Category: misc/personal

evening with a friend from university

spent the evening in geneva, ny, with a friend from college. manish was one of my closest friends back in connecticut. this was the first time i met his wife and kids. we had some delicious chicken biryani cooked by his wife and talked about the good old days, in a mixture of urdu/hindi and english, as desis are wont to do. his youngest son reminded me of my nephew when he was younger. i showed manish my son’s picture and he couldn’t believe it. he remembered celebrating his first birthday. it was such a pleasure to reconnect after so many years. ah, how similar we continue to be, we indians and pakistanis. borders don’t change a thing.

dinner with manish and fam

a vast and mysterious universe

yesterday evening, as the sun was about to set, this beautiful soft light poured from the sky and spilled onto the snow. it was like looking at the world through a lens filter, or through rose-colored glasses, literally. the top of the sky was a gorgeous, warm pink which bled gently into a cooler yellow, only to be transformed into the purest blue. this splash of color was reflected faithfully by the snow and created a unified, magical landscape.

we live in such a vast universe, full of mystery and miracles. it’s easy to get caught up in too many thoughts, to live too much in our heads, and so it’s comforting to know that there is such a prodigious world outside of us, connected to us, yet also gloriously ancient and infinite.

[these photographs are unfiltered and don’t even begin to describe yesterday’s color extravaganza]