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Take a journey back in time more than 2700 years to a royal banquet in the palace at Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian Empire. As you arrive, the scent of lilies and roses fills the air. Musicians play harps and pipes, sing songs and recite poems. You snack on fresh pistachios and walnuts as you wait for the entrance of the king. The woman next to you stirs, and her red linen tunic crinkles slightly against her fine cotton shawl. Her gold earrings softly jingle as she moves.

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With certain fingers, a Sarod is more than an instrument and music is more than music. Longing is more than what you thought it was. When Ustad Amjad Aali Khan sits with his sarod and his fingers move along its strings, the sarod sobs, weeps, cries, wails, grumbles, groans, murmurs, smiles, laughs, giggles, yells and sighs. And in the ceaseless ascent and descent of all possible human emotions to its noblest fullness, it just leaves you in tears. As your soul is in a state of elatedness and  tranquility. Music is the only language that doesn’t need a translator.

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I was slightly disappointed at having not been able to go to Jaipur to attend India’s most reputed literary festival, especially when I read a report in the Hindu about an open forum featuring writers Ahdaf Soueif, Tahar Ben Jelloun and Selma Dabbagh, Jonathan Shainin and William Dalrymple.  In the forum,  Moroccan author Tahar Ben Jelloum made a stark remark about writing fiction: ‘Sometimes, I am frightened at fiction as it seems more dangerous than reality.

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As children we did not know the meaning of the moulid we used to recite and sing. Nor did we try.  When we pestered our elders for a little bit of glosses on those sonorous, full-bodied verses, they discouraged: 'You don't know the meaning of the Qur'an either.' Piety stayed well outside all meanings. So we recited again and again, unconvinced though we were. In fact, the elders themselves were in the dark about the meanings.

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Headlines about two Indian actors have recently gone viral. They are Bollywood’s own King Khan and Kollywood’s own King Kamal. Shah Rukh Khan wrote an article titled ‘Being a Khan’ in the Outlook Turning Point Magazine on the agonies of carrying a name, Khan. Kamal Hassan made Vishwaroopam (Global Shape), a film on the most pressing problem of our time: terrorism. It was mired in controversy.

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“When I first became prime minister I wanted to show a woman can be as good as a man. I think it is important to be a woman because woman brings nurturing aspects”

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Why is it that visual representation of Prophet Muhammad is banned in Islam? What is the theological rationale for the ban? I stumbled upon an article, where the following is stated: ‘In certain reference works and books about Islam, we may come across the claim that even if the Prophet Muhammad was represented in pictorial form in earlier times, no pictorial representation of Him is permitted in our times. This reflects the state in Sunni areas, where images of the Prophet are rare.

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The Prophet's Death

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While concluding his celebrated work Orientalism, Edward Said says: ‘I consider Orientalism's failure to have been a human as much as an intellectual one; for in having to take up a position of irreducible opposition to a region of the world it considered alien to its own,Orientalism failed to identify with human experience, failed also to see it as human experience.’ ¹It is brilliant statement that we have to have in mind when we discuss the European intellectual engagements on Islam and Muslim societies.

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Rushing to get one’s hands on a luscious pudding after meal is a familiar sight in weddings and parties. Who doesn’t fall for a delectable treat when they invite us with their tempting appearance and arresting aroma? Everyone loves sweets, especially to conclude a meal as it gives a feeling of fullness. Sweet after food is more of a tradition and has been like that for years. The word Pudding comes from French word Boudin which originated from a Latin phrase botellus meaning a small sausage or encased meat which was then the medieval European pudding.