Sonya Syed

Its hours past midnight, I can’t sleep, my mind refuses to quieten- I have tried meditation and present moment exercises, all failed. Noor Mukhadam is revolving in my thoughts, she was found brutally murdered at a residence in Islamabad by the suspect Zahir Jaffer.  I desperately want to put the onus of this crime on Noor so that I could be over and done with it. I want to justify the trauma and the fear of her death by saying that it must have been her fault, she must have said or done something to infuriate Jafer. It is always the woman who say or do something that hurts or irritates a man to such an extent that he would just behead her. Is it really the truth, I wonder? More than half of Pakistan’s population is based on women and every time she says or does not say something; does or does not do something which makes a man so angry that he hits her, or molest her or burns her, or kill her. And it all seems justified, of course it is her fault. If she is molested at a bus stop,

Sometimes a little ray of hope is enough to carry us through the rough times. USA health officials are allowing its citizens to go outside without wearing masks, if they are fully vaccinated. I am extremely grateful to Allah for easing the pressure. Here I must also commend our government for providing free vaccinations to all Pakistanis. If elders in your family are not vaccinated please do go for their vaccination; the process is quite easy. Just SMS your CNIC number to 1166, within seconds a reply message with your registration details will come.     With such meagre resources Prime Minister Imran Khan somehow managed to get everyone vaccinated age wise. In the first stage, it was 60 to 70 plus of age individuals, then age group of 50, currently registration is open for 40's age group.   Senior citizens of 70 years and above, can walk into any officially authorized vaccination centre without the need to have any prior registration. Two of my family members juts got vacci

2021 is a year to start with prayers and love for all. For couple of years I lost all my willingness to write or to communicate with anyone. I wanted to be consistent but sometimes what you want is not always possible to get. Last year was emotionally, physically and mentally challenging. I was forced to come out of my comfort zone and above all I was compelled by time to become financially intelligent. So I thought it is a nice idea to share with your all what I learned l ast year and how it has helped me to grow both inwards as well as outwards.   Now let's see, finance and money has never been speciality in fact my entire life until the year 2020 went into a haze, money-wise. I had no idea about savings or how to invest, all I knew was to happily get money from my Mom as and when required. Even though I had been earning myself for more than a decade but I never knew a thing about finance. I have been very fortunate that my mother is a financially savvy person or else only God

It is best to make no promises, nor to take any vows and just to leave everything unspoken and open-ended. The vastness of unspoken words is immense as well as beautiful. So let us be infinite and silent. The boat is rocking, the tides are quite high and the times are unsure. It is a dream- no probably a scream which has taken away light from the pendant of a stream.  Crying babies, tears of healers, pain of losing, fear of suffering tore the hearts of millions this years. Yet in the despair there appears a glimmer of hope from the steeple of faith, beaming lightly and softly yet constantly- heralding us to hold on...to hold on to the rope of faith even when our hands are bruised and bleeding through- telling us; compelling us; teaching us:                                          “ So, verily, with every difficulty, there is relief:        فَإِنَّ مَعَ الْعُسْرِ يُسْرًا                          Verily, with every difficulty there is relief :          إِنَّ مَعَ الْعُسْرِ يُسْرًا&quo

  I am speaking on behalf of Karachites: “Please Allah, I love you and I love rain but please make it stop. I am okay with a bit of drizzle here and there, dark skies and cold breeze but this city does not have the capacity to endure your divine love, we just can’t handle it.”     After a tornado of chaos, emotional roller coaster rides, Covid 19, isolation, social distancing, masks, sanitizers, pain of losing a beloved family member suddenly and the craziest social media- I have been trying to find my centre the inner place where I can go and dream of anything. Immense struggle of no avail. 2020 has been a very difficult year probably the most challenging one of my life. For the last 9-10 years I have been meditating, praying diligently and life has been pretty good to me however the emotional and financial crisis of the world jolted the best of the spiritual practises. I really believe that corona virus was a three-second trailer of the judgement day. Now on 27 th August 2020 wh

“ On no soul do Allah Place a burden greater than it can bear. It gets every good that it earns, and it suffers every ill that it earns. (Pray:) "Our Lord! Condemn us not if we forget or fall into error; our Lord! Lay not on us a burden Like that which Thou didst lay on those before us; Our Lord! Lay not on us a burden greater than we have strength to bear. Blot out our sins, and grant us forgiveness. Have mercy on us. Thou art our Protector; Help us against those who stand against faith." Surah Al-Baqarah) verse 286- the Holy Quran. “Every soul gets every good that it earns, and it suffers every ill that it earns.”  These lines from the Holy Quran are echoing in my mind today, and after a bit of investigation I found the following information, I will connect the dots later but for now please bear with me: According to Wikipedia: Augmented reality (AR) is a shared experience of a real-world environment where the objects that exist in the real world are enhanced by

Planning, organizing and time-management were the skills that I used to hear in my business management class and never truly believed in their significance in order to have a productive and healthy life, until recently.  And oh boy I have become obsessed with organizing and managing time efficiently, would you believe I have three separate planners for my daily, weekly and work life. Plus I am using reminder apps, evening shopping list app on my mobile so I don’t have to memorize the grocery list or paying bills or doing errands. It gets even better, because there are Namaz/prayer and even present-moment reminder apps and all we need to do, is install them all. I recently bumped on Google calendar and it is Amazing . I simply put all my work schedules, including breakfast, lunch, afternoon nap, dinner and prayer timing, it then colour codes/time blocks that period giving me a precise track of my daily and weekly activities. Before using Google calendar I thought I was wasting my time,