My experience with Muslims

The recent well justified uproar all around the world by Muslims because of a cartoon/caricture of the Prophet Mohammed made me think about the muslims I know, see and interact with in my life. My experience with them has been pretty pleasant. Here’re some I can remember at present. 🙂

• Members of Bohri Community frequent the area where I live in Mumbai. Their religious head Sydna Mohd Burannuddin has his abode about 200-300 metres away from my house. These days hordes and hordes of his followers come there every day mainly because of Mohurrum. But there has been no commotion so far on any of the days. Their volunteers stand on the corner of every lane and guide all those who come to visit the priest. No confusion, no chaos, no nuisance.

  A few years ago, it was the birthday of their priest (or may be it was some other important day). There were thousands and thousands of Bohri muslims standing in queue all the way from his house to my house and further. The queue was more than a kilometer long. But still, as always, there was no chaos. Everyone of them was patiently waiting and moving. Pretty disciplined crowd!

• Then, I must mention about my first boss, guide and guru – Advocate Nusrat Shah. He is a gem of a person. Ask any of his sub-ordinates and all will agree that he is a very good boss and a very good human being. He is a kind hearted gentleman. I have seen him whole heartedly fighting cases for poor and paupers without charging a penny and also donating lakhs to Prime Minister’s Relief Fund for Kargil war victims!

  He comes at least once every year to our home to have our gujarati undhiyu, puran poli and kadhi. 😀 He is a foodie and loves these dishes!

• Ammar Electricwala and Mohammed Kapadia are the next two persons who come to my mind. Ammar is the one who introduced me to programming under Windows which is event based. At that time I was used to sequential programming under DOS. He is my Visual Basic guru and helped me think in terms of events instead of sequence of code. 🙂

  Mohammed taught me Visual C++ and has been a friend since then. I have somewhat lost touch with both of them. I must admit that I am somewhat selfish and call them whenever I need their help. But they have always been helpful and solved my problems.

• Then there is Shahab Jafri. He is a recent acquiantace through the Digit Forums where he is more popularly know as Batty. 🙂 He has been always helpful. He is a techie to the core and has always answered my questions even if they were basic FAQ kind of questions. And this was even before we came to know each other pesonally or met each other. Actually, he keeps doing this to all. He is one of those patient guys who goes through the HijackThis log of every one who posts it. 🙂
• Lastly, let me mention about Fahim Shaikh. Fahim is a talented commercial artist and a very good photographer. Photographs that he clicks with a 2 mega pixel camera are far better than the one I click with 5 mega pixel camera. I always wondered what’s wrong with me. Then I realised and told to myself, “its talent, silly!” 🙂

  I have been able to reap some benefit out of Fahim’s pool of talent because he, alongwith Parita and Sonal (another talented pro and my sister-in-law :)), have designed my personal logo, visiting cards, letterheads, etc. They didn’t charge me a penny and still spent so much time and effort after it. I take this opportunity to thank them. They all still keep helping me by making templates for my clients’ websites. However, now I ensure that I pay them. 🙂