Mumbai, India – In the quiet embrace of a small Indian village, where dreams are often whispered against the backdrop of simplicity, emerged a football prodigy destined for greatness.
Meet Manisha Kalyan, the young Indian football sensation whose long journey from the narrow lanes of Muggowal in Punjab to the illustrious stage of the UEFA Women’s Champions League is nothing short of a remarkable odyssey.
Kalyan participated in athletics and basketball during her school days before football captured her heart. Daring to dream beyond the confines of her rural beginnings, she made the cut for India in 2019, at the age of 17.
Last year, Kalyan received the golden opportunity to sign with the Cypriot club Apollon Ladies. A rare chance for Indian footballers, given the country’s ranking of 65 in women’s FIFA rankings and 102 in men’s.
“I made the right decision to join Apollon because I am improving and learning new things here,” Kalyan told Al Jazeera from Limassol.
“Even before I was called up for India, I dreamt of playing abroad because when you begin playing abroad at an early age, you can improve and contribute more to the national team.”
Kalyan signed for Apollon after playing for three Indian clubs, including Gokulam Kerala, with whom she won the top-tier Indian Women’s League twice.
Known for her speed and ability to adapt to several positions, Kalyan has been recognised as one of the best Indian players in recent times.
The All India Football Federation named her the Women’s Player of the Year in 2021-22 and 2022-23 and she was also part of the India team that won gold at the South Asian Games in 2019.
Kalyan shot to fame in 2021 after she became the first Indian to score a goal against Brazil in a friendly match, which India lost 6-1.
She rates it as the most special goal of her career.
— Indian Football Team (@IndianFootball) July 4, 2023
‘If you’re quiet, you won’t get the ball’
The offer from Apollon did not come as a surprise for Kalyan, who revealed she had been attracting interest from foreign clubs since that goal against Brazil.
Even though Kalyan was over the moon to receive interest from Apollon, she had very little knowledge about what she was signing up for.
“When I decided to sign for Apollon, I did not know much about Cyprus. I did a bit of research about the club and the country and felt it would be a good call. I had seen some of the matches from the Cypriot First Division and knew Apollon had played in the Women’s Champions League, where I wanted to participate,” she said.
A language barrier and some cultural differences made Kalyan’s start to life in Cyprus difficult but she slowly found her way.
“At the time I joined, I didn’t understand English as much as I do now and couldn’t talk much with my teammates, which was difficult,” Kalyan recalled.
“Now that I can speak a bit of English, I have built a connection with them. I think communication is important both on and off the field because if you’re quiet during games, you won’t get the ball. Once I started to communicate during the games, things improved.”
Kalyan’s dream to play in the Women’s Champions League came true last August when she featured against Latvia’s SFK Riga in the qualifying round. Then in September, she added another feather to her cap by becoming the first Indian to score in the Women’s Champions League when she found the net against Georgia’s FC Samegrelo in the qualifiers.
Coming on as a second-half substitute in that game, Kalyan scored a stunning left-footed goal from inside the box.
“Having the chance to play and score in the Women’s Champions League has been the best part of my life,” Kalyan said.
“I was quite happy at the time, but now I have bigger goals. I want to improve individually in the next year and perform better for India.”
Since joining Apollon, Kalyan has transitioned from an attacker to a defender.
In India, while playing for Sethu or Gokulam Kerala, Kalyan would feature on the wings or as a striker, but she has been deployed as a left-back at Apollon.
“She is a very good modern left-back, someone who likes to attack,” said Apollon coach Andreas Matthaiou. “In my opinion, good players can play everywhere.
“She is very fast and fires very good crosses from the left. She can run throughout for 90 minutes and technically she is good, too.”
Having taken over the team earlier this month, Matthaiou described Kalyan as a “hard worker” and a “quick learner”.
“I am very happy with her,” he said.
Indian women’s football expert Anirudh Menon believes Kalyan’s journey is already a “success story” for the country, which has seen very few women play in top-tier leagues overseas, especially in Europe.
India’s all-time top-scorer Bala Devi is the highest profile player to play in Europe, having represented top-tier Scottish club Rangers, while others have played in the lower leagues in Europe or top divisions in small Asian countries such as Bhutan, Maldives and Nepal.
“Bala Devi is arguably the best women’s player India has produced, and she got the opportunity only when she turned 30. So if she couldn’t play abroad in her prime, it was quite unlikely that anybody else could have,” Menon said.
Poor game time for women
The Indian women’s national team is ranked higher than their male counterparts, but they still receive fewer opportunities.
The Indian Women’s League (IWL) usually lasts for a month. While its current season has stretched to about four months, it still fares poorly when compared with top leagues elsewhere that run for more than seven months.
“When I played the IWL, the league would run for one month but after that, you wouldn’t know what’s next,” the lean 22-year-old said.
“If you are a part of the Indian team, you get exposure through tournaments often but the rest of the domestic players would barely get any game time.
“To become a good player, you need to play continuously – at least once a week. No matter how many times you train, you only discover your calibre and areas of improvement when you play a competitive match.”
Kalyan, who won the Cypriot First Division with Apollon last season, said she has become a better player since moving to Europe.
“The main difference between the women’s game in Europe and India is that the players in Europe have clean touches. When they receive the ball, their first touch is quite good. Even the passing is great,” Kalyan added.
“Players in Europe have a great understanding of the game – their runs, positioning and tactics are all quite impressive. Whereas in India, the players aren’t good at their basics.”
Menon, who reported on Kalyan’s career in India, said she has improved at Apollon by playing against opponents of her calibre.
“One thing I noticed is that she is not better than everybody,” Menon said.
“If you watched the IWL, you could see that in most games, she could do whatever she wanted to … But in Cyprus, you can see that she is up against opponents of her calibre, and she is working harder than used to in India.”
Matthaiou, her coach at Apollon, believes Kalyan can build a great future if she continues to improve.
“I believe she is a player who can have a game-changing impact.”
Mumbai, India – Mallika Sagar’s introduction to the world of auctioneering came when, as a teenager in her hometown Mumbai, she read a book with a female auctioneer as its protagonist.
“And, perhaps, a bit frivolously, I thought: ‘That’s what I want to be,’” she recollects with a chuckle.
Three decades on, Sagar finds herself at the helm of making history.
After a successful 23-year career in art auctioneering, she is set to become the first female auctioneer at the richest franchise cricket league in the world when she takes the stage at the Indian Premier League’s (IPL) 2024 auction in Dubai on Tuesday.
More than 300 cricketers will go under the hammer during the daylong event, which will be a breakaway from a trend that has seen only men – Welshman Richard Madley, Briton Hugh Edmeades and India’s Charu Sharma – spearhead the event.
“It’s extremely exciting to be asked to conduct an IPL auction,” Sagar told Al Jazeera during an hourlong chat at her Mumbai office last week.
Sagar was born into a business family in the capital of India’s Maharashtra state and has lived in the city since her return, from the United States, where she graduated with a degree in the history of art.
Now a specialist in modern art and an auctioneer at a privately-owned Mumbai-based auction house, she has long been a pathbreaker on the global art auctioneering circuit. In 2001, she became the first female auctioneer of Indian origin at the international art and luxury business Christie’s.
‘All about personality and skills’
Clad in a yellow drop-waist dress and with a cup of green tea in hand, Sagar explained how auctioneering is more down to personality and skills than gender.
“You could be the most engaging male auctioneer, the most boring female auctioneer or vice versa – it’s about personality and skills.”
The 48-year-old has been responsible for wielding the gavel at both the player auctions for the Women’s Premier League (WPL), India’s IPL-style five-team franchise tournament for women.
“Sport is gendered, so to be part of something where women cricketers have a platform at the highest level and the chance to be financially independent doing what they love, was really special.”
Being one of the few female auctioneers in India, Sagar acknowledged that the inaugural WPL auction in February may have been an unwitting stepping stone to bring her to the IPL auction, a far more scaled-up affair than its WPL equivalent.
Learning the ropes – with kabaddi
Sagar’s first stint at sport auctioneering came at the eighth edition of the Pro Kabaddi League (PKL), an Indian men’s professional franchise kabaddi tournament that ranks second behind the IPL most-watched sports league in the country.
She admits sport auctioneering “was a new world” for her, given her longstanding association with art.
“It did take a little bit of training, largely to change my approach,” she said.
So what does it take to make a good auctioneer?
“Depending on what you’re selling, you have to learn the mechanics of the auctioneering process and blend it with math, theatre and drama – all wrapped up in a smile!”
The PKL experience, she said, warmed her up for the cricket auctions.
Despite a foray into sport, steering a cricket auction at the WPL proved to be a different ball game.
The scale of operations, including the requirements of catching the producer’s cue in the ear during live broadcast, added a different dimension to the job.
‘Can’t let your nervousness take over your job’
Sagar describes a usual auction as an “unknown” as it unfolds in real time.
The ones in cricket often come with last-minute mic-ups or touchups with the makeup, frenzied bidding wars traversing multiple parties or, something as seemingly easy-to-do as figuring out where the franchises are seated based on the draw that allots them their order. Their dynamism warrants significant focus and flexibility.
“You have to be alert and adaptable,” she said. “At times, despite your best efforts, there can be mistakes. You may get a syllable wrong when calling out hundreds of names. It’s best to acknowledge the error, apologise, fix it, and move on.
“Regardless of the situation, you can’t panic. You cannot let your nervousness take over your job. Having composure as part of your skillset is a must.”
Sagar swears by exercise and yoga to refuel quietude and strength of body and mind.
“There’s nothing a downward dog or a headstand doesn’t fix,” she quipped. On auction eve, she retires early to avoid mental exhaustion during the all-important hours on the job the next day.
The bedrock of a well-run auction, in her view, is being as even-keel as possible as an auctioneer, no matter the stature of the players on offer.
“It’s important to present a newcomer with the same amount of energy as you would a star player,” she said.
Among the other non-negotiables, Sagar places the utmost premium on knowing the subject – the order of the sets of players, similar to pieces of art.
“You’ve got to pace out each name well and give it enough time,” she said. “Especially, when there’s a flurry of bids for them.
“And when the frenzy slows down, give it a few seconds and ask the room, ‘Everybody sure? Last chance if you’d like to bid?’ Whether in art or cricket, rapid changes such as a last-minute raise of the paddle or a new entrant coming in are a given. It’s your job to factor them all in.”
Has her preparation for the IPL auction been any different from the WPL’s?
“No, because the basic formats are the same,” Sagar explained. “The key is to make sure you are familiar with the names. You don’t want to destroy someone’s name who’s coming up on a platform as prestigious as this – it’s their moment of glory, after all.”
On Tuesday, as Sagar reels off over 300 such names, it will be as much her moment in the sun as theirs.
Jalaluddin Mohammad Rumi’s spiritual poems and perpetual wisdom have transcended time and cultures.
Seven hundred and fifty years after his death, the celebrated Persian thinker remains a best-selling poet in the West, revered as an Islamic dervish in the East, while his sagacious thoughts rule the internet.
When he died on December 17, 1273, aged 66, the streets of Konya, in present-day Turkey, were filled with mourners from multiple creeds and nations, reflective of the cosmopolitan society that lived in 13th century Anatolia – it was a time when the cross-cultural exchange of ideas and arts prospered.
At his funeral, his followers, who also included Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians, each recited from their own scriptures.
This year too, on Sunday, the man posthumously known by his nisbah (a name indicating one’s origins) Rumi, will be honoured by his followers on Sheb-i Arus – meaning wedding night in both Persian and Turkish.
And it would be in the spirit of the Persian poet’s call: “Our death is our wedding with eternity.”
From the British capital, London, to California in the United States, to Konya, his murids or devotees, will gather in whirls of motion and emotion, remembering his own elegiac eulogy:
“When you see my corpse is being carried, Don’t cry for my leaving, I’m not leaving, I’m arriving at eternal love.” – Rumi (translated by Muhammad Ali Mojaradi)
Mevlana Rumi’s tomb in Konya is a point of pilgrimage for millions of devotees and tourists each year [Creative Commons]
Who is Rumi in the east?
Rumi is believed to have been born in the early thirteenth century in Balkh (now in Afghanistan), though some say his place of birth was in Central Asia.
At the time of his birth (1207), the Persianate Empire spanned from India in the east and as far west as Greece, with many staking a claim to the man who would become more popularly known as Rumi, reflecting the region where he would settle – the Sultanate of Rum, also known as Anatolia.
In the eastern world, Rumi’s name is often preceded by the honorific title Mevlana or Maulana (meaning our master), showing just how respected he is as an Islamic scholar and Sufi saint. To state his name without this title in some circles would receive tut-tutting and be considered disrespectful.
“Like any historical figure who spans cultures, he has taken on a life of his own,” explained Muhammad Ali Mojaradi, a Persian scholar based in Kuwait.
He said people tend to project their own understanding and bias when engaging with historical texts, including Rumi’s.
“I have heard that Rumi is a staunchly orthodox Sunni Muslim, others say he is a closeted Zoroastrian, or a deviant Sufi, or someone who is too enlightened to subscribe to a religion. Some consider him a Tajik, a Khurasani, others a Persian, or Iranian, some are adamant that he is Turkish. These are more indicative of our biases than the real Rumi.”
During his life, his identity was intrinsically linked to his faith.
“I am the servant of the Quran, for as long as I have a soul. I am the dust on the road of Muhammad, the Chosen One. If someone interprets my words in any other way, That person I deplore, and I deplore his words.”
– Rumi (translated by Muhammad Ali Mojaradi)
Rumi was an Islamic scholar, following in a long line, and taught Sharia or Islamic law. He would also practise Tasawwuf, more popularly known as Sufism in the West. It is a way of understanding and drawing closer to God through the purification of the inner self, reflecting and remembering God through meditative chants, songs and sometimes even dance.
Other thinkers and poets of his time included Ibn Arabi, the Andalusian philosopher and Fariddudin Attar, the Persian author of the Mantiq-ut-Tayr (Conference of the Birds).
Islam’s openness to discussion and debate at this time would allow the poetry and arts to thrive, influencing the works of other Persian poets like Hafez and Omar Khayyam.
Whirling dervishes perform outside the Byzantine-era Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul, Turkey, this year to mark the 750th anniversary of the death of Mevlana Rumi [Khalil Hamra/AP Photo]
What did Rumi become known for?
After completing his theological education in Syria’s Aleppo, Rumi went to Konya where he met a wandering dervish, named Shams-i-Tabriz, who left a lasting impact on the Islamic scholar.
Barka Blue, founder of a spiritual arts movement, the Rumi Centre, in California, said Tabriz would transform Rumi, and lead to his “spiritual awakening”.
Rumi penned his magnum opus, the Masnavi, a 50,000-line poem, written in rhyming couplets and quatrains about a lifelong yearning in search of God.
It would become the most famed of his works. Other notable works include Fihi Ma Fihi and Divan-i Shams-i Tabrizi – a collection of poems written in honour of his spiritual mentor.
“It [Masnavi] was actually called the ‘Quran in Persian’, indicating that it is the pinnacle of expression in that language but also that it is an exposition of the Quran in the Persian tongue,” Blue, the acclaimed rapper and poet, told Al Jazeera.
As Rumi says in the introduction, “this is the root of the root of the root of the way [faith],” added Blue, author of The Art of Remembrance.
To fully understand and appreciate the depths of Rumi’s words, “a firm grasp of the Islamic tradition in general and Sufism in particular” is needed, Blue said. “His words are undoubtedly a beautiful entry point to this tradition [of Islam].”
Rumi himself would advise readers of the Masnavi to make ritual ablution and be in a state of cleanliness as one would upon reading the Quran or praying the five daily prayers. The intention when reading it was to connect with the Creator.
Who is Rumi in the West?
The first-known English translation of some of Rumi’s work was published in 1772 by a British judge and linguist William Jones in Calcutta — now Kolkata — then the base of the British East India Company. Persian was still the official language in courts and public offices in India, a legacy of Mughal rule.
Rumi’s mystical pull attracted other British translators, JW Redhouse in 1881, Reynold A Nicholson (1925) and AJ Arberry’s Mystical Poems of Rumi (1960-79).
But Rumi reached truly global popularity with the general public after older, more academic English translations of his work were retranslated, in particular in the 1990s by American writer Coleman Barks. More than seven centuries after Rumi’s death, he was a best-selling poet.
Yet that popular reach came at a cost, say some experts.
“The main issue for decades has been that the Rumi presented to Western readers, including Muslims, is that Rumi is a secular, universalist poet,” explained Zirrar Ali, a writer and photographer who has also authored several anthologies of Persian and Urdu poetry.
He told Al Jazeera that just as the works of German philosopher Immanuel Kant and English philosopher John Locke cannot be understood without understanding their belief systems, it should be the same with Rumi.
“What should be asked is why has Rumi been transformed so freely? It is partially laziness and partially intentional,” he added.
Removing Rumi’s orthodox Sunni beliefs has led to wrongful translations, he said, that cater to a pseudo-secular image of the man and his work.
Rumi is not only cast as a universalist, Ali said, “he is painted as a free-thinking liberal … a man who wants nothing but wine, free sex and joy”.
Omid Safi, a professor at the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University in North Carolina, also points to inaccurate translations.
“God” or “The Beloved”, is considered to be a human beloved, “rather than subtle references that encompass all earthly, celestial, and divine beloveds”, he explained.
“Another concrete example is the much-quoted line ‘Let the beauty we love be what we do, there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground’. But Rumi’s original is specifically referring to Ruku’ and Sajda, which are postures of the [daily] Islamic prayer.”
Rendering of some of Rumi’s “most popular versions … water down the Islamic context”, Safi told Al Jazeera.
By 2015, half a million copies of Barks’s The Essential Rumi translations were sold, making Rumi the most widely read poet in the United States. From Coldplay singer Chris Martin to Madonna, pop icons have spoken of how they have been inspired by Rumi’s work. Martin has referred to the Barks translation. Al Jazeera reached out to Barks for a comment but had not received a response at the time of publication.
Perhaps without realising the deeper connections to Islam, a meme-obsessed internet then readily turned digestible one-liners into shareable quotes, that would be used by lovelorn romantics to try to capture the heart of their beloved, or to at least get a date.
Still, even critics of Rumi’s meme-ification acknowledge potential gains from translations that have made the poet more accessible to 21st-century audiences.
“Whether or not Barks’s work has merit or counts as a translation aside, if it leads people to read more about Rumi and discover more accurate renderings, or even learn to read Persian, that is a good thing,” Mojaradi, who founded the passion project Persian Poetics in 2018 to debunk the rise in fake Rumi quotes, told Al Jazeera.
That is just what happened to Baraka Blue. He was led to Rumi in his teenage years when he would soak up poetry with like-minded friends, beat poets, musicians and songwriters. Rumi’s words, he said, had a “profound impact”.
“It wasn’t that he was good with words, it was the state he was speaking from and the reality he was describing. That’s what drew me in,” Blue, an educator and poet, told Al Jazeera. So enraptured was Blue, he embraced Islam at age 20 and made a pilgrimage to Rumi’s tomb in Konya three months later.
His shrine has become a point of pilgrimage for millions of devotees and tourists, with the attached Mevlana Museum recording 3.5 million visitors in 2019, the year before COVID-19 hit. It is here too that the largest performance of the iconic sema dance is performed, especially during Sheb-i-Arus.
Whirling dervishes of the Mevlevi order perform during a Sheb-i Arus ceremony in Konya [Lefteris Pitarakis/AP Photo]
Is Rumi’s Sufi dance a panacea for modern lifestyle problems?
Though its origins are as mysterious as the movement itself, some say it was Tabriz who introduced Rumi to the sema.
It would only become ritualised and part of a ceremony a few years after Rumi died in 1273, Sultan Walad, the eldest of his four children, established the Mevlevi Order, sometimes also known as the Order of the Whirling Dervish in reference to the enchanting sema ceremony.
Although the dance was added to the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008, and Konya is expecting thousands to attend this year’s Sheb-i-Arus, in some places, where Sufism is less accepted, it is practised privately.
Al Jazeera attended a sema performance in London. There, heads jolted to the right, eyes cast to the earth, arms extended as if about to fly, seven people spun in tandem, their earthy off-white linen dresses started to gently open up like the petals of waterlilies. A left hand pointed to the ground, while the right up to the heavens. They spun. Silently. To the echoes of the gentle nye.
The rotation, explained one of the dervishes to Al Jazeera later, is in an anticlockwise motion, “just like the pilgrims around the Kaaba and the birds that fly above it”.
Every December, Konya hosts a series of events to commemorate the death of Jalaladdin Rumi, the 13th-century Islamic scholar, poet and Sufi mystic [Lefteris Pitarakis/AP Photo]
Claire*, a spectator at the sema dance ceremony, said she found her way to Rumi about 30 years ago.
“I was going through a particularly troublesome time in my life, and a friend suggested I join her at a gathering that may help. I was expecting some type of yoga class, but what it actually was this, the sema.”
“You don’t have to belong to a faith. Remember Mevlana tells us ‘come, come, whoever you are, wanderer, idolater, worshipper of fire; come even though you have broken your vows a thousand times’,” she added.
“Those lines tell us everything, his teachings were meant to transcend all religion.”
But Mojaradi said, these lines, perhaps the most popular lines attributed to Rumi, are not actually his words, but instead belong to Abu Said Abu al-Khayr, another Persian Sufi poet who lived 200 years before Rumi.
“The fact that even Rumi’s most dedicated followers are inundated with false or mistranslated quotes, shows how big of a problem we’re dealing with,” said Mojaradi, who launched Rumi Was a Muslim project in 2021 to counter this.
“I am happy if anyone reads Rumi at any level, but they are doing themselves a disservice if they do not dive deeper. Sure, anything that spreads his message on any level can be seen as a good thing,” he said.
What makes Rumi so universal?
Rumi’s message is “strikingly universal”, said Blue. “It’s evidenced by his popularity in translation all over the world.”
“One of Rumi’s great gifts is to communicate profound metaphysical truths in the language of simple metaphor from shared human experience. He will speak of a ruby and a stone, or a chickpea in the pot, or a donkey that was stolen, or really anything at all – but the whole time he is speaking about the One.”
And at its core, it is his message of love that ultimately makes him relatable – whether that is interpreted as divine love, romantic, or familial.
“Set fire to everything, except love.”
– Rumi (translated by Muhammad Ali Mojaradi)
Mojaradi added: “Rumi’s love is a fire, everyone is yearning for a spark to set their life on fire. Especially in this modern world where everything seems to be meaningless and fleeting.”
Kannauj, India — Gopal Kumar pulled apart the bulb of a flower and pointed to where the roots of the petals had turned a little black inside. This is when the marigolds smell the best and are ready for picking, he said. He picked a pink rose next and sniffed. “You can only find this smell in Kannauj,” he said.
Kumar has been growing flowers outside Kannauj – a sleepy town nestled on the fertile plains of the Ganges in northern India – for 50 years. His flowers are used in the making of ittars, natural perfumes produced by distilling flowers, herbs, plants or spices over a base oil, which takes on the scent of the raw material.
Once a sophisticated kingdom in northern India, Kannauj is famed for its production of ittars using an ancient method called deg-bhakpa. This is a slow, laborious process of hydrodistillation devoid of all modern equipment that has survived in hundreds of small-scale distilleries across Kannauj and in surrounding cities.
Despite a long heritage of fragrance and scent, economic liberalisation of the late 1980s led to a period of decline in India’s ittar industry as cheap, alcohol-based perfumes were introduced from the West. Until the 1990s, there were 700 distilleries in Kannauj, but their numbers dropped to 150 to 200 by the mid-2000s. Trying to compete on price, some manufacturers started using alcohol as the base rather than more expensive sandalwood oil, degrading the quality and purity of the products.
Post-liberalisation, rather than selling directly to consumers, the vast majority of ittars and essential oils produced in India were exported to other businesses – either as an input into perfumery and cosmetic industries in the West or to the tobacco industry. Rosewater is an ingredient in chewing tobacco.
But in the past few years, several young, predominantly female Indian entrepreneurs have spotted a gap in the market between these indigenous artisanal skills and India’s thriving consumer culture, and a new set of homegrown brands has emerged.
A new wave of fragrance
Boond Fragrances is one such company, established in May 2021 during the pandemic by a sister and brother, Krati and Varun Tandon, to help preserve and raise awareness of the perfume-making traditions of Kannuaj and to support local artisans.
“Our father was a perfume trader and at-home perfumer,” Krati Tandon explained at her family home in Kannuaj. ”We grew up around perfumers and perfumeries in Kannauj, and you really absorb what’s happening. But we also saw over the years how some perfumeries started shutting down, and some are worried about their futures.”
The duo wanted to make ittars accessible. “The idea was really for us to bring it to customers – people like us who, if we knew something like this existed, would appreciate it,” Krati said.
Divrina Dhingra, author of The Perfume Project: Journeys Through Indian Fragrance, agrees. “Ittars have a marketing problem actually. In many ways they are stuck in the past,” she said. “But it is also an awareness problem. I don’t know if many people know this industry still exists, the way in which it exists, what it does, what is actually available.”
Gopal Kumar grows flowers in Kannauj that are used to make ittars [Eileen McDougall/Al Jazeera]
The initial response to Boond, Krati said, has been overwhelming with more than 10,000 orders dispatched in the 12 months up to October, a sizeable number for the young business.
Sales rise in winter, the Indian wedding season and the time when Christmas orders come from abroad. The company said it expects sales to double in the next two years but declined to share its revenue numbers.
“Recently, people have again started realising what synthetic perfume is and what real perfume is,” Krati said. “Particularly post-COVID, there has been a transformation back towards the real thing.”
As per market research firm Technavio, the Indian perfumery industry will increase by about 15 percent compounded annually for the next five years. While market trends are currently dominated by trade between businesses, the number of Indian firms selling their own fragrances directly to consumers is increasing.
Indian beauty writer Aparna Gupta said there’s been “a discernible shift, a renaissance if you will, in the domestic market’s attitude towards these traditional fragrances”, which are predominantly marketed on Instagram, and demand for them has gained “considerable momentum”.
She credited brands like Boond that are concentrating on traditional, time-tested ittar scents for playing “a pivotal role” in this resurgence. “They are not just selling ittars; they are reintroducing a forgotten art form to a generation that is eager to reconnect with its heritage,” she said.
Then there are other new brands like Kastoor and Naso Profumi that are targeting “younger consumers by blending traditional elements with modern nuances” – for instance, Kastoor’s Mahal with its unique blend of patchouli and lotus, Gupta said.
A tradition of scent
The flowers used used to make ittar are put in water and sealed inside a large copper vat called a deg [Eileen McDougall/Al Jazeera]
It is unclear exactly how long ittars and essential oils – made when vapours of ingredients are extracted but no base oil is used – have been produced through hydrodistillation in India. However, recently distillation stills excavated from the cities of the Indus Valley indicate a culture of scent in some form dating back to about 3,000 BC.
Around Kannuaj, many locals attribute the discovery of ittars to the Mughal queen Nur Jahan, who lived in the 16th and 17th centuries CE. However, Sanskrit texts indicate that the area was already a centre of fragrance before Mughal times. Historians believe the practice was invigorated with new ingredients and distillation methods further developed by the Mughal court.
Production is highly seasonal, and February in Kannuaj is the season of Damask rose. The warming winter sun was high in the sky by the time a motorbike arrived at the distillery of Prem and Company, a jute sack tied to its rear. Dinesh, the distiller, immediately weighed, inspected and emptied the dusky pink flowers into water inside a large copper vat called a deg.
Within minutes, the rim of the deg has been sealed with a metal lid and an airtight layer of water and clay, and a bamboo pipe has been connected from the deg to a second, smaller vessel, the bhakpa, which sits in a concrete sink of water.
Each deg is fixed over a furnace fired with wood or dung, and the distilled vapours pass through the pipes, collecting and condensing in the bhakpa. This bhakpa holds the base oil, which over time is imbued with the scent of the distilled material.
Boond Fragrances use local artisans, such as Dinesh, to distil both new scents and more traditional favourites, including Mitti, the smell of fresh rain, and Khus, known for its cooling notes. Just a dab suffices with 6ml (0.2oz) selling for $20.
A bamboo pipe connects the deg to the bhakpa, which sits in a concrete sink of water and holds the base oil that gets imbued with the scent [Eileen McDougall/Al Jazeera]
The modern ittar
Kastoor’s founder, Esha Tiwari, wants to change existing perceptions. “Ittars are considered heavy,” she said. “In the earlier times, the ittars were so distinct. They were used by kings and queens as a mode of announcement. But I don’t want to drag you to the 14th century. I will bring this art form to your 21st century.”
Kastoor was set up in 2021. During research and development, 30-year-old Tiwari, who has a background in marketing, ran workshops to facilitate knowledge exchange between ittar artisans and modern perfume experts. The result was a set of seven “modern ittars”, in which trusted ingredients are combined in new, unique proportions with 8ml (0.3oz) selling for $22 to $36. The target market is middle-class, urban consumers looking for a completely natural perfume.
Growth has been rapid. Kastoor has another collection of ittars in the pipeline, and the number of artisans it employs has increased from three initially to 12 to 15 families across Kannauj, Hyderabad and Uttarakhand.
Tiwari found the younger generations of artisanal families were leaving the industry due to lack of prospects. “They didn’t see the demand,” Tiwari said. “That is where we came in. This is not a one-time hike we are giving to their business. It is a constant change in their livelihoods.”
According to Tiwari, Kastoor’s turnover is expected to rise from $120,000 and increase by 5 to 6 times over the next two to three years.
Made in India
The flowers used to make ittars are sold by weight [Eileen McDougall/Al Jazeera]
In addition to the domestic market, these new brands are also exporting across the globe – to Europe, the United States, Japan, Australia and the Middle East. The absence of alcohol makes ittars non-haram and suitable for the religious purposes of both Hindus and Muslims.
The growing interest in sustainability and organic products worldwide is also bringing these producers new clients.
“In the beauty industry, there has been this entire movement towards natural and what’s local, and so in that sense, ittars fit in really nicely,” Dhingra said.
International perfumer Yosh Han said that globally, there is an “increasing desire to decolonise scent” and an “interest in POC [people of colour] brands” because of which some of these new Indian firms are getting interest from abroad.
Back in Kannauj, generations of knowledge and experience mean the local artisans are perfectly positioned to exploit and adjust to these new trends while promoting Indian products.
The name Kastoor comes from the word kasturi, which is also known as musk, a scent of a deer’s navel. According to folklore, the deer was enchanted by this scent and searched for it, not understanding that it was coming from itself, Tiwari explained.
“So we have used it as a metaphor,” she smiled. “We are still frantically looking outside, not realising that we are the creators of the world’s most magnanimous scents.”
Cloud seeding was used to counter the hazardous smog in the megacity of Lahore, one of the world’s most polluted cities.
Artificial rain has been used for the first time in Pakistan in a bid to combat hazardous levels of pollution in the megacity of Lahore, says the provincial government.
Planes equipped with cloud-seeding equipment flew on Saturday over the eastern city, often ranked one of the worst places globally for air pollution.
“It drizzled in at least 10 areas of Lahore,” caretaker chief minister of Punjab, Mohsin Naqvi, told reporters, adding that the authorities were monitoring the impact of artificial rain in a radius of 15km (nine miles).
Air quality in Lahore has been particularly bad in the last few weeks and the Punjab government employed several tactics including the early closure of businesses and keeping schools off for two extra days to help improve the air quality – but nothing worked.
The “gift” was provided by the United Arab Emirates, Naqvi said.
“Teams from the UAE, along with two planes, arrived here about 10 to 12 days ago. They used 48 flares to create the rain,” he said.
Commuters make their way along a street amid smog in Lahore [File: Arif Ali/AFP]
Naqvi said the team would be able to assess the effects of the experiment by Saturday night.
The UAE has increasingly used cloud seeding, sometimes referred to as artificial rain or blueskying, to create rain in the arid expanse of the country.
In the cloud-seeding process, silver iodide, a yellowish salt, is burned in clouds in a compound with acetone to encourage condensation to form as rain.
Naqvi reassured the public of the safety of the artificial rain, citing more than 1,000 annual missions by the UAE and similar technologies used in dozens of countries, including the United States, China and India.
Lahore’s toxic smog
Even very modest rain is effective in bringing down pollution, experts have said.
Levels of PM2.5 pollutants – cancer-causing microparticles that enter the bloodstream through the lungs – were measured as hazardous in Lahore on Saturday at more than 66 times the World Health Organization’s danger limits.
Air pollution has worsened in Pakistan in recent years, as a mixture of low-grade diesel fumes, smoke from seasonal crop burn off and colder winter temperatures coalesce into stagnant clouds of smog.
Lahore has suffered the most from the toxic smog, choking the lungs of more than 11 million residents in Lahore during the winter season.
Breathing the poisonous air has catastrophic health consequences.
Prolonged exposure can trigger strokes, heart disease, lung cancer and respiratory diseases, according to the WHO.
The Pakistani authorities blame industrial emissions, smoke from brick kilns and vehicles, and the burning of crop residue and general waste for causing air pollution and smog in the central Punjab province.
Naqvi said that there would be more instances of artificial rain in the city, in which smog towers – large-scale air purifiers designed to capture pollution – would also be installed in the coming weeks.
Growing industrialisation in South Asia in recent decades has driven an increase in pollutants emanating from factories, construction activity and vehicles in densely populated areas.
The problem becomes more severe in cooler autumn and winter months, as temperature inversion prevents a layer of warm air from rising and traps pollutants closer to the ground.
Rising air pollution can cut life expectancy by more than five years per person in South Asia, one of the world’s most polluted regions, according to a report published in August which flagged the growing burden of hazardous air on health.
Pakistan is responsible for less than 1 percent of global carbon emissions but is among the top 10 most climate-vulnerable nations.
The world produces enough food to feed all of its 8 billion people, yet hundreds of millions go hungry every day.
There is no shortage of food being produced globally. Yet, more than 735 million people faced chronic hunger in 2022.
The United Nations has called for urgent humanitarian action to save lives and livelihoods. It has warned the target of ending hunger by 2030 might not be reached.
Communities across Africa are also facing their worst food crises in four decades. But the funding of aid programmes that tackle food insecurity is declining.
So, if the world has enough to feed its people, why do so many nations suffer from food insecurity and hunger?
IEA report says demand is expected to grow in India, China but decline in United States, European Union.
Global coal use is expected to reach a record high in 2023 as demand in emerging and developing economies remains strong, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has said.
The demand for coal is seen rising 1.4 percent in 2023, surpassing 8.5 billion tonnes for the first time as usage in India is expected to grow 8 percent and that in China up 5 percent due to rising electricity demand and weak hydropower output, IEA said in a report released on Friday.
Coal is the largest energy-related source of the CO2 emissions responsible along with other greenhouse gases for global warming.
Half of the world’s coal use comes from China, the agency said, so the outlook for coal will be significantly affected in the coming years by the pace of clean energy deployment, weather conditions, and structural shifts in the Chinese economy.
Coal use is set to drop by about 20 percent this year in both the European Union and the United States, the report said.
The agency said it was difficult to forecast demand in Russia, currently the fourth-largest coal consumer, because of the continuing conflict in Ukraine.
But the IEA noted that overall coal use is not expected to drop until 2026, when the major expansion of renewable capacity in the next three years should help lower usage by 2.3 percent compared with 2023 levels, even with the absence of stronger clean energy policies.
Global consumption is forecast to remain well over 8 billion tonnes in 2026, the report said. To reach goals set by the Paris climate agreement – reached in 2015 by governments who agreed to phase out fossil fuels in favour of renewable energy in the second half of the century – the use of unabated coal would need to fall significantly faster, it added.
At the United Nations COP28 climate talks in Dubai this week, world leaders agreed to a deal that would, for the first time, push nations to transition away from fossil fuels to avert the worst effects of climate change.
However, the agreement did not go so far as to seek a “phase-out” of fossil fuels, for which more than 100 nations had pleaded. Rather, it called for “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade”.
“The absence of explicit ‘phase-out’ language in the draft is significant, as it is a more measurable and definitive term, sending a strong message globally about a total shift away from fossil fuels,” Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network International, told Al Jazeera.
“The current terminology – ‘transitioning away’ – is somewhat ambiguous and allows for varying interpretations.”
Mumbai, India – Park Circus, a bustling neighbourhood in the heart of India’s historic eastern metropolis Kolkata, is known as a Muslim ghetto by its inhabitants and the city’s Hindu middle-class populace.
Some of the poorest slums of the city are found here at the cross-section of Kolkata’s central and southern districts in a mix of posh enclaves, malls and restaurants.
In a conservative and marginalised environment, especially for women, it is nothing short of remarkable that one of the neighbourhood’s own, Saika Ishaque, picked up cricket at a young age.
What’s more, the “ziddi” (headstrong) player from Park Circus went on to become one of Indian cricket’s breakout stars and rags-to-riches success stories of the year.
In a fairytale-like year, Saika signed a contract with the Mumbai Indians franchise in the inaugural Women’s Premier League (WPL), completed a title-winning campaign with them and made an impressive debut for India in the recent T20 series against England.
The 28-year-old left-arm spinner now finds herself knocking on the doors of the Test team as India look to build a dominant squad.
Just ask Jhulan Goswami, the legendary fast bowler who is renowned as a poster child of improbable, against-all-odds narratives of triumph in Indian cricket.
“Saika has had a rough and tough childhood,” Goswami told Al Jazeera.
Goswami knows Saika better than most, being her former teammate in the Bengal side and current bowling coach at Mumbai Indians.
“Her family’s financial condition has always been utterly abject. She lost her father at a very young age, and coming from such a place where having two square meals a day or studying or playing is a tall ask, it’s quite incredible to see a girl having come this far and play cricket for India.”
Goswami has watched Saika’s journey unfold from up close.
The 41-year-old remembers a pre-teen Saika lugging a bat almost twice her size for practice sessions at Vivekananda Park in southern Kolkata.
“For an 11- or- 12-year-old, she had a lot of pluck, the kind of X factor you look for in young cricketers. She would come to the nets holding her mother’s hand and always used the masculine gender for Hindi words as if she were a boy: khaunga, jaunga, karunga [I will eat, go, do].”
Such slip-ups are still part of her speech. It is partly down to her upbringing in the bylanes of Park Circus, where most of her childhood friends were boys, a rarity for Muslim women there.
Her childhood was spent playing gully cricket, riding motorcycles and strutting around the neighbourhood with the air of a local gang boss.
To all that rizz, add a penchant for dying her hair red, green, purple and other hues.
“She has a ‘bindaas’ [carefree] character,” Harmanpreet Kaur, the India captain, who also leads Mumbai Indians, said on the eve of Saika’s India debut last week.
Echoing Saika’s iconic quip, “I’m a bowler. I’m here to take wickets” from her WPL stint, Harmanpreet added: “She has a wicket-taking mindset.”
Saika ended the T20 series with five wickets, three of which came in the third T20, which India won.
The bold spinner “loves a challenge”, according to England and Mumbai Indians all-rounder Natalie Sciver-Brunt.
“Even in her debut series for India, I saw her attack the stumps and make life difficult for batters.”
Charlotte Edwards, former England captain and incumbent head coach of Mumbai Indians, believes Saika’s personality shines through her bowling.
“She’s a real competitor and certainly a character,” Edwards told Al Jazeera.
“She’s a bit different – look how she’s got the blonde locks now!”
Goswami is credited with bringing Saika to the WPL.
“Ahead of the auction, I asked Jhulan, ‘Who’s the best left-arm spinner who’s not played for India yet?’ And she said it was Saika and sent me a video of hers,” Edwards said.
“I watched it immediately and knew instantly she was a player we wanted.”
It did help that Saika had long been a reliable wicket-taker in domestic cricket, where she has taken 140 wickets and had put in the hard yards in nearly 12 years.
From Park Circus to the big stage
Despite her domestic success, financial challenges – including costs involved in playing the game consistently and the historically limited earning opportunities for female cricketers in India – often threatened to pull Saika away from the sport.
“In many ways, the onus was on us, her Bengal teammates and the Cricket Association of Bengal, to ensure Saika doesn’t become one of the thousands of cricketers we have lost due to the lack of financial security,” Goswami said.
The tall Indian fast-bowling great gave Saika her first cricket kit but plays it down.
“Whoever could chipped in to ensure that Saika finished her schooling and kept her cricket career going. The rest is all down to her own dedication, determination and destiny.”
Saika’s first brush with cricket came on the streets of Park Circus.
Her father, encouraged by his friend, enrolled Saika in a local cricket club where she started out as a fast bowler but occasionally kept wickets too. It was at the insistence of an instructor at Vivekananda Park that the naturally left-handed Saika traded pace for spin.
“What struck me when I first saw her videos and in person was that she was slightly quicker than most left-arm spinners,” Edwards said.
“She had the ability to bowl in the powerplay, and that’s a real strength for left-arm spinners. She was really accurate in terms of what she brought to the table.”
With every wicket Saika took for Mumbai Indians – 15 in 10 matches, making her the only Indian spinner in the top 10 wicket-takers in the league – Edwards remembers turning to Goswami in the dugout to express her wonder.
“I’d tell Jhulan: ‘We’ve got the best left-hand spinner in India for 10 lakh rupees [$12,000] – an absolute steal!,’” Edwards recalled.
“And look, she is playing for India now.”
Saika Ishaque, right, took three wickets in the third and final T20 match against England [Rajanish Kakade/AP]
A fighter armed with a killer instinct
It’s a long way from where Saika found herself only three years ago. Grounded by a long shoulder-injury layoff, she lost her accuracy and rhythm to the extent that she had to be dropped from her state team.
Worried about her rapid decline, former India women’s cricketer and national selector Mithu Mukherjee put her in touch with former Bengal left-arm spinner Shibsagar Singh. Under his watch, Saika gradually rediscovered her bowling mojo and went back to her wicket-taking ways.
“The Saika I have known all these years has had that indomitable spirit: to bounce back and fight tooth and nail to overcome any hardships on and off the field,” Goswami said.
“She’s a fighter, and the adversities she faced from a young age have armed her with a killer instinct.”
Saika’s steady rise in 2023 augurs well for India as they look to build up to next year’s T20 World Cup in Bangladesh.
“The journey has just begun for Saika,” Goswami said.
“Given the ups and downs she has faced, I’d love to see her place a bejewelled crown of pride and prosperity on her mother’s head. And that would be some story, wouldn’t it?”
More than 450,000 Afghans have left the country since Pakistani authorities launched a deportation drive in October.
Islamabad, Pakistan – The Pakistani government has announced that undocumented Afghans awaiting paperwork to resettle to a third country will be allowed to stay in Pakistan for two more months.
The extension of the deadline on Wednesday from the end of this year to February 29 comes amid Pakistan’s drive to expel more than one million foreigners living in the country without paperwork.
According to the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), more than 450,000 people have returned to neighbouring Afghanistan since the deportation campaign began in early October. Ninety percent of them did so “voluntarily”, according to the Pakistani government, but the UNHCR says they cited fear of arrest as the primary reason for their decision to leave.
Announcing the extension, interim information minister Murtaza Solangi said anybody overstaying the new deadline would be fined $100 monthly, with a cap set at $800.
“These measures were aimed at encouraging the Afghans residing illegally in Pakistan to obtain legal documents or finalise evacuation agreements as soon as possible in a third country,” Solangi added.
The announcement followed a visit to Pakistan by US State Department officials to discuss the issue of Afghan refugees. It is estimated that nearly 25,000 Afghans require paperwork for resettlement in the United States.
Pakistan estimates that more than 1.7 million Afghan nationals have long lived in the country without documents, with the majority arriving in different waves since the Soviet invasion in 1979.
The last such major influx of an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 people took place two years ago after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan.
Pakistani authorities have cited a dramatic surge in violence this year – there have been more than 600 attacks in the first 11 months of 2023 – for the deportation drive.
Interim Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti said in October that 14 out of 24 suicide attacks in the country over that period were carried out by Afghan nationals. He did not provide any evidence.
The Taliban has denied any accusations of providing shelter to fighters, maintaining their position that Afghanistan’s soil is not being used for cross-border violence.
Chester, United Kingdom – It is just after 8:30am on a Friday and 40-year-old Waheed Arian is cycling down a path next to a frost-covered football field in the northwestern English city of Chester.
His cheeks are slightly flushed as he hops off his bike, and he seems sprightly despite having caught only a few hours of sleep.
During the week, he often works into the early hours of the morning running his two digital health charities, and he spends most weekends at the A&E (accident and emergency) ward of his local hospital where he works as an emergency doctor.
As Waheed locks up his bike, personal trainer Andy Royle walks up to him.
“Good to see you, Andy,” Waheed says.
The two men stretch, then run laps around the field. Despite the freezing weather, Waheed is enthusiastic. Physical activity has helped him cope with the most trying times in his life.
“In Afghanistan, when I was young, I used to do taekwondo and imitated the moves that Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan did in their movies. I fell down a lot,” he tells Andy laughing as they finish their workout.
Now Waheed, a former refugee, is helping others overcome adversity by drawing on his personal experience of surviving war-related trauma to advocate for and deliver mental health services to refugees.
A young Waheed and his parents after fleeing to Pakistan as refugees [Courtesy of Waheed Arian]
Finding strength
Waheed’s calm demeanour belies a difficult past.
He was born in 1983 in the Afghan capital Kabul during the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1989) when the Soviet-controlled government fought the US-backed Mujahideen for control over the country.
Waheed is the eldest son in a Pashtun family of 11 children. His father bought and sold antiques and traded currency at a bazaar, while his mother was a housewife.
As a child, he remembers being unable to sleep at night, terrified by the sounds of government planes and helicopters being fired at near his house. The government soldiers and tanks on the streets frightened him and he remembers wondering if they would shoot him.
“I only have two happy memories from my childhood during the 1980s,” says the softly spoken Waheed. “One was being taken by my mother to a local park to have ice cream.” The second was when his father gave him a kite.
When he was older, he remembers hours-long shelling in the capital preventing his family from venturing out. At times they went without food or water. When Waheed did go out to buy necessities for the family, he would see dead bodies lying on the streets and if a gun battle erupted, he would have to throw himself into a gutter to avoid being hit. Once, while cycling home, a missile hit a house in his neighbourhood and sent him flying, though he wasn’t badly injured.
Waheed’s childhood and teenage years were marked by anxiety and nightmares, which he would later learn were symptoms of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). But during those years, he also began associating exercise with resilience. When he was 11, his family was internally displaced to the rural province of Logar. “I had a really depressive episode then, and lost all my energy because I couldn’t sleep or eat,” Waheed recalls.
On a particularly difficult day, he decided on a whim to go for a run. Afterwards, he felt a bit better. “So I decided that I would keep doing it,” he says.
Then he started looking at famous sportspeople for inspiration, including the boxer Muhammad Ali and his story of surviving a tough childhood. He began taekwondo and started running regularly. Exercise gave him the strength to dream of a different future, he says.
Arian Wellbeing works with mental health professionals and fitness experts like Andy Royle (R) who exercises with refugees to help them stretch and release tension in their necks and backs [Amandas Ong/Al Jazeera]
Arian Wellbeing
In August this year, Waheed set up Arian Wellbeing to help address refugees’ mental health needs.
Working alongside 20 clinical psychologists and therapists, as well as five fitness professionals like Andy, Waheed and his team are piloting tailored therapy and exercise in group and one-on-one sessions with refugees in Chester, his home for the past nine years.
They aim to provide the service for free to people who don’t have a stable income or accommodation via a scheme that accepts payment from participants who are not experiencing financial difficulty. They provide both in-person and digital sessions.
With 22.1 percent of conflict-affected populations suffering from issues such as depression, anxiety and PTSD – compared to the global average of 12.5 percent – Waheed believes refugees’ mental health remains a widely underserved need.
“These are people who have overcome so many adversities, faced traumas over many years that are not understood,” he says.
Waheed believes that Arian Wellbeing’s culturally sensitive approach makes it unique.
The team comprises people who either have lived experience of conflict or have undergone rigorous training to better understand participants’ countries of origin – whether Afghanistan, Syria or Ukraine, for example.
“Even being aware of the tribal and regional makeup of a refugee [Afghan] community here in Chester can help us work with them more effectively,” he says. “For example, we know that in Afghanistan, women like to sew and bake together, while men bond over tea.” To help build rapport, he has embedded the sharing of food with various forms of therapy in his group sessions in Chester.
Waheed graduated in medicine from Cambridge University in 2006 [Courtesy of Waheed Arian]
The doctor in Peshawar
After that morning’s exercise, Waheed sits in his living room, soft winter light streaming in through the window. Behind him is a large wooden toy kitchen for his children Zane, 7, and Alana, 4. There are family photographs all around. In the garden outside is a mini-playground with a slide. “In a way,” he says quietly, “I see my own lost childhood when I look at my children.”
In the spring of 1988, when Waheed was five, his father risked being conscripted by the government to fight on the front line, so like some 3.5 million other Afghans, they left for neighbouring Pakistan.
“We travelled on a few donkeys and horses, taking seven days and nights to reach Babu refugee camp,” Waheed says, referring to the temporary settlement for Afghans that lay just outside Peshawar in northwest Pakistan. The journey over mountains and rivers was arduous and dangerous. “We came under attack from helicopter gunships three times,” Waheed recalls.
In Babu, sanitary conditions were poor, and within days, almost everyone all his family had contracted malaria.
After three months, Waheed was coughing so much that he brought up blood. “I could hardly walk,” he says. “That’s when my parents realised it wasn’t the typical cold or flu symptoms that children have.”
His worried father carried him to a pulmonologist in Peshawar, selling some of the gold reserves he had brought to afford the medical fee. The doctor examined Waheed and concluded he had advanced tuberculosis (TB), with just a 20 to 30 percent chance of survival even if he underwent treatment. “My father was in tears, but he was committed to saving me,” Waheed says. He went to the local marketplace and sold antiques they’d brought in order to buy meat, fruit, milk and medicine to help Waheed recover.
As Waheed slowly recuperated, he would still see the pulmonologist, a benevolent man who left a deep impression on Waheed. “I caught his attention because I was always very curious about his job every time I interacted with him,” he chuckles. “One day he gave me a stethoscope and a black-and-white medical textbook, and he said, ‘Son, I think you’ll be a doctor one day. So you’ll need these.’”
Waheed says he knew then that he wanted to become a doctor. “I was determined to also change people’s lives with the same patience and empathy that he showed me,” he explains.
Waheed as a child in Afghanistan [Photo courtesy of Waheed Arian]
Ambition, flashbacks
In 1991, after the Soviet Union had withdrawn from Afghanistan and during a lull in the fighting, the family returned to Kabul and Waheed formed his plan to become a doctor.
First, he thought, he had to learn English. This was the language of the pulmonologist’s medical textbook. He threw himself into his third grade studies and visited the United Nations Development Programme office in Kabul. There, he argued with the staff to allow him to enrol in their English classes. “They told me that I wasn’t an employee so the course wasn’t for me,” he laughs. “And I started debating with them about the importance of investing in children’s education.”
The office agreed to accept him as a student, and he became one of the first children in their English classes. But this period of stability was short-lived.
In April 1992, fighting broke out once again. Waheed wanted to continue studying but turned up to his school one day to find it had been destroyed by rockets.
Undeterred, he bought English and science textbooks that were being resold on market stalls after being looted from school cupboards.
By the time he was nine, he found himself playing the role of an unofficial neighbourhood doctor. “The health infrastructure had collapsed from years of fighting. There were no facilities, no drugs, no doctors,” he explains.
In Pakistan, he had spent many afternoons at the local pharmacy watching the pharmacist dress wounds. “I also learnt the names of common drugs like paracetamol, ibuprofen and penicillin,” he says. Using this knowledge, coupled with what he gleaned from his medical textbook, he tended to his neighbours’ less severe artillery wounds at home, using bandages improvised from old clothes and pillowcases.
In 1994, the Taliban came to power and gradually the chaos was replaced with an ironfisted rule.
Then, when Waheed was 15, his parents decided to send him to the UK to try to pursue his ambition of becoming a doctor. Meanwhile, despite his stellar grades, he was also experiencing symptoms of PTSD.
“I wanted to sleep all the time, and felt escalating anxiety whenever I had flashbacks of my childhood years,” he says. To calm himself, he would practise what he called a “do-it-yourself” form of cognitive behavioural therapy – which focuses on changing thought and behavioural patterns to manage one’s problems – by quietly reviewing the positive aspects of his life: that he was alive, and doing well academically. And he practised taekwondo.
Waheed working as a shopkeeper in his early days in London. He worked in a shop, in a cafe and as a cleaner to support himself and earn money for his studies [Courtesy of Waheed Arian]
A red tank
In 1999, Waheed left Afghanistan and applied for asylum in the UK where he was initially detained. As he waited three years for asylum to be granted, he juggled three jobs while studying at college. Though he found London exhilarating, his PTSD was worsening.
“As soon as I saw a red bus, it would turn into a tank… Or I’d have nightmares of a sniper taking my head off,” he says.
Only after excelling in his college A Level exams, then going to the University of Cambridge on a scholarship and graduating in 2006, did the mental strain become too much for him to bear. In 2008, experiencing back and shoulder pains and constant nightmares, he went to see a counsellor, who suggested that he had PTSD and anxiety. Therapy helped him to better cope with his symptoms and allowed him to embark on a medical career as a radiologist and emergency doctor.
After a while, he began wondering how he could give back to society.
“I started a telemedicine charity called Teleheal in 2015, which enables doctors in low-resource countries and conflict zones to access advice from volunteer medical experts in the UK, Canada and the US,” he says. Doctors in Afghanistan, Yemen and Syria, for example, connect with their counterparts through WhatsApp and Skype. Teleheal believes almost 700 lives may have been saved between 2016 and 2018 as a result of emergency care advice received via the charity.
“Teleheal taught me that it’s not technology that helps people communicate effectively, it’s compassion,” Waheed says. This made him think about how to harness compassion to help refugees overcome trauma.
Waheed and Palwasha, who fled from Afghanistan in 2021, walk along the River Dee in Chester [Amandas Ong/Al Jazeera]
‘He gave us hope’
Waheed walks along Chester’s River Dee, which is lined by moss-covered stone walls and red brick homes on both sides.
He is on his way to catch up with Palwasha*, a 33-year-old Afghan woman who is receiving counselling through Arian Wellbeing. The former languages student fled Afghanistan after the Taliban returned to power in 2021.
“I was staying at the Holiday Inn in Chester with around 15 other displaced families when I met Waheed,” says Palwasha, speaking at a cafe.
“In communities like ours where there’s little awareness of mental health, we don’t always realise that physical symptoms can be a sign of depression or anxiety,” Palwasha explains as she cradles a cup of green tea. “I observed that many of the women had headaches, or said they felt fatigued.”
After arriving in Chester, although people were friendly and kind, she missed the liveliness of Kabul. She felt uncertain about her future and found there were days she felt drained of energy.
In April, when Waheed met the families housed at the hotel by the UK government, Palwasha remembers his inviting manner struck a chord with people.
“I thought: He is like us. He came here with nothing. He gave us hope that our lives might be different in the future,” she recalls.
Slowly, through gender-segregated group therapy sessions coupled with stretching exercises, the residents began to open up. “Before we received counselling, we weren’t really talking frankly about how we felt, or what we experienced back home,” she says. “It was really comforting to know that we were all in the same boat.”
Palwasha is about to move on to the next phase of her recovery programme where she’ll do more personalised one-on-one sessions.
She says she is feeling positive about the future. She is about to complete a diploma in mental health studies, reads Afghan poetry in her leisure time, wants to study Japanese, and is in discussions with Waheed about working as an interpreter for other Afghans who sign up for Arian Wellbeing.
Palwasha feels strongly about giving back to the initiative that has helped her.
“We’ve had war in Afghanistan for more than 40 years now,” she reflects. “I think it doesn’t really resonate with people the level of intergenerational trauma that Afghans carry with them. Some people, before coming to the UK, had never even left their province. It’s tough for them to assimilate, and they miss their family. I know I do.”
Training refugees to provide mental health support
Back at home in his study, Waheed has a brief Zoom meeting with Cressida Gaffney, a clinical psychologist with the National Health Service (NHS) who is also part of his team.
She later tells Al Jazeera that the UK health system “assumes a particular starting point for physical and mental distress that doesn’t always map to other cultures”. This is why, she says, Arian Wellbeing places great importance on team interpreters being present to pick up on cultural nuances, and wouldn’t carry out a therapy session without one.
Throughout the week, Waheed also speaks to mental health practitioners from around the world to share know-how. One of the people that he meets online that Friday morning in early December is Hivine Ali, a Bangladesh-based mental health and psychosocial support officer with the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR.
She’s Lebanese, and her parents have been displaced across three different countries. “So I really connect with the issues that refugees face, and it gives me a sense of meaning and fulfilment to help them,” she says.
Currently, along with other UNHCR staff, she’s training 200 volunteers from the Rohingya community to provide mental health support to their fellow refugees. She says that, unlike other refugees who may have a sense of belonging to their home countries, the Rohingya face extreme exclusion as they are not accepted in Myanmar, from where they fled, nor in Bangladesh.
The training programme is giving her and her team cause for optimism, however, with some of the young Rohingya providing mental health support over the phone to their parents in Myanmar. This model Hivine is adopting “to help refugees help themselves” is something Waheed is interested in exploring. They end the call and agree to stay in touch.
Waheed at home with his wife Davina and their dog Pushkin [Amandas Ong/Al Jazeera]
‘I can’t stop’
In the late afternoon, Waheed relaxes in his kitchen with his wife, Davina. Zane is at school, while Alana is upstairs sleeping off an earache.
“I wouldn’t have been able to do any of this without Davina’s support,” Waheed says as he picks up Bruno, one of the couple’s two cats.
“He cares very much about his work, but he knows that if he’s feeling stressed about something, he can always talk to me,” Davina says.
Waheed travels often to speak about his work and published a memoir in 2021 hoping his story might help others.
Tomorrow, he has a rare day off from his multiple jobs and is excited to spend time with the children and order takeout. “Davina and I really love food,” he says, reminiscing about how the two had their first date in an Indian restaurant. “It’s true what people say, if you don’t love food, you probably have no appetite for life.”
Although Waheed will be back at the A&E ward on Sunday, he knows that the time spent with his family will give him the energy to continue.
Like the pulmonologist in Peshawar who inspired him so many years ago, “My life now really is just dedicated to giving people a message of hope, of resilience, of never giving up,” Waheed says. “I’m so privileged to be where I am, so I can’t stop.”
*Name changed to protect the interviewee’s identity.
This article has been produced with the support of UNHCR.
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