Sufi Articles of Arun Prakash Ray
Qawwalo'n ke Qisse-1 Munshi Raziuddin ka Qissa
Munshi Raziuddin had once come across an old man who spoke only Gujarati, in Madinah during one of his visits. Reportedly the old man had approached him with ‘Baba, please pray on my behalf, I heard somewhere that the Prophet Muhammed and the Almighty
Mulla Nasruddin Modern Tales 7
The old man was performing his ablution near an almost frozen tap at a Sufi Dargah near Tangmarg, Kashmir. He visited Kashmir for the first time to meet some friends in the city of Srinagar, one of them had recommended him this 300 years old shrine.
In conversation with the Guardian saint of Delhi, and the mystic of Sindh Farid Ayaz.
I had met Farid Ayaz Sahab in 2012, while gatecrashing in a private concert hosted by an MD of a large private sector bank in Lutyens, Mehrauli with a promise to the event managers that I was least bit interested in the free food & liquor, only wanted
Qawwalo'n ke Qisse-12 Farid Ayaz Qawwal ka Qissa
He woke up in a dingy room of a Delhi 6 guest house, he doesn’t keep his door closed. The neighborhood tea-seller’s ten year old son walked in with a newly learnt Bandish in Raga Desh. He kept the tempo by drumming a rickety, old bedside table. The boy
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“In tolerance, be like the sea”—a message of wholehearted acceptance that’s very much the need of the hour. Inscribed somewhere in Konya, on a wall. Believed to be a quote of Maulana Rumi. The old man met an interesting looking middle-aged man in the
Yaar tori Basant manai
Basant means a lot to me. The flowers, the music at Nizamuddin Auliya Dargah in Delhi. I can smell the flowers from my Bangalore living room, can hear the strains of Qawwali. Hundreds of years ago, Amir Khusrau had started this tradition dressed in yellow
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The security staff at Konya airport looked at him in surprise, he has seen his caricature somewhere for sure. He couldn’t recollect. He checked the Turkish Airline boarding pass again, the elderly gentleman’s name read Nasruddin Hodja. He stamped the
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A street cat approached him for some food. He bought a pack of biscuits from a nearby store and started feeding the cat. Cats are everywhere in the streets of Istanbul. The cat finished the entire packet of cream biscuit. He smiled remembering an incident
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It was a smooth touchdown in Kuwait. After a brief wait, he boarded a flight to Delhi. Nasruddin was standing in the boarding queue, a burly man from the airport security team was having an intimate chat with a lissome ground staff. The security guy
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Nasruddin was taking a stroll in the streets of Konya. A few hundred meters from the Maulana Muzesi, he spotted a neat row of dead telephone booths. He picked up a receiver gingerly to his ear, a strain of nay (an end-blown flute that figures prominently
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Nasruddin opened his email on phone, the invitation read “Interfaith Dialogue Conclave.” The email also carried a Qatar Airways return e-ticket and a hotel booking voucher as attachments. Nasruddin sighed and smiled in amusement, his keynote speech was
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The Immigration staff at Shah Jalal Airport noticed the distinguished looking old man had everything in order. His visa, his stay booking in Dhaka, his invitation letter from the large business conglomerate mentioning his topic of consultation ‘leading
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There was something uncanny about the city, the airport terminal was half-empty. His hotel was within a few kms of the airport terminal. He was supposed to deliver a lecture in an Istanbul Auditorium near the iconic Topkapi palace on ‘one’s first obligation
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Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. (Barks, the Essential Rumi, 36) The cop stopped his car near a coffee shop in Meram, in the outskirts of Konya. Nasruddin came out to face the young cop who had just
