Love is a Steaming Cup of Chai

It’s been nearly three months since my last blog post. I took a bit of a break to work on my research project, and then the gap grew larger as I started to think about the process of blogging itself and ask myself: Does it make sense to share one’s thoughts and reflections with a wider audience?  I was pondering the question while taking a class about improving the quality and state of one’s heart, and in that context, it felt like chattering about one’s feelings and reflections was indulging in a thinking process that could have just as well gone in a journal. Today though, I opened an almost empty notebook and found an unfinished blog post about falling in love with Toronto that was dated from this past summer. The short entry led me back to the blog, and reading the small number of posts here was a beautiful reminder of moments in Toronto that touched my heart, and people I’ve met here that have left an indelible imprint on my heart and mind. It made me wish I had blogged more often, as it is a qualitatively different type of reflection than the (also important) experience that occurs when I pick up a Moleskine to jot down thoughts.

And since I leave Toronto in about a month for the post graduation chapter of my life, I’ve included it below as a reminder to keep the same joy and peace in my heart as I soak up this last bit of time I have in this beloved city, to have trust that the next chapter will hopefully bring forth goodness and adventures in equal measure, and to remember to blog along the way.

My love for Toronto is a steaming cup of chai with the Roommate, sweet mangoes for breakfast, a late night guitar jam session on the beach, finding the way home using the CN tower, a smile from a stranger on the elevator, new challenges at work, walking the tree-shaded streets of U of T, hearing birds outside my office window, sitting and watching the lake sparkle at the Harbourfront and seeing the Ford Centre full of people excited about the ballet during a evening stroll. It’s  watching trains go by from my apartment window with my nephew and stretching our imaginations to create stories about where people are going.  Even after so many months, my love and happiness with this city still feels like an unexpected gift.

Sometimes the thought of whether something is right or whether you’re doing what you’re meant to be doing is so strong that the attention can be intensely uncomfortable. It is difficult to be completely relaxed and open when you’re analyzing your experiences and emotions constantly. But from first term when I frequently thought about what Toronto meant, without realizing it was even happening, a natural, easy contentment with Toronto has slipped into my life. ~ May 28th 2011.

Face the World

Make people ashamed of their existence, Jean Paul Sartre said. Yes: make them aware of the possibilities they have denied themselves or the passiveness they have displayed in situations where it was really necessary to cling to the heart of the world, like a splinter – to force, if needed, the rhythm of the world’s heart; dislocate, if needed, the system of controls; but in any case, most certainly face the world.

~Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, p.59 (Grove Press Edition).

The Argument Against Modernity’s Dominant Formulation

Sometimes you read articles that make your heart sing with their intelligence and insight and overall wonderfulness, and as you read, you find yourself whispering intentions and prayers to yourself to go at your work with a bit more determination and focus. Today that happened as I read a lovely article by Massey, and wanted to share bits of it here as inspiration when my enthusiasm stores run a bit low. =) The article as a whole is about different ways of disrupting and problematizing popular academic and general conceptions of globalization,why such disruptions need to occur, and why we need to construct ‘space-time’ understandings of the  process of globalization.  The chapter was assigned as one of this week’s readings in a class I’m taking this term titled Global Urbanism and Cities of the Global South. In the 2 years of my program, I think this is the first course offered about ‘other’ parts of the world, so I’m excited to soak up as much as I can. (Because as interesting as Canada is, my heart and brain is craving to learn about urbanism in other contexts).

The quote below talks about how we need to recognise the particularities of the modernity story. It predicates an extensive discussion about why popular conceptions of globalization (one for example being that globalization is about free unbounded movement) need to be deconstructed, and outlines four reasons that the author is uncomfortable with unquestioned usages of the term. One particularly interesting part of the piece is the way she demonstrates how different powerful geographic imaginations are utilized to construct a particular understanding of economic globalization and the implications of this knowledge production. The international movement of capital is valorized and celebrated, whereas the international movement of labour is discussed in the context of protecting local people and controlling immigration.  It is a fascinating piece that warrants a read in its entirety.

“The standard version of the story of modernity – as a narrative of progress emanating from Europe – represents a discursive victory of time over space.  That is to say that differences which are truly spatial are interpreted in being differences in temporal development – differences in the stage of progress reached. Thus Western Europe is understood as being ‘advanced’, other parts of the world as ‘some way behind’ and yet others as ‘backward’. Euphemistically to re-label ‘backward’ as ‘developing’ does nothing to alter this process of thinking of spatial variation in terms of a temporal series. (..) It is this act which deprives these spatial differences of their ‘real import’, deprives them of  ‘the full measure of the real differences which are at issue.’
(..)
Ironically then, not only is this temporal structuring of the geography of modernity a repression of the spatial, it is also the repression of the possibility of the temporalities (other, that is than the stately progress towards modernity/modernization/development on the Euro-Western model. Indeed it is in these terms – that is, about the existence of other temporalities and stories – that the argument against modernity’s dominant formulation is usually posed. In other words, for different temporalities to co-exist there must be space.

Massey D (1999). Imagining globalization: Power geometries of time-space. In A. Brah and M. Hickman, M. Mac An Ghaill (eds). Global Futures – Migration, Environment and Globalization (pp.27-44). New York: St Martin’s Press.

What are your tips to become a more comfortable, less nervous public speaker?

If it is possible to both love something dearly and hate it passionately at the same time, that describes my relationship with public speaking. I love it, but I wish I was better at it, was less nervous beforehand, and was able to speak without “umms” and ”aaahs” and losing my train of thought during regular conversations. (After all, every conversation is a form of public speaking in a sense).  In Episode 10 of Seriously Planning, I’m asking about your public speaking experiences and your advice. You can listen to the episode here. Looking forward to hearing your words of wisdom!

Awesome Event Alert! Human Rights, Religion and the Law

Check out this amazing event held at U of T this week. I’ll be there, taking notes and soaking in the amazing speakers. (For Barbara Hall alone, this event is worth it)

From the event page at : http://media.utoronto.ca/media-releases/event-advisories/human-rights-religion-and-the-law/

TORONTO, ON – The wearing of face coverings, the question of whether “Good Friday” at Easter should still be a statutory holiday, and prayers in the school cafeteria over the lunch hour are all questions of religious accommodation in civil society. Beginning January 11, the University of Toronto and the Ontario Human Rights Commission are facilitating a two-day policy consultation on religion and the law. The public is invited to join the conversation to explore the boundaries of religious expression and practice in the public sphere:

EVENT DETAILS:

WHAT:          Human Rights, Religion and the Law (Opening session)

WHEN:          Wednesday, January 11, 2012, 7:30 p.m.

WHO:             Barbara Hall, Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission

Pamela Klassen, Director of the Religion in the Public Sphere program, University of Toronto

Winnifred Sullivan, Director of the Law, Religion, and Culture, State University of New York

David Seljak, Chair of the Department of Religious Studies, University of Waterloo

WHERE:       U of T Multi-Faith Centre, 569 Spadina Ave TO, ON M5S 2J7

****

WHAT:    Human Rights and Wrongs: Religion and Creed in the Public Sphere

WHEN:   Friday, January 13, 2012, 1:30 pm

WHO:     Richard Moon, Faculty of Law, University of Windsor, past President of the Canadian Law Society Association. Iain Benson, Senior Associate Counsel with the Litigationn

Practice Group and Senior Research Fellow with the Chester Ronning Centre for the Study of Religion and Public Life, University of Alberta.

WHERE:       U of T Multi-Faith Centre, 569 Spadina Ave TO, ON M5S 2J7

A Matter of Perspective

Because, look – just look at the world below! The entire superstructure of a city reduced to a mere toyscape. Little toy cars moving about on little toy roads – noiselessly, aromalessly; little toy trees and little toy people. A city with a thousand years of history reduced to a view from a window. All its gates and gardens and towers; its monuments and markets, its politics, its ugliness , its many irregularities reduced to a fine palimpsest of design. This was the undeniable miracle of flight: not that it allowed you to travel great distances in small amounts of time, not the actual physics of getting 200 tonnes of metal to stay up in the air. No. It was the miracle of perspective. The fact that down there could be anywhere.

~The Pleasure Seekers, p. 214.

Planes are the Place I Think Best

I’ve been back in Toronto for a couple of hours now, and unpacking my suitcase, I’ve already realized that I’ve forgotten my indoor sandals, the base of my Krups kettle, and my USB key (at which point I abandoned unpacking and gave myself a proper scolding about being a more careful person). Now that that scolding is out of the way, today’s podcast episode is about my reflections from the flight from Vancouver to Toronto. Specifically, I’m talking about the difficulties of detaching from things,the importance of recognizing the blessings you have (and using them properly) and what landing a plane indicates about goal-setting. You can hear it here.

p.s-I had to stop the recording at one point, and the sound changed afterwards. Please excuse the audio quality!

Flexing One’s Courage Muscles

With her pretty hair tucked into a little cap, arms bared to the elbow, and a checked apron which had a coquettish look in spite of the bib, the young housewife fell to work, feeling no doubts about her success, for hadn’t she seen Hannah do it hundreds of times? The array of pots rather amazed her at first, but John was so fond of jelly, and the nice little jars would look so well on the top shelf, that Meg resolved to fill them all, and spent a long day picking, boiling, straining, and fussing over her jelly. She did her best, she asked advice of Mrs. Cornelius, she racked her brain to remember what Hannah did that she left undone, she reboiled, resugared, and restrained, but that dreadful stuff wouldn’t ‘jell’.

She longed to run home, bib and all, and ask Mother to lend her a hand, but John and she had agreed that they would never annoy anyone with their private worries, experiments, or quarrels. (..) So Meg wrestled alone with the refractory sweetmeats all that hot summer day, and at five o’clock sat down in her topsy-turvey kitchen, wrung her bedaubed hands, lifted up her voice and wept. ~~ Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, Chapter 28.

I know how Meg feels. I seem to cook fine when there is someone to ask if anything goes wrong, but on my own I question the progression of each stage. After a while, I just want to sob dismally, wring my hands, and escape someplace comforting. But after a lovely holiday of real basmati rice and proper curries and love in every meal, it’s going to be hard to return to the residence cafeteria  (though as cafeterias go it’s probably a very good one, and I do appreciate its halal options). So though it makes me nervous, I’m determined post-break to practice flexing my courage muscles and try cooking more often, because it’s really home-food that I love best, and I’d like to be brave enough to cook for friends on a more regular basis.

What Will You Do With The Things You Notice? (the beginnings of Idea Steep)

Near my bedside table are Thoreau’s Walden, and a book of essays and lectures by Emerson. Both are books that I can only read a few pages at time, and something different speaks to me with each reading. Today upon opening Emerson I came across the following passages:

What help from thought? Life is not dialectics.We, I think in these times, have had lessons enough of the futility of criticism. Our young people have thought and written much on labour and reform, and for all that they have written, neither the world nor themselves have gotten on a step. Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity. If a man should consider, the nicety of the passage of a piece of bread down his throat, he would starve. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Experience.

I am thankful for small mercies. I compared notes with one of my friends who expects everything of the universe and is disappointed when anything is less than the best, and I found that I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always full of thanks for moderate goods. (..) If we take the good we find, asking no questions, we shall have heaping measures. The great gifts are not got by analysis. ~Experience, Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Emerson’s words remind me of conversations with a mentor of mine last term, where I would be upset about something going on in international, national, or local news, or something that happened to me personally, or a program or policy that I thought could be designed better, or about the exhausted feeling I would get sometimes answering a question about the hijab/my ethnic background/Muslim women that I’d answered a million times before. Really whatever the matter would be, the question I would always get after I had finished my rant was what are you going to do about the things that you notice? Are you simply critiquing and making conversation, or do you have the ethical commitment to initiate change? And what will that change look like? What is the purpose of your professional and personal life Shagufta?

It’s a blessing to have someone ask you such questions. And that is perhaps one of the greatest blessings of graduate school, (though I hope it continues after school is done): you are surrounded by people who are brighter than you, more accomplished than you, who have more skills, who are more well-read, and who are actively striving to understand more about the world and what their place in it is. In such company, you find yourself marvelling at how different everyone’s research interests are, how inspiring their intellects are, and you grow because the company you’re in demands it.

I grow the most though, when the company I’m in is not just of fellow students who are genuinely interested in the questions they’re pursuing and are actively thinking about how they can make contributions outside themselves, but is of people who are also engrossed in the task of becoming better people. One of the best descriptions I’ve read of this kind of company is Rehab al Buri’s blog. (If you haven’t heard of her, she was an ABC News staffer who passed away on March 6th 2011 from cancer, at age twenty-five. ABC News wrote an article about her here, which is where I first heard her story). Her blog was about her reflections and thoughts about her illness, and in one of her posts, she writes:

“I’m also trying to keep company with those who are committed to leading meaningful lives…who don’t think making du’aa  (supplication) at the end of a get together is cheesy, and who won’t think I’m trying to be a goody-two-shoes for suggesting worship instead of entertainment, and who will call me out when I’m wrong.

Living up to the person I promised Allah I would become is a struggle. But I figure I can set myself up for success by making struggle my new normal.

Like Rehab, I too would like to keep the company of those who are committed to leading meaningful lives. Before moving to Toronto, I helped organize an event called Terry Tales, which was basically a gathering every couple of weeks at the University of British Columbia with tea, cookies, and awesome people. The event was originally supposed to be something similar to The Moth, but when we ran the event we discovered people were more interested in sharing ideas and reflections and gaining inspiration from one another than hearing stories passively, and there were really neat projects that came out of each session (just from engaged people who do wildly different things being in the same place, chatting and deciding they liked each other enough to actually work together). We also almost always blogged about the experience afterwards. Since moving to Toronto, I’ve been wanting to try something similar and call it an Idea Steep, and since my heart still feels so heavy and painful over leaving home, now seems like the right time. I think I’ll be hosting it at home (makes it more doable with school) so it’ll be small and simple, but I will blog about our reflections here. And if we come across a magical space with tea I’ll post the details here too.

Stay tuned (and if you have ideas of potential places, feel free to comment!)