Through the eyes of my child

I see a face, it has a mask on it and they are all looking at me. I am wrapped in something warm and fuzzy. It feels almost like the belly lodge and I am placed in the arms of some one. They are soft and kind and feel very much like what I was used to. I hear her voice, the voice I have been hearing for the last so many months and I can smell the same familiar smell. I feel safe, this is my safe haven.

There are so many people staring down at me, oh why do they have to make such weird faces and why do they talk in this funny language. I can understand adult talk perfectly well. I try and tell them to talk properly using their big words but oh what is this I feel an intense pressure and pain in my belly so I start to cry and soon there is a wet sensation and it all feels better. A disapproving face hovers on top of my crib now, it is the nurse she is telling mommy that I have wet my diaper and we need to change me, oh not again. I feel horribly cold, so I cry some more.

Now I am hungry give me food, oh you mean mean people give me food I yell and scream and flail the things attached to me, what are these long things and where is my belly lodge bed, I do not feel the walls around me any more. They laugh that I sleep like a super man well I want my bed back you guys. I hate this crib, I am all alone in it no warmth no safety;oho everything is new and different from what I am used to. Pick me up pick me up waaaah waaaaaah. Finally a light turns on, I see her face hovering over my crib she is smiling. I smile back, she hugs me tight...... I feel safe now. Mommy please keep me safe protect me from the mean mean monsters.

Yes my baby that is a mothers job; protection........

protection of my gift from god.

Halal =sustainability

My younger sister is a tree hugger, atleast that is what i call her. She did her studies in economics with a special interest in sustainable development. She recently got a job and in the interview they had asked her why she was interested in working in sustainable development and my sister who in outward appearance does not come across as a religious person told the interviewer because that is what her religion taught her to do. I had asked my sister why she had said that and she said, well apa Islam is all about sustainability, we are encouraged to live a life of service to others where we are good to the environment and treat all creatures humanely. I thought wow, she is so right i never did look at it quite this way before; yet when I think about it, it is true. We are told not to beat work animals and to treat them kindly, feed them well and give them plenty of rest and not over work them. When it comes to crops and trees we are told not to burn, cut or destroy crops even in times of warfare. When it comes to eating animals there are strict guidelines on how to kill them and not only how to kill them but also how to raise them.

These last few days my friends and I have been having discussions regarding method of Halal and all my research led me to a lot of information regarding how the throat of the animal must be cut, how the blood be drained how things are to be cleaned prior to the killing and after the killing. What verses of the Quran are to be recited etc. However, the things that really piqued my interest was that there is also strict guidelines on how to raise the animal. It must be raised on good vegetarian diet, not be fed ground animal bits. It must be allowed to roam free and it must be treated with kindness and calmed down before being killed. It also got me to thinking that although Islam allows us to eat meat it does not tell us to just eat meat or to eat meat mostly. Cause when we study the life of the prophet and examine his diet we find it to be quite simple and again following organic and sustainable practices. His sustenance was mostly dates, water and sorgham (jowar) flour. He did eat meat occasionally but even than liked to share it with other people, it is a good practice to send some meat curry to your neighbor when it is cooked at home. So here is my beef with whole halal/haram debate. First of all halal is a way of life which extends beyond how we cut and kill our meat. It is also about how we treat them prior to killing them. Halal is also not just about what we eat but also about how we live our lives, it is about conservation about all else. Islam discourages needless consumerism by encouraging us to spend our time and energy wisely in service to other creatures and in spending time gaining knowledge and our expertise in other areas of life. It is about living passionately and in harmony with out environment while inflicting minimum damage to it.

My sister was right Halal is synonymous with sustainability and conservation. It is about leaving our planet a little better than how we found it, and if we cannot leave it better; lets try and not leave it in a worse off state.

You should have married a computer

My husband started telling me he wanted to buy a computer the second day of our married life. Oh wait, it was the first day. I was not surprised, since he is a programmer and well I would look at him in quiet amusement barely containing my adoration of this 6 ft "galoot"(I mean this with sincerest affections hubby dear). Thinking its only time before he ll be giving me his 100 percent attention hanging on my every word. Oh, how naive I was.

Well, he bought a lap top and after barely a week with that machine he wanted to buy yet another computer and the quest for the perfect 'puter began. I told him hey, when you buy me a house you can buy your self a computer. The day the deal for the house finalized the first of the many number of puter boxes showed at our door step. My husband came home barely containing his excitement. Like a child on Eid day waiting for eidi he could barely wait to get the box open and examine the motherboard. The mother to the bane in my life. Than more boxes arrived, a tickle soon became a stream ending with a deluge in the form of an HDMI monitor screen.

The next few days were spent among a maze of boxes while the machine was being put together. First it had just been the laptop which was the center of his life. He d come home,barely enter the door and start on the laptop. There I was regaling him with the triumphs of my day which he would half listen to as he read news from all across the world. The final straw came in the form of Stephen Colbert and John Stewart; with food was a daily dose of the daily show. I have asked him on many occasions why he married me. I think if we were in more technologically advanced times and hot hot robots in black leather suits were actually around, girls like me would never have a chance at snagging a husband. He would have married a computer. The other day a friend of mine and I were lamenting this very fact, of how our husbands spend their whole day in front of this terrible tube, come home and plank themselves right in front of them. We dubbed them the other woman in their lives to which her husband said no, she is not the other woman, you are!

Well I am woman enough to admit that he is right, the terrible tube did come into my husbands life waaay before me. He was swimming in its codes long before I arrived on the horizon and writing the code to Writetext.Writeline("Hello World") before we had the chance to be introduced. Another friend gave an iphone as a birthday gift to her husband and right after she took it away because as she put it, it was like shooting one self in the foot.

Hence, I will never give my husband an iphone or a wii console or for that matter a play station for his birthday, a few months a ago a dear friend of mine had to buy a gift for her husband she had enough money saved up to buy him rock band but in the end she decided on not getting him any such thing. As she put it than I wont talk to him for weeks unlike right now where I get to talk with him once every few days.

As my husband is such a computer geek and as I am surrounded by computer geeks in this part of the world I decided the only way I was to have meaningful conversations with my better half was to become at least some what like that hot hot robot. Becoming hot is out of the questions as I am sure my rotund and pleasantly plump figure will never be able to fit into a leather suit. Becoming more computer savvy is still a possibility, so what started off as a conversation starter between me and my geeky half soon became my all consuming hobby. Conversations about computers and programming started me off on the quest to actually learn and figure out the fantastic world of computers and well honestly saying now after my meager experience. I get why my darling is glued to the terrible tube, it really is quite addictive and a whole lot of fun. So to the Richard Geere/Josh Groban/Patrick Demsey/Eric Bana/Shiney Ahuja/Luke Wilson of my life(i.e hubby dearest) all I gotta say is code on dude!!!!