, carrying the scent of oud and bread, and somewhere far, the muezzin’s call unfurled over the rooftops like a ribbon of light. The city seemed to hum in remembrance. Walls, stones, even the dust seemed to know … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
(Urs Sharif at Mehbob-e-Ilahi’s Dargah, Delhi) He hadn’t come for faith. He’d come for footnotes. The kind that lie between history and poetry, in crumbling Persian inscriptions and the scent of dying roses. Nathaniel Crane — professor of comparative religion at Columbia — had arrived in Delhi with an agenda: research on syncretic shrines of …... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
The Khan penthouse was exactly what you’d expect from a Mumbai man who had once been called “the conscience of Urdu letters” — now rebranded by society pages as a heritage intellectual. Persian rugs, an Italian espresso machine, and a faint whiff of nostalgia mixed with old paper and Davidoff. Aryan Khan, his only son, … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
The rain had come to Thanjavur like a returning pilgrim — gentle at first, and then insistent, washing over the red-tiled roofs and courtyards as if reclaiming an old promise. In the large ancestral house on East Main Street, the monsoon meant many things: damp prayer mats, the scent of sandalwood paste, the gleam of … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
The evening sun lay low over the verandah of the old Delhi bungalow. Bougainvillea spilled over the walls, the breeze carrying with it the faint sound of temple bells from the neighborhood. Raj Malhotra, once a towering name in the steel business, sat in his cane armchair. His hair, silver and untamed, caught the fading … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
In a walled garden at the edge of the desert, two birds lived side by side. The first bird was restless, always darting from branch to branch. She gathered twigs, shiny beads, scraps of cloth—anything to build her nest bigger and grander. Yet each evening, when the garden grew quiet and the breeze softened, her … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
The village square was alive with the pounding of drums. Women in red and ochre spun in wide arcs, silver anklets ringing with every step. The air itself seemed to pulse — as if the earth’s heartbeat had risen to the surface. Garba was not a dance here; it was invocation. Amidst them stood Aayan, … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Arjun Malhotra did not plan his disappearance so much as he rehearsed it, the way a diver rehearses breath. In the week before he vanished, he did not change a thing. He rang the opening bell at the exchange with a smile that looked welded to his face. He walked a visiting minister through the … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
The glass-walled meeting room looked polished from outside, but inside it often echoed with raised voices. There was Meera, sharp and ambitious, who always came armed with data and a quick retort. Across from her sat Dev, cautious and watchful, who distrusted every new idea until it was triple-checked. Between them, small catfights sparked often &#... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
At the Secretariat, her staff called her Madam Officer. The nickname had weight, but she carried it as lightly as her starched cotton saris. “Madam, shall I send the file to the Minister?” asked her secretary one evening. She glanced over her glasses. “Read the clause again, Noor. The figures don’t tally. Integrity is not paperwork, … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Anaya Sen had long ago learned how to carry silence like a weapon. In the grand chamber of Parliament, where voices rose and thundered, her pause could silence them all. But in her own home, silence became something else—an estrangement, a wall she had built without noticing. Her father, once her compass, no longer visited. … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Arman had lived in San Francisco for fifteen years. His days were filled with boardrooms, emails, and the clatter of trams climbing the steep streets. Yet, whenever he closed his eyes in exhaustion, it was not the Golden Gate he saw, but the faint green dome of Nizamuddin Dargah shimmering in memory. On a humid … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
The metro slowed with a tired sigh, its carriages clattering into the station. Leila leaned her head against the glass, watching her own reflection dissolve into the blur of strangers on the platform. Everyone seemed to have a purpose—earphones in place, bags tucked close, screens glowing like fireflies. She alone felt adrift, as though she …... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Cities are sly creatures, and none more so than Istanbul, which has learned over millennia to hide its true face behind a dozen masks: the Roman, the Byzantine, the Ottoman, the Republican, the tourist-brochure city and the smoky-backstreet city, the city of call to prayer and of cocktails, the city that flirts across continents like … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
There are days, Mira thinks, that wear another woman’s perfume. They slip over your shoulders like a borrowed shawl—soft, unfamiliar, faintly fragrant with decisions you didn’t make. This one arrives at the end of the rains, when the pavements of Connaught Place are stitched with banyan leaves, rainwater cupping small skies in every pothole. Even &... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Aria lived inside noise. The kind of noise that never shuts off: Metro announcements, endless reels playing from strangers’ phones, the drone of traffic outside her window, the blue light that seeped into her eyes until 2 a.m. Her life wasn’t hard by definition. She had a job, rent covered, weekends at cafés, friends to … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
On the terrace of her cantonment home, Ayesha often waited for the bugle to fade into silence. The parade ground would empty, the dust would settle, and she would find herself alone with the horizon. It was in those moments that she remembered what her grandmother used to say: “Every footstep is dhikr if taken … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
In the middle of the city stood a peculiar factory. It did not make cloth, or sugar, or steel. It manufactured benchmarks. Every morning, the factory roared alive and out came sheets of paper: “50 calls today!”, “10% growth this quarter!”, “Target not met — penalty due.” The air was thick with ink and anxiety. … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
They called him the Paper Prince of Patna, though the moniker had outgrown its flattery and hardened into a kind of reproach, whispered by rivals and journalists alike. His mills stood like fortresses by the Ganga, their chimneys breathing smoke that mixed with the river mist at dawn. In the counting houses of Calcutta and … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
The stage lights were blinding, the auditorium vast. Riya adjusted the sitar on her lap. Its familiar weight should have steadied her, but tonight, it pressed heavier than usual. The audience was silent — waiting, watching. Her palms were damp. Her throat dry. Fear, old and stubborn, sat in her chest. She closed her eyes, … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
In contemporary Indian cities, the café has become what the addas of Calcutta once were, or the press clubs of Delhi in the 1960s: places where ideas take tentative shape, where ambition rubs shoulders with uncertainty. It was in such a café—wedged between a bookstore and an art shop in South Delhi—that Mira, a young … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Eliane Mehra lived on the 17th floor of a high-rise in Mumbai—a city that never truly slept, only paused to exhale between honks, power cuts, and monsoon rain. Her flat was minimalist, curated in quiet earth tones, with trailing plants by the windows and books stacked unevenly near the TV she never turned on. She … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Eliam Reyes had once believed in the power of words. He’d armed himself with books, sharpened his mind like a blade, and cut through arguments in lecture halls that echoed with applause and envy. Students quoted him, colleagues debated him, critics wrote against him with respect. But inside—deep inside—something had always ached. A silent room R... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
They called her karamjali before she knew what it meant. At first, it was a word flung casually, like water to shoo a crow. Her aunt said it the day the rice burned in the pot and smoke curled into the kitchen like a curse finding its way home. “Karamjali,” the woman snapped, not even … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
In the old quarters of Delhi—where the walls lean close like old gossiping men, and the air forever smells of rosewater, sweat, and centuries—there lived a mad Sufi. He was a threadbare shadow who drifted through the narrow, mystical alleys of Nizamuddin Auliya’s dargah, clutching at dreams heavier than coin, speaking to the saints as …... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
In the dim silence of an old haveli, where the arches remembered more than the people did, Bibi Zainab sat cross-legged on a prayer mat woven by her grandmother. The world outside had long forgotten Ashura — but within her, the desert of Karbala rose anew with each breath. She did not speak. She did … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
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