All These Words

 The 99 Names of Allah -  al-Asmāʾ al-Ḥusnā , the Most Beautiful Names are meant to unveil the nature of God. Each Name is a facet of the Infinite: mercy, peace, justice, wisdom, love, light, patience. Taken together, they form not a list, but a vision. And yet, across history, God has often been reduced to the image of a warlord’s deity that is partial, vengeful, insecure, demanding blood and obedience. But if we listen to the Names themselves, this image collapses. The Names expose the gap between divine transcendence and human narrowness. How can al-Raḥmān  - the Most Gracious - be represented by cruelty? How can al-Salām - the Source of Peace - sanction endless war? How can al-ʿAdl - the Just - delight in eternal damnation for disbelief? How can al-Wadūd  - the Loving - be mirrored in coercion and fear? The Names do not support this narrow portrait; they refute it. They open instead to a God beyond possession, beyond tribe, beyond violence. A God who is m...

 A letter to the spirit that raised me,   He was born in the early 1920s, in a time when India was still a dream. Before the country had a name of her own, before the flag, before the anthem - he was already in service. My grandfather joined the Army Postal Corps around the time of the Second World War and served through its years and after. His work took him from Kerala to Egypt, Europe, and beyond as part of a system that moved words across borders, even as nations burned. He never spoke of war. But his words carried the weight of what he'd seen, and where he'd been. And perhaps that’s where it began for me, the sense that words carry something sacred. That a message, handwritten or typed, is not just communication, but continuity. A thread across time, between duty and tenderness, between home and the world. After Independence, he did not retire. He kept serving. Not out of obedience, but out of quiet alignment with something that didn’t need to be spoken aloud. He belong...