Outline of the notes:

1. What is the Reading Salon for Ruminators

2. The idea behind the theme for this session

3. The books that helped guide the discussion

4. Tips to become better readers

5. Some concluding remarks

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What is the Reading Salon for Ruminators?

The Reading Salon for Ruminators is a book club designed to explore one big theme in each session. Rather than focus on a single book, we take a thematic approach and everyone brings a book they associate with the theme.

I have chosen to do it this way because in my view, the books are the journey and not the destination. I can reach many conclusions about a variety of topics through the books on my shelf, and the person next to me can reach the same conclusions with a completely different book shelf.

The idea behind the theme for this session.

The ninth session had the theme of “On the Road Ahead”. This was in part motivated by the fact the reading salon went on the road for the first time, but also inspired by one of my favourite poems: The Road Ahead or the Road Behind.

This is one of my favourite poems because it embodies the natural fire of our souls that exists within the Autumn and Winter months. We associate these seasons with the cold and darkness, but lurking beneath is a defiance and will to life that we embody.

In this session I wanted to explore how reading inspires wonder in our lives, especially in these cold and dark days. But also a slightly larger conversation about travel and what it means to travel in the modern age. Those who read my letters from Uzbekistan or my recent interview with Aqeeb know this is a topic I could delve into endlessly.

The books that helped guide the discussion:

• Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

• Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree

• Selected Poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz

• Things We Leave Unfinished by Rebecca Yarros

• Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

• On the Road by Jack Kerouac

As an aside it was interesting to see how many people have read “Before the Coffee Gets Cold” - if you are looking for an entertaining read over an evening this is definitely one to consult.

Also huge shoutout to Aboubakr who brought the Selected Poems of Faiz Ahmed Faiz - the latter half of the session became a poetry love affair filled with readings, everyone sharing their favourite poems, and a wholesome end to an afternoon of ruminating. Some of the poems we discussed were:

• Morning Prayer with Rat King by Kaveh Akbar

• O Me O Life by Walt Whitman

• The works of Malika Abdulhamidova

For those looking to engage more with poetry I highly recommend the Youtube channel “Button Poetry” which shares spoken word performances from a range of phenomenal poets.

Tips to become better readers:

Towards the end of the discussion the group came together to share some thoughts of how they stay motivated to read, how they become better readers, and how they get out of a reading slump. Many of them are similar to previous tips aside from one ruminator who simply remarked:

It’s not that deep.

That alone captures the sentiment but she went on to say:

It’s something five-year olds do, it is something we all can do, we shouldn’t make it into this big deal which leaves you overwhelmed.

Some concluding remarks:

For those interested in keeping up to date with the Reading Salon I recommend following the Instagram @ReadingSalonForRuminators

The Reading Salon now has a website: ruminators.co.uk - for those not on social media you can find event links, access session notes, and become familiar with what the reading salon is.

Every session I am grateful to those who take the time and effort to join us for a few hours of ruminating. Having expanded these gatherings to another part of the UK I am especially grateful to those who made the Reading Salon possible up in the North West. The plan is to make these Manchester sessions regular with the next one planned for early 2027.

With longer nights firmly here and colder days awaiting, I hope we all find inspiration from literature to instil some fire into our souls.

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Outline of the notes:

1. What is the Reading Salon for Ruminators

2. The idea behind the theme for this session

3. The books that helped guide the discussion

4. Tips to become better readers

5. Some concluding remarks

What is the Reading Salon for Ruminators?

The Reading Salon for Ruminators is a book club designed to explore one big theme in each session. Rather than focus on a single book, we take a thematic approach and everyone brings a book they associate with the theme.

I have chosen to do it this way because in my view, the books are the journey and not the destination. I can reach many conclusions about a variety of topics through the books on my shelf, and the person next to me can reach the same conclusions with a completely different book shelf.

The idea behind the theme for this session.

The eighth session had the theme of “For the love of reading”. This was inspired by a recent remark by Mary Beard in which she shared her disdain for the phrase “I love reading.” The full quote is below:

i cannot bear, the kind of phrase, “I really love reading”, and I cannot bear when I hear on radio 4 in the morning those little interviews which said, “What book first sparked your love of reading?” And I think this is to undermine and underrate reading. That's why I don't like the phrase. Look, I get all kinds of pleasure in reading. I have a passion, in some sense, for reading. But reading is more essential to humanity now than just saying, “Oh, I really love it.” Like, I might love golf or something like that. Reading is about how to be you and how to think about the world, and if we kind of, to relegate it with the sort of wellbeing section of our lives. We're really underestimating it. I mean, I challenge anybody to say they feel better after they have read Kafka. I don't believe they have, right? That doesn't mean they shouldn't be reading Kafka, does it? And some of these books are not, I think, going to make you feel better. They're going to make you see the world differently. That's not about love.

Given Mary’s perspective, I wanted to explore what reading uniquely does to people. Why do we continue to read and persist with the practice given the abundance of mediums available?

The books that helped guide the discussion:

• Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig [for those interested I highly recommend [checking out his YouTube channel]

• Black Earth by Timothy Snyder

• Stoner by John Williams

• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

• Prince Caspian (The Chronicles of Narnia) by C.S. Lewis

• Start with Why by Simon Sinek

• Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

• The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein

• Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo

• Secrets by Jacqueline Wilson

• Animal Farm by George Orwell

• Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling

• Planting for Honeybees by Sarah Wyndham Lewis

• Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth

• Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman

• The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri

It was incredibly wholesome to hear what everyone brought to this Salon. Some of the anecdotes shared of memories from childhood, or the book that helped inspire getting back into reading really moved me. It serves as a reminder that the act of reading is something we shouldn’t take for granted given its transformative power.

Tips to become better readers:

Towards the end of the discussion the group came together to share some thoughts of how they stay motivated to read, how they become better readers, and how they get out of a reading slump. Below are the tips the group came up with.

• Have a reading goal (e.g. X number of books per year) - this isn’t necessarily to hit the target but rather to give you some external impetus to reading

• Build consistency with the habit. Think of this as a precursor to quantity and quality. Even if its a page a day, just build the rhythm

• Reduce your screentime generally, you will find yourself reading more even if the intention wasn’t to directly substitute phone for book

• At different thresholds of your life revisit books of the past and see how you feel

Some concluding remarks:

For those interested in keeping up to date with the Reading Salon I recommend following the Instagram @ReadingSalonForRuminators

The Reading Salon now has a website: ruminators.co.uk - for those not on social media you can find event links, access session notes, and become familiar with what the reading salon is.

We were also incredibly fortunate to be joined by some incredible leaders in the London running space - one of the things I love about the reading salon is the breadth of personalities that come into the space. For those in the City of London and looking for a midweek run, I would encourage you to checkout @BTSRunners

As I said at the start, I am incredibly grateful to everyone who came out on a cold autumn day and shared in our love of reading (sorry Mary). As shorter days and longer nights loom, I hope the Reading Salon is a space you can all turn to for great conversation and to expand your horizons.

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This is by far my longest and most wide ranging interview, for the benefit of readers it is split into three broad categories:

1. Central Asia & Travel

2. Side Quests

3. Chronically Online, deeply in person

The interview below was conducted with written submissions from Salam with only minor edits for formatting and grammar.

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Central Asia and Travel

What first drew you to Central Asia specifically – was there a particular moment, image, or story that sparked it?

The music.

Fourteen years ago, I came across a 360p YouTube video titled “Xorazm 2012 Popular Uzbek music 2011 2012 Top 10 New Best Songs Dance hip hop YouTube.” That was literally the title. I just loved the music instantly. The unique drum beats, the flare of the accordion, an Uzbek woman in striking green clothing performing traditional Lazgi dance from the Khorezm region. The language, the clothing, it felt so familiar yet so completely different.

But what stopped me was the minarets. This assortment of blue minarets in the background, that was Khiva, and I was like, what is this place? Why have I never seen it? Why is it blue? It looks beautiful. It was a shitty quality video, but I was completely drawn in. And part of me felt sad, because it just felt so far away and impossible to visit. I had no knowledge of it. I was fourteen, just this dumb kid who didn’t even know these countries existed. They were like Pokémon to be collected. I knew about Pakistan, maybe Afghanistan, but the fact that there were all these other stans out there? I had no clue. It felt like one of those places that could never actually be reached. Just completely inaccessible.

Then at university, I studied the Soviets in Central Asia, and it clicked again. When we talk about the Soviet Union, we picture white people. But there were millions of Muslims there, entire republics I’d never considered. And as a Muslim myself, raised in the Hanafi tradition, there’s a deeper pull. This is where it gets interesting though. We grow up talking about the Mughals, about Mughal architecture, the Taj Mahal, all these iconic symbols of South Asian Islamic identity. But if you actually strip it back, the roots of the Mughals start in the Fergana Valley with Babur. Uzbek builders built the Taj Mahal. The Mughal Empire, this thing we associate with South Asia, actually originates in Central Asia. We’ve somehow forgotten that. We’ve overlooked it. And travelling there made me realise I was discovering the actual roots of the identity I grew up with. Uzbekistan is the birthplace of Islamic scholarship and history that matters to me, not just academically but personally. The scholars, the dynasties, the intellectual lineage, it’s all scattered across that landscape.

I’m obsessed with tombs and necropolises, especially Islamic ones. The history is embedded in them. So it’s multilayered. That YouTube video lit the fuse, but then everything connected. The scholarship, the sacred sites, the layers of history, the roots of my own heritage all concentrated in one region. I just had to go.

A lot of people default to Southeast Asia or Western Europe for travel. Why do you think Central Asia gets overlooked, and what are they missing?

A lot of it is algorithmic, honestly. Southeast Asia, Western Europe, that’s what dominates TikTok and Instagram and the travel blogs, and the algorithm feeds you what’s already popular. It’s ironic because the etymology of algorithm is from Al-Khawarizimi - a scholar from a region in Western Central Asia.

I’m actually working on a piece about this at the moment, about how travel’s become a tick box exercise. People aren’t going to places anymore, they’re going to pictures. They’ve seen a photo and they want to replicate it, stand in that exact spot, and that’s the holiday. So Central Asia just wasn’t in the feed.

And it’s only since about 2024 that the Central Asia boom has really kicked off. I’d like to think i was a very small part of it. I made a lot of viral posts about Kazakhstan on TikTok that year, racked up millions and millions of views, got interviewed on the news and whatnot. So I think I’ve definitely played a part in juicing up the algorithm. But that’s besides the point.

Because now it’s actually the converse. People still say Central Asia gets overlooked, and then I come across a video today, today, saying Kyrgyzstan is becoming the new Bali. And I absolutely fucking hate that. If we look at what Bali is, we definitely don’t want that for Kyrgyzstan. Of course the locals see it differently, and the tourism industry sees it differently, I understand that. But there’s a point where it just gets sugar-coated. You see all these video trends going round now, POV: you booked a trip to Kyrgyzstan instead of Bali, that kind of thing. People do love that sort of thing, I mean look at the response on my note below. It’s the contrarian move. Somewhere not everyone’s been yet. So you can understand why it’s becoming that.

There’s also the “stan” suffix, which carries real baggage. Instantly, people conflate it with Pakistan, Afghanistan, places unfortunately associated with instability. Uzbekistan had military dictatorships. There’s all this historical weight attached to the entire region and people just lump it together. The Stans. All the same. All dangerous.

Which infuriates me, because this is literally the crossroads of civilisation. It’s the Silk Road. It’s where empires collided, where scholarship flowered, where some of the most important Islamic intellectualism happened. But people see it as a footnote, or worse, as orientalised danger. When I first told people I was going to Uzbekistan, they’d say “stay safe” like I was heading into a war zone.

And what are they missing? A lot. The architecture alone is worth it. But beyond that, there are experiences you can have there that are either inaccessible or prohibitively expensive elsewhere. Horse riding in the UK is quite elitist. There, you just hop on a horse. I learned to ski for the first time in Kazakhstan, with ski lessons entirely in Russian, and somehow still got it. These are just normal things people do there. The landscapes are stunning, the people are warm, the food is incredible, the culture is layered and largely undocumented in Western travel writing. The history is embedded in everything. You’re walking through places that shaped the world and most people have no idea they exist.

For me though, it’s always been the history. I wanted to go since I was a kid. It’s the history and the people, man. As someone who studied it, I had to go. And of course, when I finally started getting paid, I thought, why not. Let’s just go.

Can you walk us through what a typical day looks like for you when you’re out there – Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, wherever you happen to be?

I don’t plan much. But I do plan it in terms of the main sites. That’s definitely something I have to do, all the touristy stuff, the things I want to see. And I mean the properly touristy stuff, because you don’t want to be one of those pricks that goes, oh, that’s such a touristy place, I’m not going to see that. It’s touristy for a reason. But once that’s done I sort of shift. I go from being someone who wanted to see stuff to just living somewhere and doing nothing.

Sometimes I’ll purposely book three, four days in a place just to see how people are living, essentially. Not doing much. Just normal routines, going to the cafés there, chilling, meeting people. In the evenings I’ll try and find random events, jazz events, stuff like that, and go to those.

I also love boring cities. I know that sounds stupid, but I do. Cities where there’s objectively nothing to do. Because when there’s nothing marketed to tourists, you’re forced to actually look. You find the most random obscure little statue in a park, a mosaic tucked away somewhere, street art on a random corner. Things that have no attention on them whatsoever. And I find that stuff beautiful. I’ve been to places that are boring by any travel standard and had some of the most incredible times there. The boredom forces you to be present.

For me, the people definitely become the plan. You meet someone, they introduce you to someone else, and next thing you know I’m sat in a room full of Uzbek politicians interrogating me about Scottish independence. That’s a real story, by the way. And it happened because I met someone in a café.

How has travelling to that region shaped or changed the way you see the UK, or your own identity?

It’s made me a tourist in my own country.

When you travel somewhere new, you move with this childlike wonder. Everything catches your eye. Random streets, the way light hits a building, people going about their day. You notice things you’d walk past a thousand times at home. And what travelling to Central Asia did was teach me to bring that same lens back with me.

I now walk around the UK the same way I walk around Samarkand. A random alleyway becomes interesting. A little local church gets the same attention I’d give a thirteenth century mosque in Bukhara. I seek out the mundane and find the beauty in it. I’ll travel around the region I live in the same way I’d travel Central Asia, just properly looking at it. There’s a mosaic tucked away on a random street corner in Manchester I’d never noticed before. Or a statue in a park that nobody talks about. Or the way a building is designed. You start noticing these things when you’re present, and being a tourist in your own country forces you to be present because you’re seeing it fresh. You’re not on autopilot anymore.

The infrastructure thing really matters. In Kazakhstan, everything is cashless. You’ve got Kaspi, this centralised payment system. When I first got there, I was pulling out cash for everything, for Yandex taxis, for street vendors, for random transactions. Taxi drivers would eye-roll at me. I’d hand them cash and they’d sigh like I’d just inconvenienced them massively. So I realised pretty quickly: everyone here uses Kaspi. You tap your phone, done. I was in the most random shack in the middle of the steppe, no internet, just someone selling Coke bottles and peanut snacks, and they had Kaspi. You pay through your phone. That infrastructure doesn’t exist in the UK the same way. We’re still half stuck in the cash and card era in some places. But there, it’s completely unified. Everyone’s on the same system. And I’m thinking: how is a developing economy more advanced in this regard than the UK? Don’t even get me started on our trains.

It made me realise how much infrastructure we take for granted back home without actually questioning it. And more than that, it made me see the UK differently. Not in a bad way, just differently. Like, we’re not as ahead as we think we are in some areas. Other places have figured things out that we haven’t.

But the real thing is identity. Being British, Pakistani, Muslim. When you’re surrounded by the same people back home, you don’t really reflect on any of that. It’s just background noise. But lift yourself out of that and go somewhere completely different, and suddenly it means something.

I have this thing I do when people ask where I’m from in Central Asia. With younger people, I say British. They get it. With older people, I say Pakistani, because that’s what registers. Their face changes, they recognise something. And when they find out I’m Muslim, the conversation shifts entirely. I can walk into a remote village somewhere in the middle of nowhere and connect with people instantly through the same language, the same prayer. That doesn’t happen everywhere. It’s something specific to who I am and where my roots are, and it works across the board.

You really appreciate your background a lot more. Another thing I found super interesting, when I went to the Fergana Valley and people asked where I’m from and I said Pakistan, people made references to Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire, who was born in Fergana. They make that cross-cultural reference themselves, Uzbekistan, the Mughal Empire, India at the time, Pakistan, and they see you and they think, there’s a bit of a connection there. It’s a small thing, but it meant a lot. And when you’re there, parts of it you do feel at home. Just in the language itself. Simple words like namaz, they call it namoz. You see these little Persian words across the border and you’re like, I know exactly what that is. Gosht, meat, spelt a bit differently, and you’re like, bro, I know that word. It’s pretty wholesome.

There’s a less rosy aspect to it as well though. I was planning to go to Kyrgyzstan in 2024 and what happened out of the blue was the Bishkek attacks. Some incident involving Egyptian students got blown out of proportion, a lot of misinformation going round, and basically South Asian students were being targeted. Not by everyone, by mobs. And I was shitting it, honestly. I remember asking people over there, listen, is it safe to come? And I had Kyrgyz influencers messaging me saying, bro, don’t worry, you’re fine, it’s only a few people out of everyone, we’re not all like this, we’re actually against it. Which is completely valid, because a lot of Kyrgyz people did help out. But then other people were saying, oh, you’ll be fine, you’re British. And I’m like, you’re wrong. I am British, but unless I’m walking around with a passport strapped to my forehead, I don’t think people are going to see me like that. It was such an interesting dilemma to be in. I was umming and ahhing for ages. I was also planning to take my little cousin, who’s never been on holiday before, and I thought, I don’t want to risk it with him. So he stayed home. I went by myself, again, and drove to the Kazakh border instead. Just didn’t want to risk anything. Although Kyrgyzstan looked beautiful, and I’m probably going back very soon.

But it put a lot of things into question. The whole time I’d had this idea that my background opens doors out there. Same prayer, same words, Babur, all of it. And then the same face that gets me welcomed into a village in Fergana is the face a mob in Bishkek would go for. You don’t get to choose which one people see. You can call yourself British all you want, but identity isn’t really something you declare. It’s something that gets read off you by whoever’s looking. Most of the time out there that’s worked in my favour. That year was a reminder it can go the other way, and that the “we’re all one” feeling, however real it is in the moment, is sat on top of politics and rumour and whatever’s going round on people’s phones that week. I don’t have a tidy answer for it, to be honest. It’s just a weird thing to carry around.

Marginalia

what kazakhstan taught me about religion

I have been handed all manner of things by strangers on the road, but only in Kazakhstan was I sent off with a prayer cap in one hand and a bottle of cognac in the other, both pressed on me by the same smiling man in the same breath. I always think of it…

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5 months ago · 115 likes · 15 comments · aqeeb

Your photography from those trips is a big part of what you share. How do you approach capturing a place – is it instinctive or deliberate?

Taking pictures on your phone is instinctive. Sometimes you’re staring at something and your hand’s already reaching for your pocket, which is something I’m trying to limit. The film camera is different. I carry a 24-year-old film camera, and that’s the key. Film is fucking expensive, first of all, which forces discipline. I typically shoot one roll per city. 32 shots across five cities means every frame matters. You can’t just be taking ten pictures of the same thing. You’ve got to be careful what you’re taking pictures of and make sure it’s right.

I know this is going to sound a bit of a stretch, but this is how I see it. Taking pictures on your phone is like writing notes in the Notes app. Using a film camera is like writing handwritten notes in a notebook. You’re so limited, and I love that limitation. Shit can mess up easily. You don’t know what you’re looking at. It’s a complete surprise. For me it’s such a beautiful experience that I get to take a picture of something, no idea what it looks like in the moment, just trusting my instincts, and then a month later I find out when I get back. And when it comes through, it’s like Eid, bro. It’s a complete surprise. I remember one time I was at work, just waiting for the shift to end, and I get the email, your film is ready and developed. I was so excited. I love that. And even when I’m not travelling I love taking pictures and posting them on my Substack, I do it every month, because it’s something to look forward to, which is always nice.

I’m not interested in the obvious shots. Everyone’s photographed the monument. I’m looking for specific light hitting a dome at just the right angle, or waiting for a person to walk into the frame between architectural elements. It’s observational. Almost like birdwatching, but for moments and angles you rarely see. It really forces you to slow down and think about what you’re doing and how this might turn out. And because you can’t check the frame until it’s developed, there’s this beautiful uncertainty. You just hope it works.

Probably the best photo I’ve ever taken, in Kazakhstan, came exactly like that. I noticed the trees framing the scene, waited for the person to move into the middle, and took it. Instant decision, but only after minutes of watching and waiting. So it’s very deliberate in that sense.

Side Quests

For the uninitiated, how would you define a ‘side quest’ in the way you think about it?

It’s chaotic noticing.

You’re moving through the world, something catches your attention, and you take the leap. There’s no real plan, no structure. You just move on it. A person you walk past, music blasting from somewhere you didn’t expect, a door that’s slightly open. You notice it, and then it’s on you to act.

I think to be good at side quests you have to be good at noticing. Most people are moving through the world with their head down, on autopilot. A side quest requires you to actually look up. And then when something pulls at you, you follow it without overthinking. You don’t calculate the outcome. You don’t know what the outcome is.

But there’s also this: is this going to be a great story? Is this going to be a story for my kids? You know how your dad just randomly drops that dad lore. I want to be that dad. I want to tell people I got detained on the border for looking like a spy, that I saw Akon in Kazakhstan, all this random stuff. Do it for the plot, as they say. But I need to be clear, I don’t do things to create narratives. The narrative value comes as a result.

When I’m travelling, I see everything like an open world video game, and I think a lot of that is from being brought up on them. Not that I treat everything like a game. More that the first objectives are done, which is seeing everything, and then the rest is, how can I have the best time? And you know how in games you have the confidence to do anything and everything? That’s what I have when I’m travelling, especially alone. The stories flow out of that. I ended up shooting AK-47s in the back of someone’s garage, and then the same day jumping off a mountain paragliding, all because of someone I met waiting in line at a store. It’s so stupid.

But let’s be honest, there’s a privilege as well. Being a guy, there’s a lot of privilege involved, and I’m not saying there isn’t. Side quests are a lot easier for a guy, of course. I’m not going to doubt that.

At the same time a side quest doesn’t need to be flashy or grand or anything like that, whatever people or social media might think, even though I’ve just described some crazy ones. It could be taking a little detour. It could be buying a sandwich. To boil it down, you need time and you don’t need a plan. That’s literally what it is. Because if you’re constrained by anything, it’s going to be very difficult. It’s not that deep. I remember one time I wanted to find a coffee shop in this town I was in. I went everywhere. I asked everyone, even taxi drivers, and nobody knew where the coffee shops were, just somewhere I could sit and have a coffee. I spent the whole day doing that. And for me that was an actual side quest. But it turned into the main quest. So maybe we’re asking the wrong question. Maybe the main quest is a side quest we do along the way.

What’s the best side quest you’ve ever gone on, and what made it memorable?

It’s very difficult to say, to be honest, because I’ve been on some extraordinary side quests. Some crazy ones. But this is the one that’s very memorable.

I found myself in the desert in Western Kazakhstan on the hunt for necropolises. When I travel to religious sites I always carry a doppi with me, the traditional colourful hat from Uzbekistan, and that day I was wearing it with full cargos and shades. I basically looked like Bollywood’s depiction of a stereotypical Pakistani. I was wandering around this tomb by myself when I noticed a group of people gathered around an underground mosque. One of the group leaders came up to me and in broken English asked: can you pray the Quran? I said yeah. He said: you lead prayer in the mosque.

So there I am, sitting on a cushion in the middle of an underground mosque in the middle of the Kazakh desert, a circle of people around me, all waiting. And I’m thinking: I did not sign up for this. But I just went for it. Everything I knew, I prayed it. Led the whole thing, did a dua at the end. When we finished, everyone shook my hand, asking where I was from, who I was. This mysterious guy who’d just appeared from nowhere. And then I just slipped away and carried on doing my own thing.

I’ve never experienced anything like it. Standing there afterwards, I just kept thinking: what the hell am I doing here? How did my life decisions lead me to this exact moment, in an underground mosque in the middle of the Western Kazakhstan desert, leading a prayer for strangers? But it felt beautiful. I felt connected to something, to that moment, to those people. It was surreal and grounded at the same time. That’s a side quest. There’s also the Akon thing, which was equally random. I was on a flight to Astana, overheard people talking about him performing that night, landed, got tickets within hours, and went. But the prayer one, that was something else entirely.

Do you think there’s something psychologically important about doing things that have no clear productive outcome – things that are just for the sake of it?

Absolutely. It’s just my general philosophy of life. Experience everything, good or bad, and let it happen to you.

People love asking, are you getting paid for this? I remember when I was just posting pictures and people would ask that. Like, bro, I’m not. I’m doing it for pure love of the game. I’ll come back to the influencer thing later because that’s a whole thing on its own, but the short version is, the minute the destination becomes how can I optimise the algorithm, what would get me the most clicks, this would be a great thumbnail, you’ve ruined the trip for yourself.

We’re constantly talking about productivity and making the most of our day. But whether you do something or not, the sun’s going to rise, the sun’s going to set, the birds are going to be singing, life goes on. So just do it for the sake of doing it. Why do we feel guilty for having a coffee overlooking a bloody monument? Or sat in a park? We’ve been conditioned to feel guilty about that, which I think is outrageous. That’s the bit you should actually be experiencing.

When you’re doing things purely for the experience, you’re letting your curiosity guide you. Not obligation, not productivity metrics. You’re a kid again, where everything is fascinating. The grass is interesting, a sound catches your ear, a stranger’s conversation draws you in. I’m the kind of person who’ll take a fifteen-hour detour by taxi just to see a minaret that’s falling apart. I’ll get there, take a picture, and for most people that seems like a waste of time and resources. For me it’s magical.

In a culture that is obsessed with optimization and productivity, how do you escape the guilt of sometimes doing things with no payoff?

I’ve just never cared about it, honestly. And what shaped that is when I was eighteen or nineteen I dropped out of uni to take a break. Which was stupid, because I had no money. I was living at home, I had to work a crappy job to get by and save up, and I said, with this money, I want to travel. People saw that as so stupid. Everyone was like, so if you’re going on holiday you’re going to be vlogging it, right? YouTube and all that. And I’m like, no, I’m not. I wasn’t posting much about it at all. It was more for myself. I didn’t care about money, I just wanted to experience it.

And that trip was quite formative for me, because after that I embodied it across the board. I’m just doing it for the sake of doing it, because I want to do it, I want to enjoy it, I want to experience it. So the guilt just doesn’t really come.

As mentioned if your aim is to experience things, you can never have a bad time. Anything I experience, good or bad, counts. There’s no such thing as a wasted trip. If you’re constantly curious, no matter where you are, you can be curious. And I think that’s the payoff. Just being there.

I’ll spend a fortune flying to Kazakhstan in December, ten times colder than the UK, when I could go to Bali for the sun. On paper, stupid. But the way I see it, that trip is going to shape me in ways I can’t measure. The conversations I have, the places I see, the moments I experience. None of that has a KPI attached to it. And that’s precisely why it’s valuable. You can’t optimise for it. You just have to do it and trust that it matters. For me, it always does.

How do you decide what’s worth pursuing as a side quest vs. what’s just a distraction?

It depends what you’re going for, really. If you’re coming to a place with a certain list in mind, I want to go here, I want to go here, I want to go here, then anything beyond that is going to feel like a distraction. Like, I’m not actually doing what I want to do. That’s why I get the main stuff done first, like I said. Once you’ve done that it sort of unlocks something, it gives you a sense of calm. Okay, I’ve seen what I need to see, let’s actually live now and see how people actually live. And at that point anything is a side quest.

The term’s been bastardised a bit, where a side quest has to mean something. It doesn’t. What I’d say is worth pursuing is something that makes you slightly uncomfortable. That’s definitely it. Something slightly uncomfortable, something you have to be open to. Because something objectively boring is also a side quest. I remember I was walking past a theatre in Shymkent and realised there was this random debate going on inside about agricultural processes and oil and gas in Kazakhstan. I was like, fuck it, let’s go in. It was all in Russian. Did I understand anything? No, I didn’t. Did I pretend to look like I knew what I was doing? Yes, I did. And it was just hilarious that I was there. I was there by myself. It was funny for myself.

Enjoying your own company helps with that, first of all. But when I’m on a holiday like that, there’s no such thing as a distraction. There’s no such thing as a distraction at all.

Chronically online, deeply in person

You have a presence on Substack and Instagram where you share your travels and photography. How do you think about what to share vs. what to keep for yourself?

The thing is, when I’m travelling with friends, with company, I don’t seem to share as much. It’s when I’m travelling by myself, in a place where I’ve never seen things like that, that I share. Travelling to Uzbekistan back in 2022 was crazy because the trends didn’t pop off until a year or two later. So when I was there I felt like I had to share it.

But I did share a lot of the standard things. Buildings, people, places. What I keep to myself is different. First of all, when I’m on holiday I write every single day. I write about how I felt in these moments, what I’m feeling, all of that. That’s the thing dearest to me and that will never go up. Also the interactions I have with people. The stories, the conversations. When it’s something deeply personal, even a conversation, I keep that to myself. And a lot of the spiritual experiences I have, I tend to keep those to myself too. Unless they’re really wacky. Then maybe I’ll share.

Marginalia

why you should visit the most boring place you can find.

“Wherever you go, you take yourself with you…

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5 months ago · 63 likes · 23 comments · aqeeb

But there’s a beauty in keeping things for yourself. It means you were truly there, in the moment. Nobody else gets that bit. A lot of travel now is geared towards ticking off boxes and ticking off places to show people you’ve been there, or replicating pictures someone else took. People naturally want to share that, which is fine. But the feelings and the emotions you had, that’s what you keep to yourself.

Do you think being ‘chronically online’ and being deeply present in a place are at odds, or can they actually feed each other? / Has documenting your experiences ever changed the experience itself – for better or worse?

They can feed each other, but only if you’re really intentional about it. And most people aren’t, which is why it usually goes wrong.

I’ve been on social media for more than ten years. I’ve had large followings across different platforms. I recently experimented with TikTok, gained around seventy thousand followers, and then just stopped. Because I realised what was happening to me. I’d be travelling and already thinking about how to edit the footage, who to interview, what angle would perform well. You stop experiencing the place and start producing content about it. The algorithm becomes the lens through which you see everything. And that’s a deeply unpleasant way to travel. I detest travel influencers and vloggers for this reason, and I say that as someone who understands the psyche completely. They don’t want you to know this, but the destination stops being the destination. It becomes, how do I feed the algorithm?

Once you’re vlogging or constantly posting, the camera becomes a parasite on every moment. You’re dissociating from the experience, optimising for likes instead of living. And it’s disrespectful to the people you meet. How many genuine connections happen with a big camera in someone’s face? Or damn Meta glasses.

Marginalia

the most intimate thing you can send is a postcard.

I do a loop of the local antique shops most weekends, and last weekend one of them had a whole tray of old postcards in it, going back to the 1920s. 50p each. Lovely faded seaside fronts, the usual. But it was the backs that got me. Every one had been written on, by a real person, to a real person. I bought a few that appealed to me and read them proper…

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5 months ago · 42 likes · 12 comments · aqeeb

But here’s where it can work. If you use it on your own terms, surgically, it actually deepens the experience rather than flattening it. I take photos and shoot the occasional video, and that takes maybe 2 percent of the trip. The rest is just being there. And actually, the moments I do choose to document, I document more carefully because I’m not doing it constantly. That’s the difference. It’s not chronically online versus deeply present. It’s about whether the online piece is serving the experience or consuming it.

What does your relationship with your phone look like when you’re on the road in somewhere like Kyrgyzstan vs. when you’re back home?

It’s pretty straightforward. When I’m there I limit my phone to pictures, Google Maps, tickets, stuff like that. I try not to use it much beyond that. There’s been times I was sat on a sleeper train for about nineteen hours and surprisingly I used my phone for about an hour of that altogether, because I was just speaking to people.

Back home you do tend to indulge a bit. You fill in those idle times with it, those gaps where you’d be bored, which is a bit mad really. But we all do it. Over there it just becomes a tool, essentially. Here it’s the thing you fill the gaps with.

What I don’t understand is people who take a picture of a monument and upload it there and then with a caption on the story. To me that’s diabolical. But at the same time, you get these elitists who think, oh fucking hell, look at these pricks not enjoying the moment. They can piss off. It takes literally two seconds to take a picture. Nothing is being lost. No moment is lost. So take your pictures, put your phone away, and enjoy it. That’s all I use it for over there.

For someone who feels stuck in the scroll, what would you say is the first step towards doing something deeply in person?

Let’s be honest here, our attention spans are absolutely cooked. And I say that as a collective. As much as we like to admit it or not, I think we all know that. I’ve seen it from all age groups, people constantly scrolling, this never-ending cycle.

You can always say the same old stuff, intentionality, you have to be in the moment, all that, but that’s harder than it looks. I remember one time I met these two Scottish girls in Kazakhstan and we were just enjoying this lake view and I turned to both of them like, what are you thinking about in this moment? Like what are you actually meant to think about in a moment like this? And they were like, that’s a really good question, I’ve never really wondered. And then one of them said, nothing. Just think about what you’re seeing.

I know that’s not exactly a revelation. But in that moment it just clicked for me. People overcomplicate this whole thing, like you should be having deep thoughts and finding grand ideas in places like that, and it’s not that at all. It’s just enjoying it. Whatever you’re seeing, whatever you’re experiencing, that’s it. Take it slowly. What am I smelling, what am I feeling, what am I looking at.

And then what I like to do in my head is take mental screenshots. I think we’ve all done it, where you promise yourself I’ll remember this moment twenty years down the line, and you can always recall it after. I do that a lot when I’m there. I close my eyes, open them again, and I’m like, wow, where am I? How have I ended up here?

So I think the first step is noticing the details. That’s the thing the scroll takes off you. William James said it over a hundred years ago, experience is what you agree to attend to, and when you’re scrolling you’re not agreeing to anything, it’s being decided for you, one post after the next. Noticing is you deciding. And you don’t need a lake in Kazakhstan to do it. Pick one thing on your way to the shop and actually look at it. If you can take a mental screenshot of it, that counts.

If you liked this interview I recommend checking out others from my series, my most recent conversation prior to Aqeeb was with author Sufiyaan Salam.

I am incredibly grateful to Aqeeb for sharing his perspective and taking the time to answer my questions. I hope readers take from this the timeless reminder that doing cool/interesting/exciting things requires you to do.

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Outline of the notes:

1. What is the Reading Salon for Ruminators

2. The idea behind the theme for this session

3. The books that helped guide the discussion

4. Tips to become better readers

5. Some concluding remarks

What is the Reading Salon for Ruminators?

The Reading Salon for Ruminators is a book club designed to explore one big theme in each session. Rather than focus on a single book, we take a thematic approach and everyone brings a book they associate with the theme.

I have chosen to do it this way because in my view, the books are the journey and not the destination. I can reach many conclusions about a variety of topics through the books on my shelf, and the person next to me can reach the same conclusions with a completely different book shelf.

The idea behind the theme for this session.

The seventh session had the theme of “Characters that stay with us”. Our sixth salon talked about community and what it takes to build one. Ultimately a community is made up of people so I wanted to explore how those in our lives shape us - both fictional and in reality.

Aside from this I was also personally looking for recommendations for books with strong characters. My reading diet is predominantly short stories and non-fiction — something I want to change. These sessions are something I can turn to for great recommendations as past reading salon recommendations have been phenomenal reads.

The books that helped guide the discussion:

• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

• The Emperors of Chocolate by Joël Glenn Brenner

• God: A Human History of Religion by Reza Aslan

• The Twits by Roald Dahl

• Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman

• Les Désorientés (The Disoriented) by Amin Maalouf

• Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

• Leaf by Niggle by J.R.R. Tolkien

• Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

• Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang

• A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

• The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig

• Maame by Jessica George

• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

• Gratitude by Oliver Sacks

• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

• Hadji Murad by Leo Tolstoy

• Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

• Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

• A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

• Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

• The Bed of Procrustes by Nassim Taleb

• Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy

• No Matter the Wreckage by Sarah Kay

Tips to become better readers:

Towards the end of the discussion the group came together to share some thoughts of how they stay motivated to read, how they become better readers, and how they get out of a reading slump. Below are the tips the group came up with.

• Set yourself a goal (e.g. 20 pages a day) while you’re starting the habit of reading, it gives you something to work for. Once you’re set in the routine it can fall away

• Look up the authors and do some research - both to familiarise yourself with the book before reading and to inform future reading choices

• Reading with people can kickstart the habit

• Practice “close reading”

• Follow your curiosity

• Visit your local library!

• Write! Your relationship with reading changes once you begin to write - whether it is for yourself or to share with others

As an aside to the final bullet point the reading salon is fortunate to host some fantastic writers - many of whom have a home on Substack. I am sharing below some of their works . I would encourage everyone to read and subscribe to their substacks.

maro's mind

anthony bourdain

I started reading Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential shortly after watching the film Tony (2026) earlier this month. I wasn’t particularly clued up on Anthony Bourdain’s personal life before picking up the book or watching the movie; all I really knew was that he was a celebrity chef, the OG Japan glazer, and that he’s no longer with us (tw: suicide…

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a month ago · 4 likes · maro

TNNU

The man, the myth, the legacy

This year marks the third year since my grandfather passed away. My grandparents’ house, with the elaborate bàn thờ (ancestral altar) at the front, stands proudly in the narrow side streets tucked away in the former imperial capital of Vietnam, Huế. The motorbikes whir past the house and cl…

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4 months ago · 10 likes · 4 comments · Tien

Lukman’s Substack

A letter, or lament

It is a given that every person will get their due - we will constantly be demanded of, tested and pulled in all different directions, though only to what our portion may be. This may look like compromise in really menial things, to be tolerant, accommodating of others, respectful and even patient and affectionate…

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a month ago · 3 likes · Lukman A.

Also linked is some poetry by one of our attendees which was remarkably moving:

https://migrantwriting.com/2024/07/08/the-foundling-hospital/

Some concluding remarks:

For those interested in keeping up to date with the Reading Salon I recommend following the Instagram @ReadingSalonForRuminators

I am also excited to announce the Reading Salon now has a website: ruminators.co.uk - for those not on social media you can find event links, access session notes, and become familiar with what the reading salon is.

The reading salon has been the biggest boon for me this year, each month I am fortunate to welcome such a wide range of thoughtful, interesting, and curious people across all stages of the reading journey. I thank them all for attending and look forward to continuing hosting the reading salons.

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Outline of the notes:

1. What is the Reading Salon for Ruminators?

2. The idea behind the theme for this session

3. The books that helped guide the discussion

4. Guest speaker spotlight

5. Concluding thoughts

What is the Reading Salon for Ruminators?

The Reading Salon for Ruminators is a book club designed to explore one big theme in each session. Rather than focus on a single book, we take a thematic approach and everyone brings a book they associate with the theme.

I have chosen to do it this way because in my view, the books are the journey and not the destination. I can reach many conclusions about a variety of topics through the books on my shelf, and the person next to me can reach the same conclusions with a completely different book shelf.

The idea behind the theme for this session.

The sixth session had the theme of “The need for community.” Continuing our thematic arc exploring the world around us, this session was intended to conclude that arc with a look at the spaces we inhabit and the mutual obligations the bind us.

It also comes at a very apposite time in two senses. In the first sense we have seen a remarkable rise is social spaces (including the Reading Salon itself) as the world begins to attempt to heal from the COVID-19 pandemic. In the other sense it comes at the end of summer which to me is always the easiest season to be social. As winter arrives it can be easier to retreat into ourselves and become less social. The discussion at hand grappled with what it means to be part of community along with insights from speakers who have actually done the work in building thriving communities.

It was also refreshing to see people come to the Reading Salon who are self-confessed “non-readers” or “not super into reading”. This is a space which looks to welcome exactly that type of person in the hope that it proves the thesis that all thoughts are welcome and through discussion with others we ignite a love of reading.

The books that helped guide the discussion:

• Muhammad: 11 Leadership Qualities that Changed the World by Nabeel Al-Azami

• Better, Not Bitter: The Power of Hope and Living on Purpose by Yusef Salaam

• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

• Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable by Tim Grover

• Happy City by Charles Montgomery

• A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

• Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang

• The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson

• The Chimp Paradox by Steve Peters

• Don’t Be Sad by Aaidh ibn Abdullah al-Qarni

• The Lamb by Lucy Rose

• A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

• The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon

• A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza

• A Waiter in Paris by Edward Chisholm

• I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

• Dune by Frank Herbert

• Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

• A Mouthful of Salt by Reem Gaafar

• The Origins of Political Order by Francis Fukuyama

• Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Guest Speaker Spotlight

As mentioned earlier, the reading salon was proud to host four amazing speakers for a panel discussion to share their insights on community building given their experience buildings things from the ground up. The speakers were:

• Patima Shareefy - Co-founder of Ahlan London

• Mohamed Amer - Co-founder of Ahlan London

• Adi Hodzic - Co-founder of Overtime Club

• Amor Hodzic - Co-founder of Overtime Club

The speakers all had remarkable insights to share from the genesis of their initiatives (in the case Overtime Club starting as an idea floated in a burger shop), to all the work that goes into building and maintaining these spaces. A recurring theme that came up throughout the discussion in various guises was about being aligned to your values, being honest, and building trust. If we take a step back and think about society at large, those three things would go some way to addressing the divides that exist.

One thing that left me inspired was during the Q&A when the speakers were asked how they are able to “fill their cups” when so much of their energy goes into helping others. What surprised me was how all the speakers did not seemed phased at all and were energized by their mission - aside from the odd solo kebab when needed.

My gratitude goes out to all four speakers for filling the room with such passion and energy. I encourage everyone to check out Overtime Club and Ahlan London. As someone who has been in both spaces I can attest to the community feel they have rather than being “just another events space.”

Some concluding remarks:

For those interested in keeping up to date with the Reading Salon I recommend following the Instagram @ReadingSalonForRuminators

As summer comes to a close it has been remarkable to see all the incredible thoughts, perspectives and conversations that have taken place. After a break we will be back at the end of September to kickstart our fall schedule of Reading Salons. I hope in the interim you all continue to read, ruminate, and stay active members of your communities.

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It is important to introduce those definitions (however dense and tedious they may be) because a key feature of Fukuyama’s life is how much he has been mischaracterised (including by yours truly as an opinionated yet foolish teenager). My copy of the end of history is a 2020 reprint including an afterword in which he amusingly says “I do not want to deal here with these kinds of critiques, which for the most part could have been avoided if the person in question had simply read my book.”

However, this essay is not really about Francis Fukuyama or his writings in general, but rather about something he said in his LSE talk which really stood out to me. Namely that if people can’t rage for democracy they will rage against it. We can substitute democracy for many things both at an individual and societal level. Beyond the satisfaction of our basic needs, we also strive for something more. Fukuyama calls it recognition, Nietzsche may characterise it as the struggle for greatness, other traditions have their own way of speaking to this longing for meaning. My own characterisation is more spiritually inclined, in that our soul yearns for its connection to divinity. John O’Donohue puts it rather eloquently: “fixated on the visible, we forget that the decisive presences in our lives […] are all invisible.” The forces that power and sustain life are not physical trinkets but within us. A serious political project must begin to help nurture our souls. My conception of the soul here is borrowed from Maria Popova in that it is the “seismic core of personhood from which our actions, our thoughts, our ideas, radiate.”

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The human condition is not one for lasting contentment as over time we trend towards some middle ground. If things are great, then the sheen wears off after some time and we want more. If circumstances are dire, we adapt and what was seemingly unbearable becomes tolerable. In the material world, it seems that we are reaching a point of diminishing returns. Each minor advancement is providing lesser and lesser increases to our wellbeing. It is cliche to remark that even some of the poorest in western societies enjoy a standard of living that not even medieval kings would enjoy. Many diseases that would doom an empire 500 years ago are solved by a trip to the pharmacy. In terms of nourishment, it is well known that enough food is produced to feed the entire world population. Even on the climate front there is still a chance that we may avert the worst of climate change if we take action (and in this example the problem is predominantly man-made). The point here is not to say job done on the material front and we can pack up and go home. Instead we should acknowledge that the issues in front of us are entirely of our own making and solving them is also down to us. We must continue to make progress in these areas and better our material circumstances, and simultaneously acknowledge that the search for the good life will not be found outside - rather it will be from nurturing our humanity. At this point it is important to caveat that when I say the good life will not be found outside, I am referring to those who are benefitting from the enormous strides made in the past 200 years - think your average citizen in a western liberal democracy. There is still tremendous work to be done to spread those gains to large swathes of the global population. The point is once we get there (or for those who are already there), the political project must take a different shape.

And yet despite these miraculous gains, there is (understandably) an almost endless pit of discontent. A lot of this discontent can stem from a sense of betrayal after multiple failings from our governments (here I write specifically with a western lens), whether it is the failures of the War in Iraq, the aftermath of the financial crisis, in the case of the UK the calamity of Brexit, or the cost-of -crisis sparked by rising conflict in multiple parts of the world fueling inflation. There is also the discontentment that comes from our (social) media environment which too often fans the flames of conflict or sorts us into echo chambers which prey on our neuroses. Perhaps most insidious is the perceived loss of status felt when so much of people’s lives are exposed and on show, inducing the feeling that others are doing better than we are (even if that is not true). The former elements of discontent are understandable because anger at a failing government is the correct response. The latter element of discontent is more sinister because it plays on our psychology and warps how we see the world.

In these circumstances, it is hideously insulting to say to someone struggling in the UK or the US they enjoy a miraculous standard of living relative to the rest of human history, or that even with the tumult of the last 20 years their material needs are being met. Popova reminds us that we have ingrained in us a tendency to compare along “every imaginable axis of privilege and every dimension of identity.” I feel this most acutely when I look at the anti-immigrant sentiment that is rising in the UK coupled with the popularity of Reform UK. There is a legitimate and rather technocratic argument that could be made about immigration to the UK and the pace of change - who remembers the heyday of the Brexit debate which focused almost solely on Eastern European accession to the EU and how it was too much immigration too soon? Instead of this policy debate being had, it was muddled with questions of identity and bad faith arguments about integration and culture - any semblance of truth in the debate is bastardised by the true sentiment underlying it. The true sentiment being an imagined crusade against non-existent threats and external blame for potential shortcomings.

This brings us to a question I find myself constantly asking: “What do you want?” It can be a notoriously difficult question given how fickle human beings are. To continue my example, if anti-migrant protestors were granted the wish that all Muslims, immigrants and non “anglo-saxon” (or whatever racial group they latch on to) peoples are removed from their country, what then? We seldom talk about that part. Going back to Fukuyama, these people would find something else to rage against. Elites will find another scapegoat to avoid having to cede wealth and territory for the betterment of society, and human beings will inevitably point their tendency for frustration outward rather than looking within.

A political program for the soul would center on re-energizing communities, requiring people to stand up and be part of civic life - not as bystanders or peripheral figures, but as integral participants. This aspect of the program touches on the themes of train station democracy we have spoken about before on this blog. The other half is more about combatting the forces which prey on our baser instincts such as the rhetoric of populist politicians or the information environment in which they thrive. These are not new ideas or novel solutions, rather my hope is that through understanding how these forces shape us we can begin to become better human beings.

Those familiar with Chinese history may think this sounds like a hippie version of Confucianism - given the emphasis on righteousness, wisdom and a general approach to “doing the right thing”. This type of thought is missing from modern political discourse where wrongdoing is framed merely in terms of rule breaking as opposed to asking what the “right” thing to do is. Any allusion to holding people to a moral standard becomes fuzzy because we are no longer able to coherently articulate these standards. Take for example the recent drama of Reform UK’s donations: one side of the argument is no laws were broken (pending a police and parliamentary standards investigation), the other side would posit that it is “dodgy” or use another vague term to explain why exactly these types of donations are improper.

We are caught in a nuclear arms race of rage. Each turn of the wheel ratchets up the vitriol even further. The feeling of lashing out is a common. A desire to bathe our base emotions in some imagined righteousness in order to unleash it on people guilt free is the end result. It is not easy to then tell people to take the moral high ground and do the right thing when the overriding philosophy of the last 40 years has been individualism. It is a vicious circle: we need politicians and a political program which nurtures the common good and a rejuvenates the soul. However those politicians need to be elected and may compete with parties who still appeal to the darker parts of our soul. Voters in turn need to reject that appealing offer. At some point the cycle needs to be broken. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson speak of critical junctures in history when vicious circles can be broken - the source of hope I have is that in these febrile times a juncture may open where we can break this cycle.

I believe we are in the realm of the last man and it should be celebrated that we got here. The drum of human progress should hum along and we should muster our collective efforts to meet the challenges of the day with every sinew of our being. But without a program for the soul, those same reserves of human ingenuity, effort, and optimism will instead be fuel for wanton destruction, nihilism, and human misery - even for those at the top. The last 20 years have shown the worst of the last man, the rest of this century should be dedicated to nurturing the best of it.

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Outline of the notes:

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1. What is the Reading Salon for Ruminators

2. The idea behind the theme for this session

3. The books that helped guide the discussion

4. Tips to become better readers

What is the Reading Salon for Ruminators?

The Reading Salon for Ruminators is a book club designed to explore one big theme in each session. Rather than focus on a single book, we take a thematic approach and everyone brings a book they associate with the theme.

I have chosen to do it this way because in my view, the books are the journey and not the destination. I can reach many conclusions about a variety of topics through the books on my shelf, and the person next to me can reach the same conclusions with a completely different book shelf.

The idea behind the theme for this session.

The fifth session had the theme of “What Makes the World Go Around?” Continuing our thematic arc exploring the world around us, this session was intended to explore the forces - both tangible and intangible - which propel the world.

In my head I thought the framing would be three competing forces: love, money, and the truth. I am firmly of the belief that love makes the world go around and choosing to lean into that makes for a more fulfilling and aligned life. In true Reading Salon fashion the attendees provided food for thought with a variety of forces - as exemplified by the books people came along with.

The books that helped guide the discussion:

• Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

• Secrets of Divine Love by A. Helwa

• Conversations on Love by Natasha Lunn

• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

• Ikigai by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles

• Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

• The Return of Faraz Ali by Aamina Ahmad

• The History of Bees by Maja Lunde

• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

• A History of Central Banking (and the Enslavement of Mankind) by Stephen Mitford Goodson

• The Narrow Corridor by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson

• The Agony of Eros by Byung-Chul Han

• Orb (manga) by Toranosuke Shimada

• Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

• The Course of Love by Alain de Botton

• The Future of Truth by Werner Herzog

• Our Lives in their Portfolios by Brett Christophers

Tips to become better readers:

Towards the end of the discussion the group came together to share some thoughts of how they stay motivated to read, how they become better readers, and how they get out of a reading slump. Below are the tips the group came up with.

• After each book make some brief notes (even one or two sentences) so that way you have something to remember

• (Only really applies to non-fiction) It is fine to skip chapters of a book

• Don’t make your reading experience feel like an English Literature class - annotate/analyse as little or as much as you want

• Treat reading like jazz, put down and pick up books as you see fit

Some concluding remarks:

For those interested in keeping up to date with the Reading Salon I recommend following the Instagram @ReadingSalonForRuminators

As summer comes to a close it has been remarkable to see all the incredible thoughts, perspectives and conversations that have taken place. We have more one salon to end the summer on 22nd August before taking a short break.

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Outline of the notes:

1. What is the Reading Salon for Ruminators

2. The idea behind the theme for this session

3. The books that helped guide the discussion

4. Tips to become better readers

What is the Reading Salon for Ruminators?

The Reading Salon for Ruminators is a book club designed to explore one big theme in each session. Rather than focus on a single book, we take a thematic approach and everyone brings a book they associate with the theme.

I have chosen to do it this way because in my view, the books are the journey and not the destination. I can reach many conclusions about a variety of topics through the books on my shelf, and the person next to me can reach the same conclusions with a completely different book shelf.

The idea behind the theme for this session.

The fourth session had the theme of “Making the world a better place”. I wanted to pivot from the more introspective themes of the first three sessions and orient ourselves towards the world at large. While the instinctual reaction for this theme is to focus on practical ways of making the world a better place, part of the session was to touch on the question of what we owe each other and our obligations to our community and to the world.

The books that helped guide the discussion:

• The Odyssey by Homer

• Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

• The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli

• Solito by Javier Zamora

• The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak

• Teaching Community by bell hooks

• Educated by Tara Westover

• A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

• Human Acts by Han Kang

• A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

• The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker

• The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

• The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

• Secrets of Divine Love by A. Helwa

• The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff

• Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

Note: I was close to bringing Nassim Taleb’s Skin in the Game thus adding to the many fans of the Incerto at the Salon.

Tips to become better readers:

Normally at the end of each session we come together as a group and share tips for being better reads. The conversations were so engrossing that we lost track of time and before we knew it the session came to an end. So while there are no new tips, I instead would encourage all to use the summer season to engage with reading more than we usually would. The Reading Salon for Ruminators published a summer reading list to help inspire some suggestions.

Aside from books, I would also encourage readers to engage with essays - despite my enduring love of books, my favorite format remains the essay. The reading salon is fortunate to have such a great array of guests, some of whom are fantastic Substack writers - below you will find some of their writing.

maro's mind

you are who you are when you're alone

I began writing this reflection at home, in my room, on four hours of sleep. It’s been a few days now, and I think I finally have enough distance from the scribbles in my journal to make sense of them…

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3 months ago · 5 likes · 6 comments · maro

Mind Ink

Be the Slowest Person in the Room

How can I live intentionally…

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8 months ago · 62 likes · 8 comments · Arslan

Lukman’s Substack

'Good' Conversations

Not too long ago I was speaking with a friend of mine and he brought forward the topic of our positions as Muslims who have grown up in the western world where, comparatively speaking, our sets of shared circumstances and events have allowed us to see wealth and crucial developmental stuff much more prominently - rela…

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a year ago · 3 likes · 2 comments · Lukman A.

TNNU

The man, the myth, the legacy

This year marks the third year since my grandfather passed away. My grandparents’ house, with the elaborate bàn thờ (ancestral altar) at the front, stands proudly in the narrow side streets tucked away in the former imperial capital of Vietnam, Huế. The motorbikes whir past the house and cl…

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4 months ago · 9 likes · 2 comments · Tien

Some concluding remarks:

For those interested in keeping up to date with the Reading Salon I recommend following the Instagram @ReadingSalonForRuminators

I am always eager to hear feedback about the Reading Salons, if you have general feedback or thoughts on a future theme we should explore please let me know!

The next Reading Salon will be on Thursday August 13th.

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Perhaps the greatest miracle in Britain is King’s Cross St Pancras station. It is a logistical miracle the same station can take you to Watford, Paris, Bradford and Cambridge. The King’s Cross part of the station is estimated to have 39,000 arrivals per day. Per day! Aside from the station being an engineering miracle, I believe it holds the answer to how Britain should structure political life.

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When setting out my thinking on how the UK gets out of its current mess I suggested Britain should host a constitutional convention. The idea was Parliament should be held in all regions of the UK so our MPs and Ministers are visible to the people they are governing. We forget at times the sway proximity has on how we perceive people and institutions. As part of this, Citizens Assemblies should be established to explore reforms to our democracy. At the end, three things should be achieved:

1. A codified constitution,

2. A reformed electoral system

3. Devolving power back to the shires (our local and regional government).

I focus on these because a large part of the current dysfunction in Britain is driven by too much power being concentrated in Westminster and within that, the government dominating the political process. In the book Failed State, Sam Freedman observes that Prime Ministers have “enormous executive power over every aspect of policy” coupled with a “support system designed for someone with ‘virtually no executive powers’."1 Simultaneously governments are “finding ways of overriding Parliament in ever more damaging ways.”2

Before exploring the intricacies of these objectives, a more abstract question arises: what are the guiding principles for thinking about proposals in these domains? If we take objective #2, when evaluating the various electoral systems available, what is the framework for thinking about these? In short, how do we know what problem we are solving without first having a framework for what we should be aiming for? This is especially important as adaptable institutions are needed to meet the big challenges of the 21st century which are more complicated and constantly evolving. Modes of democracy will need to change on a more frequent basis without rewriting the entire political settlement.

This is where train station democracy comes in. Democratic life in Britain should be imagined as a major train station e.g. King’s Cross St Pancras. I hinted at this idea a few years back in my ‘4-2-3-1 series’ in which I said:

A framework to think about this is that democratic life in Britain should be like that of a train station. I draw this analogy for three reasons:

• Multiple Access Points

• No one size fits all, different services are targeted at different needs

• Captures the vast range of the population

Let’s look at each of these in turn:

Multiple access points:

King’s Cross has 11 entrances to it, coupled with four ticket halls.3 Navigating the station can be overwhelming but there are enough access points to get you to where you need to go. If I am taking the Metropolitan line I would use the Euston Road entrance as it is more conveniently situated to the Met Line rather than the York Street entrances which would require me to walk all the way around first before getting to the required tube line. The same observation could be made for the other tube lines, national, and international rail services: each one has a recommended starting point.

The principle to extract here is that citizens should have multiple avenues to interact with the state and engage in civic discourse. As briefly alluded to earlier, we currently have an overly dominant government and our main way of interacting with them is through elections. For some issues, this is the appropriate access point, but for many areas this is not the correct avenue but we are left with few potent alternatives. Even expressing grievances with our local MP is not as effective given how issues fall under party lines.

This becomes important when we consider that politics is “fractal” to quote Nassim Nicholas Taleb. In his book Skin in the Game he quotes a saying from Geoff and Vince Graham:

I am, at the Fed level, libertarian;

at the state level, Republican;

at the local level, Democrat;

and at the family and friends level, a socialist.

Translating that to a UK context, someone may split their vote amongst the major parties depending on the context of the election. The issue is that local government is responsible for delivery but the direction is set by central government. This results in your vote at the national level crossing multiple scales capturing everything from nuclear deterrent policy to bin collection timetables.

The consequence is that engagement with politics is shrunk to only a handful of avenues whereas we should be encouraging ubiquity - of both voting and non-voting forms of democratic participation.

Not one size fits all:

The difference between this principle of train station democracy and the need for multiple access points is that not one size fits all is focusing on areas of policy which fall under a local level vs national government. This is more focused on where policy power actually resides so citizens know where (and to whom) they should target their focus.

If we think back to King’s Cross, the magic of the station is that it solves a commute which could range from 2 minutes to 200+ miles. This is not solved by one set of train lines but a broad range of train services to cater to the varying use cases.

We can see how this approach works with the devolution packages to several areas of England - most notably Manchester and London. If we take Manchester as an example given it is Mr Burnham’s stomping ground, the new Mayoral authority has more control over areas such as transport, health and social care, planning and housing. In the area of health alone there is emerging evidence that devolution had a positive impact and led to better outcomes. It is no coincidence that the city is amongst the fastest growing in the UK.

The point is very simple: areas of policy should be placed where they are best suited to meet the outcomes set out.

Captures the vast range of the population:

The third principle of train station democracy reflects the need for holistic thinking about democratic life. There is an inevitable fact that some segments of the population will interact with politics and the state more than others. But the design should be all-encompassing enough that those who need to avail of the state or engage in civic life have the avenues to do so. That is to say: a guiding principle should be to focus on what works and what gets adopted as opposed to some Platonic ideal of what our system of governance looks like. “What works” is in part shaped by who it works for and how many whos.

This is why King’s Cross is a favourite station of mine compared to prominent London Underground stations such as Green Park or Canary Wharf. It works because a greater proportion of people come into contact with the station. Take for example a Geordie coming down from the North East to watch Newcastle in the League Cup final last year. They would have taken a train from Newcastle to King’s Cross, then get the Met Line from the same station to Wembley Park. Now here the analogy falls apart slightly because different stations serve different needs in the context of transportation. But as a point of comparison, the democracy that is able to capture participation from all segments is one that should be chosen.

It is refreshing to see an incoming Prime Minister talk about much needed structural reform not just through an economic lens. Britain will continue to encounter crises unless it rewires its political system to empower citizens and enable better governance. Devolution is a welcome step, but without a holistic examination of what powers should exist, where they should be, and who should wield that power, it may not go far enough in reforming (and I would argue saving) British politics.

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The launch of the book and our interview also comes at a time when the political discourse has started to shift to focusing on ‘the North’ and how towns like Blackburn (where Salam grew up) and Greater Manchester (the setting for his novel) need greater attention to address the myriad problems they are facing. If you add in the bleak national context of inflamed bigotry, islamophobia and racism, understanding these communities through their own stories becomes incredibly important. Heir-apparent Andy Burnham would do well to have Wimmy Road Boyz on his July reading list before entering 10 Downing Street.

Salam was also kind enough to attend a recent Reading Salon for Ruminators and speak about his debut novel. Below are the notes from that session.

The interview below was conducted with written submissions from Salam with only minor edits for formatting and grammar.

Can you share how you saw Blackburn when you were growing up there?

It was a bit of an opp, I can’t lie. Though, I guess, not entirely. I felt an affinity to Rovers1 and went on frequent school trips to Ewood Park. We were still in the Premiere League then, and though our win preceded my birth by a couple of years, I always felt mad pride about that. But for the most part, I found it quite claustrophobic. There was a bit of paranoia, too. Especially in the community and area I grew up in, a feeling like everyone knew everyone else, and therefore, all of our failures or perceived transgressions were public. These were not conditions in which to dream big.

Was the plan always to leave Blackburn?

I never really had plans when I was younger. All notions of my future life were abstract flights of fancy. I don’t know if I ever had a dream place to move to, either, beyond maybe New York, and that was entirely based on me wanting to be Spiderman.

As a teenager, I started to feel the claustrophobia I described above, and also this feeling that I wanted to break out, see more of the world. I was aware that my working class Pakistani-Muslim heritage was at odds with what was considered a ‘normal’ British life, and was curious to know what else was out there. Access to the internet - YouTube and Tumblr in particular for me - as well as my burgeoning love for cinema (at 16, I was doing back-to-back Christopher Nolan / Jafar Panahi) made me see the world was way bigger and stranger and full of possibilities than I’d ever thought possible. So I bounced.

Did many of your peers at high school take a liking to studying English Language / Literature?

I’m trying to think back and answer honestly, but I’m aware that my own love of the subject colours my memories. I don’t think English was disliked, particularly, though it was definitely undervalued or maybe seen as a little frivolous / less important than science and math’s. We’ve all seen those early internet memes about how English teachers will ascribe a hundred different meanings to “blue curtains” when the writer only meant that the curtains were blue (as a writer, I have to say, this is dumb. If the curtains truly don’t mean anything, why are you telling me about them!!!).

But I swear it was always fun. Surely my peers thought so, too? We got to watch films. Read some cool stuff. Didn’t everyone love Of Mice and Men? I don’t think anyone found it boring, at least, though I’m starting to doubt my recollections now. What I can say for sure is: my decision to study it beyond secondary school was one of the things that marked me out as a weirdo. And to choose to pursue it as an undergrad? Insanity.

What is one enduring thing about Blackburn that you love?

Kebabish.2

(And — sorry — also just the pride / shared language one feels with other people who have come from the same small town as them. I met Steve Pemberton last year, and we spoke about coming from Blackburn. I just feel somehow connected to people like Shabaz [Ali], or Tez [Ilyas], or even Michael Winterbottom as a result of having grown up, across different eras, within the contours of a place called Blackburn).

What is one thing you would change today about Blackburn to make it a better place?

I’m not sure how well I know Blackburn now to really give a good answer here, but I think, in a lot of ways, it does better than its neighbours — at least re. the general feeling of apathy and malaise afflicting the UK. That’s just my sense, anyway.

It’s always been too segregated though. Great culture always comes from the intermix of various traditions and backgrounds — think about how Jazz formed in New Orleans, or the history of food in Lahore, for example. What new forms could Blackburn flower if things were not so divided?

What is the significance of Wimmy Road for Asian lads from Blackburn?

It’s the more accessible Muslim pilgrimage. Ha ha ha.

I think it’s just fun, and welcoming. Familiar and dangerous and for us. It’s hard to say what sets it apart from, say, Whalley Range, or even Cheetham Hill, but there is a very specific vibe it just possesses. I think maybe there’s a feeling of “the homeland” just seasoning the whole atmosphere of the place, except it’s a ‘homeland’ that’s as various as the multitudes of people who head there every year. Ask a white person who went to Uni in Manchester twenty years ago about the Curry Mile and watch their eyes light up. There’s a real Narnia feeling to the place. For me, at night, especially around Eids or bank holidays or Pakistani independence day, the place has a real mythical feel to it. Like something out of The Great Gatsby.

And in a country that’s starting to feel more and more hostile, it’s nice to have a Wimmy Road of one’s own.

Are there any places analogous to Wimmy Road across the UK / in London?

I guess it’s cluster theory in action. You put a bunch of the best curry houses / shisha bars across a half-mile stretch of a single road, and watch the money roll in. There’s Leicester’s “Golden Mile” and Birmingham’s “Balti Triangle” and I guess London has Ilford Lane, Edgware Road… the entirety of Southall. Brick Lane is sort of a gentrified, pedestrianised version. It don’t count if you can’t drive up and down it!

Are you able to share a bit about how you began to formulate the idea of Wimmy Road Boyz?

A lot of stuff had to happen — in my waking life and in my mind and in the world — for Wimmy Road Boyz to come into existence. Most of these things I’ll have either forgotten about or was simply never aware of in the first place. But a couple of dominoes come to mind:

In 2019, I saw Armando Iannucci’s David Copperfield at Manchester’s Home cinema. I fell in love with the way it felt both Victorian and contemporary all at once. I thought to myself: it’d be interesting to write something in a style that is both highly modern — full of slang, internet references, the energy of grime — and traditional, influenced by Dickens and Shakespeare.

I forgot this thought, moved on with my life, lived through a pandemic, experienced various complicated life dramas, kept working on writing fiction, occasionally came close to making something, though didn’t feel like I’d ever found my ‘voice’.

After the pandemic, I went on a night out (not on Wimmy Road) with some mates, felt sad, but didn’t say anything to anyone. After, I thought that was interesting as a premise for a story: three men on a night out, all going through various issues, unable to express them to each other.

Later that week, I started reading James Joyce’s Ulysses. I wrote in my journal, “real pakis be reading Ulysses”. The same evening I finished the first chapter (it’s long), I went to a music night in some random Manchester club where rappers like Ard Adz and Frenzo Harami performed. In my mind, I tried to describe the night as I was witnessing it, and Joyce’s explosive language mixed with the music I was hearing. A lightbulb went off.

I wrote a short story titled “Wimmy Road Boyz”. Submitted it to the Bristol Short Story Prize. It came 2nd, and I won £500. I decided I wasn’t done. The crazy language of the boys — a language that I guess can be simplified as “Jay Z meets Shakespeare”, though is, in fact, just a highly-stylised multicultural English that swipes from every possible corner of my subconscious — was perfect for a longer-form thing, I was sure.

And so, final domino: I opened up a google document on my phone and just constantly threw ideas into it. Good ideas, bad ideas, it didn’t matter. I was reading different pieces from various Islamic histories, thinking about existing stereotypes, funny stories I’d heard from friends, and also read Clare Chambers book, “British Muslim Fictions” amongst others.

Once the idea was there, how did you go about writing the book? What did a day of writing look like for you?

I was still working full-time, and juggling other writing commitments at the time, so I wasn’t writing every single day at first. I always wanted to wake up early and write before heading to the office, but back then, I could just never do it. So it was usually evenings and weekends. In the beginning, I tried to do a chapter a day when I could, though with a book like “Wimmy Road Boyz”, where the language is so stylised and ‘loud’, this was too ambitious. I once read that most successful writers would write for about four hours a day, so I always tried to aim for something similar if I could. But even an hour or so was fine for me.

I’ve been putting in the work doing my reps with writing for years, so I don’t mind the time-suck. I wrote the bulk of the first draft of the novel in 2024, which was also the first year I started drinking coffee. I probably only took a single week off the entire year. I had no other choice. Once there was a deadline in place, nothing else mattered. I had no space to second guess myself. I just had to write.

What did writing a book cover-to-cover teach you about writing?

That it’s never just a single writer at work. Conception to publication took four years, and it was at least a solid 2 years straight writing the thing. In that time, I read hundreds of books, watched hundreds of films, had personal issues, bereavements, new friendships, relationships, lost jobs, moved flats, moved cities, dozens of hours of meditations. In other words: I changed. To write a book cover to cover is to be in constant dialogue not just with the world around you, but your own past and future selves. There’s a thousand Sufiyaan Salams who came in and said their piece and tinkered with words, dreamt solutions, ripped pages out with frustration, lost faith, never wavered in their faith. That was the coolest thing I learnt. I was never working alone. Reminds me of the quote from the beginning of A Thousand Plateaus: “since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd”.

For the students and aspiring authors out there, what’s one thing they should hone in on during their English lessons, and one thing they should outside of the classroom?

Read widely and read weirdly. You don’t have to finish boring books — in fact, please don’t (though please don’t be afraid of difficult books, either. Nothing better in this life than realising Dostoyevsky somehow put to paper every emotion you’ve ever felt in your life, in such sharp, unfiltered prose).

Also, take note of the stories you most enjoy telling in daily life. We’re always swapping stories when we’re with colleagues, friends, family, at dinner or brunch or Eid. That stuff is usually our best work.

Beyond Stormzy, the merky prize, and your editors, are there any unsung heroes who helped get Wimmy Road Boys over the line?

My old boss at work, Zoe, to whom the book is dedicated. She was a constant champion of everything I was doing, and always so excited to hear about all my writing stuff. As my deadline neared, she said she’d pretend I was doing a secret project for her, so I could finish it off during work hours.

I finished reading Salam’s book whilst in Tashkent on my travels and it did bring a tear to my eye. I highly recommend reading this novel for a gripping story. Here is a link to purchase the book.

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Outline of the notes:

1. What is the Reading Salon for Ruminators

2. The idea behind the theme for this session

3. The books that helped guide the discussion

4. Tips to become better readers

What is the Reading Salon for Ruminators?

The Reading Salon for Ruminators is a book club designed to explore one big theme in each session. Rather than focus on a single book, we take a thematic approach and everyone brings a book they associate with the theme.

I have chosen to do it this way because in my view, the books are the journey and not the destination. I can reach many conclusions about a variety of topics through the books on my shelf, and the person next to me can reach the same conclusions with a completely different book shelf.

The idea behind the theme for this session.

The third session had the theme of “In pursuit of the good life”. This is a topic that I think about a lot and has many avenues for exploration both personally and societally. It touches on reckoning with what we truly value but also the lengths we will go to in our pursuit of the good life. It is definitely a concept this blog will return to in later posts.

The books that helped guide the discussion:

• Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

• The Invention of Scarcity by Deborah Valenze

• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

• Freezing Point by Anders Bodelsen

• The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma

• Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi

• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

• Liquid by Mariam Rahmani

• The Ocean Would Paint Me Blue by Zoulfa Katouh

• A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

• Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

• The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham

• Babel by R.F. Kuang

• The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

• A History of Rest by Alain Corbin

• Death Is Hard Work by Khaled Khalifa

• True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership by Bill George

• Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson

• To Bless the Space Between Us by John O’Donohue

• Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? by Michael Sandel

Tips to become better readers:

Towards the end of the discussion the group came together to share some thoughts of how they stay motivated to read, how they become better readers, and how they get out of a reading slump. Below are the tips the group came up with:

• Pick a piece of classical music or music without lyrics and read the book with the song on repeat, that way you associate the song with that partiuclar book

• Find out what people with similar personalities are reading / enjoyed reading and read those books

• Add friends on Goodreads and turn on automatic notifications so you get updates when they read

• Don’t be a book snob - explore all genres

• Find the medium that works for you e.g. paperback, hardback, kindle, PDF, audiobook

• Habit-stack your reading, integrate the habit into a part of your day e.g. on your commute to work

Some concluding remarks:

For those interested in keeping up to date with the Reading Salon I recommend following the Instagram @ReadingSalonForRuminators

The conversation as a big group and the smaller breakout ones were took so many different avenues ranging from the economic to the religious to the patriarchal to the cultural. It was also nice to see people attend who were open about not being big readers and earnestly wanting to read more. I am excited to keep the momentum going and look forward to welcoming more people to the Reading Salon.

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I write to you having spent the last two nights in a yurt deep in the Nuratau mountains. This was the final ‘main-leg’ of my two week trip to Uzbekistan, and as I write I am now retreating to the relative safety and comfort (I emphasise the latter) of Tashkent for a few nights before returning to London.

This trip came as a complete surprise to me - serendipity in holiday form. To understand the significance of this trip we first need to understand my general disdain for travel in the modern age. Travelling has never held much of an appeal to me. I often feel like these trips are either an escape from your current life (in which case you are running from a problem) or the desire to travel is born out of a ‘tick box’ mentality of going to places for the photo or to say you’ve been there. A lot of the appeal of travelling is to open yourself to the wonder of the world. My slight rebuttal of that sentiment is that there is wonder everywhere for those with the eyes to see it. In a recent New Society interview the author Andrea Wulf makes the point that travel is no longer slow, it is not a “pensive experience” and a lot of modern travel is going to spot X where someone has taken a pic to also take a similarly cool picture. Contrast this to the great travellers of history: Cook, Magellan, - all of whom undertook lengthy excursions and charted uncomfortable paths. A question I ask sincerely: strip away the ability to take pictures and talk about your experiences, what have you taken from your travels? I encourage all readers to sit with this question. I don’t want to come across as morally superior to those who travel in what I have called the ‘modern’ manner. In the era of annual leave and knowledge work, who wouldn’t want to transport themselves to a paradise and switch off for a period of time. To thrust yourself into the unfamiliar places a huge demand on you.

With that being said, this trip continues my exploration of the Silk Roads - following my inaugural trip to Tbilisi over the Christmas period. The idea to visit Uzbekistan next was in part influenced by my friend (and famous Substacker) Aqeeb’s trips to Central Asia. I recommend checking out his Substack as he documents his exploits in a truly singular manner. Beyond the intellectual theme of the silk roads it was nice to travel to a predominantly Muslim country both for culinary and practical reasons. The idea to visit originally came in 2024 and it didn’t fit into my 2025 schedule. It was originally earmarked for Feb 2026 but being close to my Tbilisi trip and after some soul searching I wanted to minimise travel and focus this year on my running and my career.

Marginalia

what uzbekistan taught me about colour

Scroll through Pinterest or Instagram for ten minutes and you will see it everywhere. Muted, tonal, souless greige. Every kitchen the same shade of nothing, every bedroom a whisper of taupe, every outfit a carefully considered arrangement of oat, stone and slate. It is not just the insta feeds either, it is the everyday objects, the buildings going up a…

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7 months ago · 424 likes · 56 comments · aqeeb

I have often found throughout my life that good things happen when I do not cling to them. Night after night I prayed as a teenager I would get into Oxford only to fail at the interview stage. I still got the grades and ultimately went on to study a better Political Science program, but I had to let go of that dream in order to move forward. Similarly there have been relationships, romances and crushes I really yearned for (believe me, a diet of Maria Popova and indie music had me an Olympic-level yearner) and yet the more I clung to them the further away they were. And so it is with my travels, I had to let go before the winds of fate looked kindly upon me.

Having recently left my job and taking a break, the perfect opportunity came so I packed my bags and flew to Tashkent.

A while back an Uzbek cafe owner in London told me not to spend too much time in Tashkent as it is a lot like other capital cities. I spent maybe 11 hours there on my first day - resting, finding somewhere to eat/pray and then making my way to the train station for the journey to Bukhara.

Now Uzbekistan has a high-speed rail system - built in 2011 and iterated on since. The trains can reach speeds of 250kmph. If I opted for the Afrosiyab trains, I could have reached Bukhara in no time. Instead I wanted to experience what it was like to board a sleeper train and take the slow path to Bukhara totaling around 6-7 hours. The great thing about new experiences in foreign lands is that you have the capacity to be completely surprised. And surprised I was when I boarded the train. The first shock was me realising i didn’t book a private cabin (where you will share with 4 others) and instead booked a bunk in the open carriage with dozens of other passengers. Processing this took longer than usual as I was immediately hit by a wave of heat from the carriage and what can only be described (politely) as a ‘funky’ smell - think butcher’s shop meets barber salon on a hot summer’s day. I will confess this had me slightly shook - since a young age I have always been sensitive to smells and the wrong ones can make me curl up. Eventually I got over it and after some gymnastics to access my top bunk I settled in and attempted to sleep. As the train moved it got progressively cooler but the open window meant the chugging of the train was there for us all to hear. I managed to knock off and the only thought was I hope Arsenal don’t win the Champions League - when I last had signal it was 1 - 1 and nearing the end of the 90 mins. When I awoke from the slumber I had just enough signal to check and after a long loading time I saw PSG had won.

Upon arriving in Bukhara at around 6:30am the first thing I noticed getting off the train is that it is HOT even that early in the morning. Of all the places visited, Bukhara was the hottest with temperatures between 35-40 Celsius during the day. The city is teeming with historical significance, it has been inhabited for at least five millennia - the centre is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But rather than being walled off, the centre is inhabited by locals. After arriving and freshening up, I was famished so I went to find some plov. Each region has their own spin on the dish, I found that Bukhara plov had slightly more meat in the dish and the grains were shorter. It is hard to say if I enjoyed any city’s plov more than another because it is such a simple and tasty dish.

Now I am not going to give a play-by-play of my entire trip. I will include pictures throughout so you get a sense of the journey. Rather I want to draw attention to the things that stuck out for me.

The most important thing to call out is the kindness of Uzbek people. Throughout my trip taxi drivers, vendors, strangers on the street, and those I met in the mosques demonstrated incredible kindness at every step. In many instances I was invited to dinner by families eager for me to try Uzbek food properly. Despite the low uptake of English and me only possessing a few words of Uzbek, I was able to have somewhat rudimentary conversations and reach an understanding with the locals. In one slightly surreal instance upon leaving the Imam Bukhari complex in Samarkand two locals approached me asking to take pictures with me (I mean can you blame them amirite :) ), as they were leaving I said “rahamt” - the Uzbek word for thanks - and they turned back around with such glee and engaged with me for a while longer. People would speak fondly of Pakistan when speaking of my ancestry, similar to my stint in Tbilisi people would even break out a few verses of Urdu. To really hammer the point home about kindness, I met a gentleman in the queue at Tashkent airport on the way back and we exchanged pleasantries. When arriving back in London we crossed paths at baggage collection again and resumed our brief conversation. During our chat we realised we live about 20-25 mins away from each other, at which point without hesitation he offered to drop me off home. His friend arrived to pick us up (also an Uzbek) and for the hour long journey we laughed and talked.

The next natural point of inquiry beyond the people is the food that Uzbekistan has. Unlike my trip to Georgia, halal options were the default so I definitely feasted on this trip. My use of the word feasted here is relative because 30 degrees plus weather really saps the hunger from you. Nevertheless I had my share of plov, samsa, manty, laghman and a whole other variety of Uzbek dishes. The dishes are incredibly flavoursome but without spice in stark contrast to their South Asian brethren. The diet is definitely more suited to carnivorous personalities, by day 7 or 8 I was missing my Farmer Js salad. Going through the motions, I thought Uzbek food was an 8/10 - as close as a foreign cuisine will get to winning a place in my heart, after all nothing beats mums cooking. And then… And then on day 12 from the heavens came the best restaurant meal I have ever had. After my stint in the Nuratau mountains I arrived back in Tashkent to fly home. I used those two days to treat myself and have a more conventional holiday (trips to the spa, eating, doing nothing etc). In the evening I went to “Bazar” restaurant in Tashkent City. Each bite had to be savoured, I would pick up my food, take a bite and then sit for 30 seconds marvelling at what I just tasted. The chef came out and saw my reactions and we struck up conversation. He was generous enough to give me a dish which was his spin on the pakistani ‘paratha’. I apologise to my grandmother in advance, his spin on the paratha was infinitely better than how we prepare the dish. The best meals come when you least expect it.

Now this brings me to my final point of inquiry which was how Uzbekistan is a huge monument to the dead. I spent so much time in Mausoleums - be it to prophets, politicians or plebeians. People online have seen the necropolis’ in Samarkand and the burial sites of Bukhara. What was slightly frustrating is these places had been stripped of their solemn tone. Take the Shahi-Zinda necropolis in Samarkand for example. The building is famous for the striking blue tile-work which is rather picturesque. Legend has it that a cousin of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) is buried within the necropolis. Now I don’t expect those lacking faith to particularly care about who exactly is buried there, but they should care that the dead are there. I sat for an hour people watching and scores of tourists would come scouring the right angle for the perfect picture and sometimes not even look at who was buried there! It is a rather sobering reminder that our reverence for those who have departed this realm is depleting and they are merely props to the perfect Instagram post.

Putting aside my lamentations on the behaviour of visitors, I did find the Bahaouddin Naqshband complex to be my favourite place to visit and pay my respects. Bahaouddin founded the Naqshband sufi order, one of the oldest and most respected within the sufi tradition. The place can only be described as an oasis of tranquility, it was peaceful not only in atmosphere, but it calmed the senses as well. I could have spent many more hours there sitting, praying in the mosque and having quiet reflections in the courtyard. Overall, the country has done a phenomenal job at showcasing its history. The Imam Bukhari complex is without a doubt the best museum I have been to - the perfect blend of modern technology used to tell a story and rich historical artefacts. The Quran hall in the Hazrati Imam complex houses one of the most historically significant Quran’s - the Quran of the third Caliph Uthman who was slain whilst praying from that very book. His blood stains are still on the page! And it is encased in a hall whose beauty I can only describe as transcendental showcasing the marvellous history of the Qurans we use.

And yet all this history left me feeling rather somber. Not just because of the amount of time spent with the dead (the only time it really got to me was when I was walking through a graveyard for the locals of Samarkand and saw a tombstone dedicated to a three year old child), but because everything was a reference to the past. There was limited talk of Uzbekistan’s future. In the Hazrati Imam complex there was a section dedicated to the future of the country in which it talked about construction of cities and complexes (which to be honest looked like slightly nicer version of your average Barratt Homes apartment complex). Multiple references to BYD and Chinese investment were made. Was this the future of this once great Silk Road territory? On the way down from the Nuratau mountains we saw a fallen pylon used to for electricity generation. It has been there for some time as the municipality is waiting for the Chinese to send a replacement. It made me realise that for all the UK talks about losing growth, it is still future-oriented. It is an unfair comparison to make given the two countries are markedly different, but given the UK is my frame of reference it is what I think of.

I left Uzbekistan with my fill of exploration and with a surprising question gnawing at me: why was I here and does my intellectual fascination of the silk road justify me being here? I don’t think it does, but simultaneously the religious aspect was absolutely worth it. If nothing else it showed me the multitudes of beauty that exist within our faith and made me aware of even more characters who were instrumental in the faith’s development. of I am definitely full up from travel, my desire for wonder doesn’t require a 1,000km+ trip to some far-off land, the same can be achieved with an open mind in a new coffee shop on a road you don’t walk down so often. It also filled me with a hunger to propel life forward. Two weeks of looking back into the past created a yearning for the future, to propel my own life forward, and to see what the next chapter in human history has in store. The Uzbeks have done a magnificent job of telling and showcasing their history, I will keep that in mind, but I am more excited by the prospect of the building the future.

Dum Spiro, Spero.

The above was the opening of my sign off email that I sent at the end of May. The magnitude of typing those words out, hitting send and then logging off for the last time hit me with a tidal wave of emotion. I have been so caught up in other endeavors that I hadn’t really contemplated the significance of the moment. Seeing all the emails flood in from colleagues and a brief farewell chat from my sanguine manager were the cracks that burst the dam. It finally hit me I was saying goodbye.

My whole career from graduation to that Thursday was spent at that particular bank. Five-ish years of doing the same walk from my flat to the station, then the same tube journey, taking the lift to the same floor and sitting at the same bank of desks. Lunch was from the same few places, I had my favourite coffee spots, I had my summertime walking routes when needing to get off desk.1

My journey to get there went beyond the usual ‘spring week → summer internship → grad program pipeline. This exit feels so momentous in part because of the journey it took to get there. This began over ten years ago when I was in sixth form. Back then I was an aspiring politico planning my route to 10 Downing Street. It was safe to say a career in finance hadn’t crossed my mind. I spent many an evening googling for schemes/programs which provided work experience in politics and/or help in applying to Oxford. My thinking at the time was to study PPE at Oxford, work for an MP to build experience and then bide my time to run for elected office. I look back with a certain level of admiration of how straightforward and ambitious the plans were. There was no hedging, I wanted to do something and everything was in service of that.

One night of random googling I came across the Social Mobility Foundation and their Aspiring Professionals Programme (APP). The specific link took me to a then discontinued civil service stream of the APP. This was exactly what I was looking for, work experience and help with applying to university. Applications had not yet opened so I registered to be on the mailing list and went about my day. Given the Civil Service stream had been discontinued I selected finance based purely on the fact the other options were law and medicine/dentistry.

When applications opened it took me by surprise at how extensive the application was. Some of it was income/geographic related to confirm I fit the target demographic for the scheme - the SMF work with students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The second portion of the application consisted of 10 questions ranging from 250 to 1,000 words. I took my time prepping my answers which inevitably meant I drifted closer to the deadline.

Now I share this story partly because it is almost comical how different my life could have been if not for the following set of events.

As I was typing out my answers ahead of the application deadline I was getting increasingly fatigued, I was doing this after my day of studies concluded. It got to around 11:30pm and I thought “Okay, I can’t be bothered, I’m too tired and will forget applying.” I didn’t think much of it and went to bed.

The following morning I woke up to the below email:

Immediately I jolted up. I took it as a sign from God that I need to apply for this program. So I wrapped up the application and a few months later was accepted onto the programme. The APP consisted of two weeks’ work experience in the summer between Year 12 and Year 13, year-long mentorship from an employee at the place where the work experience was undertaken, and help with personal statements / university applications.

The two weeks work experience, and mentorship did a lot for me as an individual and my confidence. It was those experiences which opened my eyes to the possibility of working in finance. The main draw at the time was the people I met through the various work experiences and networking events. Everyone seemed incredibly smart, enthusiastic, and personable. Of course now coming out the other end the sheen has worn off slightly, but the sentiments still remain intact. 10 years on, my mentor has remained in contact and is someone I know I can turn to for advice.

The other reason I begin my resignation eulogy with this story is because I do carry a strong sense of gratitude for the chances that were taken on me by various people and by the bank at large.

This brings me to first lesson from my career: coming in I was incredibly lucky to get there, but you need to park that in some corner of your mind. Of course there are people who are more intelligent and could have been there in your place but it doesn’t serve you to keep reminding yourself of that. The world is the sum of contingent circumstances. The hypothetical “what ifs” are a good thought exercise but the world is the way it is due to what actually happens and how we all conducted ourselves. This works both ways, just because you were good enough to get in, doesn’t mean you can rest on your laurels - the bar is continually raised. People talk of imposter syndrome, but I’ve seen more of the reverse: people who are vastly incompetent acting as though they are wholly capable. Instead of viewing them with derision, I view them with a tinge of admiration, they are bold enough to seize opportunities.

How did this lesson carry with me through my career? There were seniors who were objectively not that intelligent, or whose flaws were apparent to see. At first I found this slightly bizarre as my frame of reference was that the hierarchy would be the smartest are at the top. At some point it clicked that I need to look for their ‘secret sauce’, the magic that covers up their flaws. We all have weaknesses but we are not just the sum of our positives and negatives, we are the mix of those traits and we can choose how to blend those together.

So given the bar is continually raised, how do we actually make a careers out of this chance? Another big lesson is that hard work is the only currency you have control over. I’ve seen a lot of content about white collar jobs which is laced with cynicism. Now let’s not pretend we are doctors or building infrastructure, the impact we have in so-called “knowledge work” is harder to discern due to the scale and complexity we operate at. If you are a doctor it is quite easy to see patient X, recommend treatment A or B, and see outcomes 1, 2 or 3. Working on PowerPoint or Excel doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. For argument’s sake let us assume it is BS and has no value, your options are: leave, or do the work. If you opt for doing the work then hard work and enthusiasm are the preferred course of action. People like enthusiasm and effort, with enough effort you will learn and pick up things. If you take a cynical approach to what you do, that process is slowed down. Ironically this leads to being stuck doing more of the same work you are cynical about.

How did this lesson carry with me through my career? This is slightly more difficult because sometimes work is hard and life is getting you down, but I found when I joined calls and had a smile on my face, or took a “yes, and…” approach rather than a “no, but…” approach things started to work in my favour. People often make requests which are unreasonable or practically not feasible but it isn’t enough to tell them, through the process you have to show them. As a product manager I was constantly explaining to relationship managers or bankers why proposal A or B doesn’t work but sometimes taking a more constructive approach and just bearing out the thesis does more.

Fortunately we have control over the attitude we bring to our jobs. The reason why I leave with a bittersweet feeling rather than just palpable joy is because of my amazing team. So much of your career is determined by who you are around. You can be in the best team, covering the most prestigious clients, doing the most high profile work, but if your team are terrible then it will make the whole endeavor an ordeal.

The next lesson is one that I think is super important: have your why. Why are you embarking on a career in finance? My why at the start was simple: given the work experience and networks, it was too good an opportunity to pass up on. It is remarkable that at such a young age you are given a sense of responsibility and are put to work. It was exactly what I needed in my early 20s to learn and grow. It was an environment where you were expected to deliver and add value, and it is only by doing that we learn. I think a lot of people start off with a good why but don’t interrogate it constantly. I do in parts agree with Rutger Bregman’s critique of so-called “elite” careers which become a Bermuda Triangle for talent. However I think the critique can sometimes underestimate what great training grounds these professions are. To be successful you become adept at dealing with multiple stakeholders, speaking to people, working with complexity, etc etc. These aren’t skills you can teach in education. A stint in the sector, especially when young can, make all the difference. However, the problem is people stay in these professions without a refreshed why. Often this is because of the salary and general comfortability these careers can offer. In other instances your responsibility expands - think marriage, kids, personal circumstances. Once you’ve had it good, it is hard to say goodbye and take a risk. This can lead to a low-level constant dissonance because what we do is not aligned to our values. This doesn’t have to be a moral crusade of some sorts, but we all have intrinsic levels of purpose and drive, our goal is to align our life to these intrinsic motivations. This is all to say, periodic reevaluation of our intentions and motivations is essential.

In professions such as finance, the perception can be that it is super serious and everyone is stern. One thing I have tried to do is inject fun in where possible. Now this definitely requires craft, and can backfire when not done correctly. A small example of how I’ve done this is with funky socks/ties (note: there’s a fine line between tacky and tasteful here). Or with an Outlook invite that has a humorous title. While we treat our work very seriously, when the opportunity presents itself try to inject some levity, it makes you more personable. Work can be a grind, don’t be someone who adds to it.

My career is littered with anecdotes, nuggets of wisdom and lessons I know will stay with me for the foreseeable future. One I like to share is the “yellow M&M” story. One of my managers was unhappy with a deck I put together - in fairness I was trying to get the outline right and then would clean up the aesthetic at the end. I pushed back saying the instructions and guidance were vague and once the “story” is ironed out I can clean up the material. My then manager then proceeded to tell me a story about a touring rock band who had a laundry list of instructions, amongst those were that a bowl of yellow M&Ms were to be placed in the dressing room. The reason for the request was that given the complexity of touring and putting on a rock show, a lot of their requests were too niche to notice (will anyone check the cables for the mic system before it is too late?) but the yellow M&Ms provided a base level of comfort that the team at least had a cursory glance at the requests. The lesson to apply was that in every draft make it look as close to perfect and then the tweaks can go along. Part of knowledge work is testing ideas and putting pen to paper is the way of crystallising those thoughts. The iterations show that maybe the idea sounded great in the mind but when put on paper it looks horrible. More often than not, the process of putting pen to paper is what guides the thinking, it is iterative.

Below is my full resignation later. I leave with some more aphoristic lessons and will share more lessons as my career progresses.

• Work-life balance is largely a misnomer. There is work, and there is life, the knack is knowing how and when to prioritise one over the other, not striving for balance.

• In today’s smart casual approach to office outfits, rock up in a full suit and tie every few weeks - you will feel the difference in how you carry yourself.

• Large corporations and bureaucracies start to make a lot more sense when you imagine yourself as some lackey in a medieval court serving a noble Lord of the realm. You are Tywin Lannister’s cupbearer, not Kendall Roy.

• The goal of your early career should be to work hard, not smart. The working smart part comes after a period of accumulation, you need something to optimise.

• Take pride in your craft. Whether it is slides you produce, analysis in Excel, or your emails, take the time and effort to hone your craft - don’t half-ass it.

• Carve time out for reflection. Don’t just make notes but re-read them, synthesise them. Embody the spirit of Ben Franklin and create a “careers almanac”.

• Given how intangible a lot of white-collar work is, simply doing good work isn’t enough. The right people need to know and it isn’t political to make sure that they do.

• Behind zoom calls, teams, and email, it can be easy to forget these are real 3D people. Take time to connect with colleagues in-person.

• In the early career phase, being in the office is the best way to learn - you never know what you might overhear or learn by osmosis.

My Resignation Letter:

For any of my colleagues reading this, I sincerely thank you. To everyone else, thank you for coming along for the ride.

Outline of the notes:

1. What is the Reading Salon for Ruminators

2. The idea behind the theme for this session

3. The books that helped guide the discussion

4. Celebrity Guest: Sufiyaan Salam to discuss Wimmy Road Boys

5. Tips to become better readers

What is the Reading Salon for Ruminators?

The Reading Salon for Ruminators is a book club designed to explore one big theme in each session. Rather than focus on a single book, we take a thematic approach and everyone brings a book they associate with the theme.

I have chosen to do it this way because in my view, the books are the journey and not the destination. I can reach many conclusions about a variety of topics through the books on my shelf, and the person next to me can reach the same conclusions with a completely different book shelf.

The idea behind the theme for this session.

The second session had the theme of “beauty in human imperfection”. I wanted to build on some of the conversations from the last reading salon and delve into the human qualities which shape the paths our lives take. Often these are seen at the time as being flaws but with hindsight we appreciate all the good that comes from them. Literature is also full of great characters with flaws which make them endearing.

The books that helped guide the discussion:

• Wimmy Road Boys by Sufiyaan Salam

• Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

• Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence

• The Man Who Reads Books by Rachid Benzine

• The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

• Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

• Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

• Wonder by R.J. Palacio

• Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick

• Stoner by John Williams

• Guapa by Saleem Haddad

• The Shadow of What Was Lost by James Islington

• As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow by Zoulfa Katouh

• Supplications by Imam Sajjad

• Traversal by Maria Popova

• Heroes by Stephen Fry

• Moneyball by Michael Lewis

Celebrity Guest: Sufiyaan Salam to discuss Wimmy Road Boys

In the session we were also fortunate to host award-winning debut author Sufiyaan Salam to discuss his novel ‘Wimmy Road Boys’. Sufiyaan was kind enough to share his thinking about the novel – which follows three British Asian lads on a night out on the famous curry mile whilst they wrestle with their own internal struggles and are unable at times to share them. The work speaks for itself and I highly recommend everyone buy a copy and get stuck in to a gripping story which has the power to make you feel every emotion over the course of this rollercoaster novel.

Tips to become better readers:

Towards the end of the discussion the group came together to share some thoughts of how they stay motivated to read, how they become better readers, and how they get out of a reading slump. Below are the tips the group came up with.

• Read ‘Wimmy Road Boys’ !!!

• You don’t have to finish a book when you start it, put it down and revisit at a later point if it isn’t working for you

• If you are finding a book difficult, don’t assume it is your fault, some books are hard to read!

• Don’t make reading a chore or metric based

• Listen to audiobooks to help break up the consumption

• Remember different books can be read for different intentions - keep that in mind as you navigate what you are reading

Some concluding remarks:

For those interested in keeping up to date with the Reading Salon I recommend following the Instagram @ReadingSalonForRuminators

The conversation as a big group and the smaller breakout ones were breathtaking in their depth and the perspectives shared. I am excited to keep the momentum going and look forward to welcoming more people to the Reading Salon.

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Outline of the notes:

1. What is the Reading Salon for Ruminators

2. The idea behind the theme for this session

3. The books that helped guide the discussion

4. Tips to become better readers

What is the Reading Salon for Ruminators?

The Reading Salon for Ruminators is a book club designed to explore one big theme in each session. Rather than focus on a single book, we take a thematic approach and everyone brings a book they associate with the theme.

I have chosen to do it this way because in my view, the books are the journey and not the destination. I can reach many conclusions about a variety of topics through the books on my shelf, and the person next to me can reach the same conclusions with a completely different book shelf.

The idea behind the theme for this session.

The inaugural session had the theme of “the contingency of life”. I wanted to explore how the decisions we make can have an outsized influence on the path our lives take. The inspiration came from reading “Why Nations Fail” by Acemoglu and Robinson when they discussed “critical junctures”. I touched on this in a previous substack where I remarked:

The books that helped guide the discussion.

• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

• The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

• People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry

• Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

• Wild Swans by Jung Chang

• The Road to the Country by Chigozie Obioma

• Time to Think by Nancy Kline

• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

• The Alchemy of Happiness by Al-Ghazali

• The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis

• Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

• The Diaries of Franz Kafka by Franz Kafka

• The Wandering Souls by Cécile Pin

• Exhalation by Ted Chiang

• Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson

• The Bosnia List by Kenan Trebincevic

Tips to become better readers:

Towards the end of the discussion the group came together to share some thoughts of how they stay motivated to read, how they become better readers, and how they get out of a reading slump. Below are the tips the group came up with.

• When in a reading slump, read a book you loved as a child to get you started

• It is okay to buy books that you may not be interested in now, but know you will come back to later

• Crack the spine, highlight, annotate - make the book yours!

• Read a few books of varying topics at the same time, that way if you get bored of one you can pick up another

• The books you read don’t always have to be heavy hitters or “classics” they can be fun reads

• (I promise this wasn’t me!) Join a book club!

• Use any commute time to read instead of scrolling

• Read the same books as your friends, that way you are all invested

• It is okay not to finish a book cover to cover

• Make a routine out of reading

• Immerse yourself in all things related to that book. Read about the author, the context, any video essays, book reviews etc

• Always carry a book on you

• Use a kindle

Some concluding remarks:

Hosting the book club was the most fun I have had this year, my jaw was hurting that evening from all the smiling and talking I did. A sincere thanks to all who attended.

For those interested in keeping up to date with the Reading Salon I recommend following the Instagram @ReadingSalonForRuminators

The conversation as a big group and the smaller breakout ones were breathtaking in their depth and the perspectives shared. I managed to note down some of the iconic quotes which stuck with me:

• “Giggle as you go”

• Not a quote but there was an extensive conversation on the definition of girlypop which sparked huge disagreement

  • Following on from that the phrase “Brat Summer Bolshevism” was said which is now permanently lodged in my brain

• “You almost have to hit rock bottom before you think you have nothing to lose”

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Side note: if any of my previous matches are reading, it wasn’t you that prompted this I promise you.

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There was no particular moment that prompted this exodus from the realm of online dating, it was more drip by drip. I found being on the apps irreconcilable with the life I want to live and how I want to pursue romance.

I thought long and hard about penning this piece. Substack is full of enough cringey content about online dating, how romance is dead and a great many other grievances that exist in this general sphere. The reason why I decided to write the piece is because I haven’t seen many from a guys’ perspective and taking the spirit of this blog to heart (that is to follow the contemplative tradition) there is something I hope worth sharing. At the very least I will have crystalized my own thoughts about the pursuit of love in an increasingly digital world.

When deleting various dating apps you are often asked to give a reason. It stuck out to me that one of the reasons you could select was “I don’t like how the app makes me feel.” Providing that reason almost feels like an admission of guilt from the dating apps - a tacit admission that their structure can leave us feeling repulsed with ourselves. It is striking because I am making this decision at a time when I feel the most “me” I have felt in years. That drip drip drip of misalignment has finally reached its denouement, and the bad feeling has driven me to take action.

Unfortunately for readers expecting a scathing rebuke of dating apps, this isn’t it. I actually think dating apps are incredible at what they do: connecting you with people you wouldn’t otherwise come across. It is important to keep that in mind throughout this piece as it dawns on me that so much of the disappointment with dating apps comes from the weight of expectations placed upon them. In reality it is just an app to connect you with people and help facilitate some level of conversation. It can be a path to romance (or whatever it is you seek on these apps) if and only if you are willing to pave the path ahead.

The pitfalls of an online dating profile:

The first drip of misalignment is the very nature of building a profile on a dating app. The problem of distilling a 3D human being into a 2D screen is not unique to dating apps, but it is an arena online where the problem presents itself in a very acute manner. Human beings are a wonderous species. One of the things that sustains me is my never-ending love of and fascination with humans. We are endlessly fascinating; our thoughts, feelings, contradictions, attitudes and everything in between are such a rich tapestry for inquiry. And yet despite this wonder that exists, dating app profiles are some of the most dull distillations of a person you can come across.

While some of that dullness can be attributed to the inherent impossibility of translating 3D humans into a 2D profile, I think it is more the case that we are horrible at putting ourselves out there in a compelling manner. Granted part of this is strategic, you want to have enough appeal to a wide audience to make your choice. That leads to a place where people who are seemingly “interesting” based on their profile are actually quite boring, they have just figured out what works. It is a Sisyphean task to go through endless profiles with the duopoly of performative femininity: Pilates and matcha. In short, it is hard to figure out who is actually being authentic in their representation of themselves versus a perceived image of who they want to be versus trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

A more interesting lens to view online profiles through is not “what makes a good dating profile” but rather what makes someone a good reviewer of a dating profile. As Henri Matisse reminds us: There are always flowers for those who want to see them. If we approach things from a place of curiosity then naturally even the seemingly mundane can be interesting. What I described above could very well be the case in human interactions: people altering their personality to be more palatable, inauthentic framings, an inability to present oneself in an accurate manner. The differentiator I have found is that the online world reorients our cure for boredom to the external domain. Instead of looking within, we look outside. We scroll, we swipe, we stare, all in search of that right constellation of pixels to light up our synapses and keep the beast of boredom away for a little while longer. This reflects a broader societal ill of consumption: when everything is frictionless and abundant, we stop bringing genuine curiosity to other people. We expect it to be delivered to us, rather than to discover it ourselves. As I talked about above, human beings have within them an endless capacity for wonder, but if we are not attuned to that ourselves then no profile will ever be interesting enough.

A match made in heaven, navigating the hidden etiquette

Let’s say you manage to re-discover the wonder of the human race and send a few likes, heck you even get a few matches. Now the real dance begins: conversing with people. As a dude this is especially delicate because the onus is usually on us to send the first message. I am not one for “small talk” in the sense that I want the other person to have something to work with rather than a “hey how are you”. I usually pick an opening based off their profile, and if their profile doesn’t have anything that can be probed further (shockingly this is often the case) I will ask an amusing question - a go to of mine is asking for their favorite meme. Imagine chatting to strangers IRL for the first time, there is so much stimulation that you are bound to overthink the situation. The same is true online only that you can’t see the other person and they can g..gh…ghost you.

Yes we have got to that stage: the dreaded g-word. The scourge of all those who have dated online. I am ashamed to say I have on a few instances ghosted someone and in many instances been ghosted. In every instance it is a weird phenomenon and one I won’t dwell on too much because we can all acknowledge it sucks. It does provide a good reminder though that these apps are best used as a bridge to in person interactions where you are actually connecting with another human being rather than an end in of themselves.

The internet and online conversations have existed long enough that there are distinct approaches coupled with a multitude of sub-languages. For example: do you double text? Do you send one long message rather than multiple small ones? Consider that each time you meet someone new in this digital labyrinth, it is a new lexicon to navigate. Amidst all this we would all do well to remember there is another human being on the other side of the screen. For me I have simply reached the point of exhaustion, there are only so many layup conversations I can have before actually discussing something of substance. When I say substance I am not even referring to anything high-brow or beyond surface level, but rather a conversation where it feels like I am speaking to a fellow human being.

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The bridge to the start point: actually meeting someone in person

We’ve combed through our profiles, sent a few likes, matched with someone, survived the haunted house of dating app small talk and finally reached the point at which you meet someone. If you have reached this stage congratulations. This is where you can actually get the measure of a person and see if you connect. I have no frustration with this part at all, meeting people is awesome! The draining part is that it takes a whole bunch of texting and “vetting” to get to this stage. Some of this is warranted given you are essentially connecting with strangers online, and I am most certainly speaking from a place of (male) privilege. At worst a meetup for me leads to a few hours wasted, the reality for others can be much worse and I wouldn’t want to diminish that reality.

I raise this point because meeting people in person for me is the only barometer for assessing an experience with someone. If two people have great textual chemistry and it fails in person then you know the endeavor is doomed. Whereas if the reverse is true we would continue. One of my favorite dating experiences was with someone I exchanged a handful of messages with, arranged to grab some food and then didn’t speak until we met save for a confirmation message.

Connecting with strangers: adventures in misalignment

After all of the above, we come to the trickiest part of the whole ordeal: the mismatch between what people say they want and reality. I am deliberately keeping this section brief as I don’t want to come across as an old man yelling at the clouds.

Instead, I will remark on how dating reveals a lot about yourself and how it can be incredibly confusing given how things we thought were true can change. Our perspectives on love/romance are contingent and constantly being re-examined. Notions of attractiveness, of traits we desire, of aspects we dislike are all somewhat context-dependent. What we like in one person, we hate in another. Longstanding notions of what we want or need suddenly come into contact with reality. Even the more veteran daters who have a solid sense of who they are and what they are looking for can be surprised with the right interaction.

Given the above, the key skills required are self-reflection and self-awareness. Our views are what they are and could very well be different tomorrow (within reason of course). It takes a certain level of humility to understand this constant flux and be able to enter the dating space fully. There is the trope of “being ready” or “working on oneself” before entering the dating world, and while I think some core development is beneficial, that work is never done. Coming into contact with lots of people broadens that perspective. Dates that don’t go anywhere are not bad dates, good encounters change you, people you’d never date carry thoughts and opinions you keep with you long after the last conversation.

Similarly there is this notion of “not wasting yours/others time” as though each interaction needs to pass a threshold of utility to be deemed worthwhile. This sentiment evokes a deep sadness in me because it shows how untethered we are to our fellow human that we view time spent with them in a utilitarian manner.

My concluding thought here is that you cannot be honest and open with other people about what you’re looking for if you aren’t open and honest with yourself. Meeting new people may conjure up uncomfortable feelings because we may encounter the unfamiliar - it is not bad, it is just different.

Going through the (Muslim) motions

All of the above is through the lens of a single man in his 20s trying to find love. The key piece of context here is that I am also Muslim so there is very much a specific framework in which I am looking: that is primarily for a wife.

One of my favorite questions to ask people looking for marriage is “why now, why not a year ago, why not a year into the future?” And it has stumped a worrying number of people. Those who provide an answer give an incredible insight into their life journey, what they have been working on and where they want to go and how marriage plays into that. Those who stumble around for an answer often frame their search as “the next step”. The steps preceding their search are the well-worn path of school-college-university-employment. It is common that once people enter the workplace inquisitive family members start asking “soooooooo is there a special someone” (I am using a generous paraphrase of the question here, often it is much more blunt).

To me this is a huge mistake. Life is not linear and resists any playbook you try to chuck at it. In an ideal world that is what would be the ideal trajectory but the conditions are rarely ideal. Embracing non-linear approaches to life building is the only way to ensure we remain aligned to ourselves. I can fully appreciate why people push for marriage given the positive impact it can have, but i think we underindex on the costs of an unfulfilling marriage. In short, it is better to make it fit into your life rather than contort yourself into fitting into the linear life straightjacket.

In other domains we accept it is true - non-linear careers are becoming more common as people realise professional lives don’t follow a fixed script. Our personal lives can be built along the same lines. This isn’t delaying or putting off the pursuit of companionship, but rather having the self awareness to understand that timing is everything and if the timing isn’t right then we should re-direct our energy.

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The Rizz Recession

The insights above are not unique to my experiences, they are in part shaped by many conversations with friends and fellow dates over the years. This has resulted in a collective low-belief, low-energy, low-expectation state of modern dating. Nobody really thinks it is going to work, but everyone persists. It is the same way people doom scroll when they know it is bad. In the same way endlessly scrolling leads to brain rot, endlessly swiping on Hinge against our better instincts leads to romantic brain rot. We are in the era of the rizz recession.

Where do I go from here?

I mentioned earlier that I deleted the apps precisely at a moment when I felt the most “me” in a long time. It isn’t that I am giving up on searching for love, it is rather that I have lost faith in the avenue that dating apps present. It is also reflective of a worldview where I believe things will play out as they are meant to and the only thing I can do is exert myself every day. I have absolute faith that being social, meeting people, bringing my full self to the spaces I inhabit will provide moments of serendipity. On the off chance they do not, the time was spent well in a more natural way rather than playing romantic roulette in a rigged casino.

I hope all those still in their search for love have it strike them at the moment it is most needed. For those preserving the bonds of love I pray it burns bright forever.

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Last year I made quite the bold declaration that I hate summer. And I still do. So while I am rejoicing the advent of Spring, there is a tinge of sadness because it means summer is around the corner.

This blog will have many words about the seasons, the natural rhythms they entail, and what it all teaches us about being human. However, I begin with the best summation of Spring I have come across1 which rings in my head all the time:

The quote poetically captures all the beauty that spring entails. We all know the feeling of that first blue sky in March when it is no longer bone-chilling and how suddenly the rays unlock within us a sense of joy and serenity we didn’t realize possible. You look up at the sky and see a crisp blue. It has been so long since you last felt that combination of warmth, light and freshness, it feels like we are experiencing it for the first time. We notice the extra pep in our step, how waking up each morning isn’t the herculean task it was previously, or that suddenly there is capacity in our hearts to soak in the beauty. The winter blindfold is whisked away and we are aware of Rilke’s reminder: “To be here is immense.”

The magic of Spring is that it catches us off guard. Some of us get to the end of February and think we escaped winter unscathed. Our routines and habits remained, we stayed diligent and kept the show on the road, indulged over Christmas with friends and family.

But then that first blue sky in March comes along.

The rays of Sunshine melt away all haze blurring our vision, the first modicum of Vitamin D in months cleaning the cobwebs from the recesses of our mind. It is not that we are experiencing happiness and an uplifted mood, it is the serenity that accompanies it. It is as though instinctually we acknowledge this feels right.

All of this reads like I am happy to see the end of winter. To winter I happily say auf wiedersehen, not because I am relieved to see the back of the season, but because I know we will be reacquainted - God Willing.

Each season embodies its own cosmic rhythm. Certain behaviors, traits, attitudes and modes of thinking come more naturally. A lot of this is inherent in our biological makeup as a species, some of it a reflection of our urban environments. One of the great tragedies of modern life, modern working, and sadly modern ways of thinking is that consistency is expected of us. The changing of the seasons is a reminder that each of us contains within us a rich tapestry of humanity that unearths itself every day. To demand across all seasons we deliver the same work is one of the ultimate signs of dislocation from our essence as human beings. We must move and adapt with the seasons, not pretend we are immune to their changing. I believe such seasonal dislocation leads to tumult in our soul.

We greet Spring with a smile the same way we take a sip of water after a long thirst. The chirp of the birds, the colors blossoming in nature, the beauty of our surroundings are so immense because we have been dislocated from them for so long. Quite literally the longer nights inhibit what we can see.

I also find that spring has built within it a way of telling you if you are living an authentic life. The lazy clouds, longer days and general rebirthing of Mother Nature somehow communicate the multitudes of possibility that live within you. I find myself asking more and more in spring whether I am living my most authentic life, whether I am capitalizing on the vast capabilities of destiny that lay within me. Perhaps the contemplative tradition, that spring makes easier, attunes us to those paths that are yet to be pursued. Perhaps it is because we finally have enough energy after months of hunkering down in winter that we are now asking ourselves how do we deploy our full gamut of capacity. For those wanting a greater vocabulary to describe this self reckoning, I recommend consulting “The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows”.2

In the winter months it is easier to apply ourselves in a gritty manner, to do the hard work we seldom have the desire for. I am reminded constantly of the Dylan Thomas poem “rage against the dying of the light”. In winter I muster every sinew I have towards my endeavors because I am raging against the dying of the light. It is cold, wet, and miserable and simultaneously life-affirming. There is a certain appeal to valiantly keeping the show on the road, putting in the hard yards and waiting for all the dreams that spring entails. Simultaneously, any retreat or defeat we must contend with is easier to swallow - after all it is dark and cold and miserable.

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I remarked previously that summer is a reminder we are alive. In winter the onus is on us to affirm that we are alive. It is a challenge I relish but I am also relieved it is over. It is the season which has the perfect hello and goodbye.

In the winter months I leaned more into my reading. It took on a heavy political economy tinge but alongside the fun lessons about English political development, military slavery being a key component of state development, and Evil Empress Wu, the theme that kept cropping up was that everything is contingent.

We live in an age of systems and scale. Billions of people, trillions of dollars, an endless array of choice. Corporations and governments are so vast they are struggling to navigate their size. The leviathan would be diagnosed with dwarfism in our age of scale. We speak of Capitalism, Imperialism, Neoliberalism, Fascism and all the other isms which attempt to explain our structural realities. With all of this in mind it can be easy to slip into being a passive player in life’s beautiful game. And yet the common theme in history is that it is contingent. Things are not predetermined, they are one way and then they are another. While we are alive it is still all to play for as David Graeber reminds us:

The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.

This is one big lesson I will take from winter, and it is fortunate that spring is the perfect time to apply this lesson. Trees that were once barren will suddenly become alive, the flowers will bloom and the birds will chirp. What was barren will become bursting with life. Humans are not separate from this cycle of rebirthing. Because everything is contingent it means the doors to better possibilities remain open.

My love of poetry has only increased. It dawned upon me that only the way to navigate the genre is to consume and create. Never just one, but both. Many a tube journey home this winter was spent jotting down my attempts at poetry. Despite every sinew in my being telling me not to, I share below some of my poetry:

The Fire of the Mind (from 12/01/2026):

The fire burns brightest in the mind

It cleanses all thoughts, destroys all inhibitions

The landscape is yours, ready to conquer like a caucus steppe

But the fire of the mind does not always burn in reality

The kindling turns damp with the first mistake

The oxygen is removed with the second mistake

The will to act is removed with the third mistake

Suddenly the fire becomes a distant memory

Until reality thaws and the flame begins its inevitable dance

The Bruises of a Normal Day (from 05/01/2026)

I arrive to my little corner of the world

Battered and bruised

Rueing the day’s defeats

Unable to accept the moments of grace

A moment of silence finally pierces the night

Palpitations transform into blessings made palpable

The grace of God extends its ever present hand

And in the depths of slumber came renewed hope

As you can tell from the poetry, the mood for winter was very much one of trying to keep things going and feeling the efforts of my exertion. It can be easy in that constant uphill battle to give in to cynicism, to let the heart calcify. But as the poems above show, despite the knocks or the difficulty, we can choose to be hopeful and begin anew. To borrow from George R.R. Martin and Chairman Mao: the long march of winter ends and the dream of spring is made real.

To Winter: I bid you farewell. The seasonal churn levitates my soul and I am grateful for your cold embrace. To Spring: I welcome you with open arms. May your desire for rebirth and renewal flow into our lives and nourish our souls.

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“But Ray Cole stood with us… all of us… in Baltimore. Working. Sharing a dark corner of the American experiment.” – Jay Landsman, The Wire.

Late last year I finished watching The Wire. No doubt a show I will return to numerous times. Better writers have summed up the series better than I ever could. Each episode is filled with well-written gems. Omar, Avon, McNulty, Bubbles, all have their epic lines. Even Officer Prez comes up with some phrasing to stop you dead in your tracks1. If there is one thing though that stuck with me, it is the above quote from Officer Cole’s wake. In particular, the phrase “…Sharing a dark corner of the American experiment” struck a chord. It conjured up an image of some form of journey into the unknown. And on that journey, even in the dark recesses of Baltimore, where Avon Barksdale and Stringer Bell reign supreme, as an American you can tie yourself back to something larger.

America for all its ills has a story to tell about itself, and quite a compelling one at that. It helps that the birth of the nation began with a revolution and a set of clear principles about the country. As with any political settlement, there is contestation over aspects of it - in one of its more egregious chapters, a Civil War had to be fought in order to abolish slavery and grant the black population equal rights under the law.2 But the basic point remains: America is able to coherently tell a story about itself. This is best encapsulated in the notion of the American Dream: a life, a path that all Americans know is the sign of a good life. Even in its failure there is a path forward, a reclaiming of the American Dream.

Britain on the other hand seems like a country devoid of narrative, exhausted in every way possible. At every turn there is seemingly no cause for optimism. I say seemingly because there are a plethora of successes to celebrate in this country. And yet we are unsure of ourselves as a nation and where we are heading. In the absence of any direction and with our current malaise, the prospects for our future look bleak.

It’s as though since the end of the Second World War and the decline of the British Empire, Britain has been caught in some post-traumatic fugue state. This sense of decline has reached its apotheosis following the 2008 Financial Crisis. Amidst such stasis there are few easy paths forward. Politicians do not have easy choices to make. The medicine is inherently bitter given the position we are in. And whatever dose you give will annoy some portion of the electorate.

Nick Clegg of all people summarized it best when he said recently:

I know it’s a hackneyed thing. To govern is to choose. And it’s often to choose between a lot of very unpleasant, invidious choices.

This for me is the basic problem with Britain: we are not choosing a path. This post isn’t here to say what that path should be - although it is something I plan to return to at a later point - but rather that the cost of not choosing is simply too high.

Successive governments have simply been swept away by an inability to chart a path forward. For all her faults as Prime Minister - and there were many it must be said - Liz Truss at least made a choice about what type of path Britain should take. Understandably it wasn’t a path Britain was able to sustain due to our debt problems. Going back to Mr Clegg, he made a decision about funding for higher education, and the Liberal Democrats suffered electorally because of it. Even David Cameron made a choice to gut the state. The unifying theme here is that at least they were able to say to the public: here is a problem, here is my solution. In the case of Truss it was how our economic model works, in the case of Mr Clegg it was preserving higher education funding, and in the case of Cameron it was capitalizing on the financial crisis to gut public services. And it speaks to the sad state of British politics that I am having to give these politicians some semblance of praise for at least trying to make a choice. These are all bad choices to varying degrees, but at least there was a vision someone can look to and understand. At that point a member of society has something to think about regarding what that vision looks like. On the other side of the political spectrum, Jeremy Corbyn tried to put forward a vision for the country and faced stiff resistance, but again it was very clear what his vision of Britain was.

And this is before you even begin to focus on delivery. I somewhat brushed over Liz Truss’ calamity in office which did damage the UK economy at a time when inflation was rearing its ugly head and a cost of living crisis was unfolding. My point above is slightly before we get to delivery: accurately telling the British public what the problem is and what your solution is to that. The equation fails if you are unable to fix your problem (either because your problem was manufactured or because you were ineffective at governance). One PM failing to meet their objectives can be chalked up to ineffective governance. If successive PMs cannot meet their goals then it strikes at a bigger problem of government capability.

I think this is why Keir Starmer is having such a hard time of things. He is at least committed to fixing Britain: investing in public services, building up institutional capacity, addressing the chronic growth problems. But any overarching image of what the country looks like will get torn to shreds. The absence of political imagination was his strength leading up to the 2024 election, and now 18 months in, he is being lambasted for that same lack of political imagination.

Which brings us to the portmanteau elephant in the room: Brexit. An issue that really encapsulated the quandary that exists in attempting to determine what it means to be British in the 21st century. It is easy to forget what febrile times they were. Looking back now, it is easy to point out the flaws in the whole affair and apportion blame – the vast majority of which goes to David Cameron for his neglect, and the British public for voting to leave the EU.3

The original sin was that Brexit was a solution in search of a problem. We can think of the leave campaign as having two halves: the Nigel Farage half and the Johnson/Gove half. Their arguments and visions of what could be achieved by Brexit were distinct enough to create the broad coalition needed to win the referendum. The problem is for delivering a political settlement it was a nightmare. If we remember the wrangling in Parliament over the Brexit Bill, it shows the country was confused about what it wanted. You could say about half the country wanted to be in the EU, 25% wanted to leave to reimagine Britain as some floating free market capitalist utopia, and 25% wanted to leave but were also incredibly frustrated at the political settlement in general. Those are three wholly irreconcilable positions. ‘Singapore on Thames’ (think free market Capitalist utopia) looks a lot different to what the ‘Send ‘em all back home’ crowd want (think: interventionist state, a lot more deportation and some ugly politics) , and those are both antithetical to staying in the EU. You didn’t need to leave the EU to give £350m a week to the NHS, but it is one way of doing that.

We started a national conversation without ending it. We Brexited and then didn’t ask ourselves what the country should look like. If Brexit was really about reclaiming sovereignty the next question is to ask: what does a post-Brexit sovereign Britain look like? If Brexit was about the NHS, or immigration, or any myriad policy areas, the next question was to ask what do we do? We essentially spent half a decade wrangling over Europe and then it got swept up in the tide of history.

The 2024 election was not fought on the grounds of European relations or a transformative vision of Britain. No politician will touch Europe for a generation due to the electoral consequences. Naturally circumstances change the world we live in: COVID-19, war in Ukraine, atrocities against the Palestinian people, inflation. It doesn’t mean the previous problem goes away. You still have to solve each problem before the rot seeps in. The slightly baffling thing about Britain is that we pile rot upon rot. The rot of the decaying post-war Britain, the rot of the remnants of Thatcherism, and the rot of post-2008 Britain. Perhaps we could let this slide before, but Britain is dangerously exposed and no longer has an empire to rely upon.

Part of this is the fault of politicians who I have lambasted clearly. But from the point of view of governance, we are electing the wrong kind of politician. Unfortunately, this sits with the British people. Ultimately any political system is only as good as the citizens who live within and operate it. We can re-imagine our ways of doing politics but if political arsonists of all persuasions are allowed to survive then any project will be subject to doom. Not only have we allowed bad politicians to survive, but the incentive structure is also in place to reward such asinine behavior. It is evident our current way of doing politics is tired and in dire need of change.

At the time of writing, Keir Starmer is fighting for his political future. Some of his advisors are resigning and there is a sentiment that the PM’s days are numbered. If he was to go then it would mean a fourth Prime Minister in as many years. Purely from an institutional and governance perspective it is foolish to want Keir Starmer to leave office. To what end? Will the next PM be any more scrupulous? Does Britain have another year to waste whilst the next PM gets to grip with the system of governing? Again, the British public should know what we want from our system and our politicians. After all, if we are committed to the principles of democracy and making this work, we should not be aimlessly baying for blood as though this is the Roman fighting pits.

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All political projects come to an end, and the end of our current system is not something to lament, rather we should eulogise about it. Britain has a rich history of charting a democratic path – the Glorious Revolution is one such example, even the shire system tells a story of people having recourse against injustice.

This sense of reinvigoration in Britain needs to be a holistic conversation. Our economic model, forms of governance, and fundamentally what a ‘good’ British life look like in the 21st century need to be re-examined. It sounds like some dramatic undertaking but in human history there are a plethora of examples where this change is either imposed in a revolution or with a turn to a ‘Black Earth’ style of politics.4 The first step is addressing the democratic structure that underpins UK politics.

My proposal is to host a constitutional convention. Our Parliament needs restoring, the building is crumbling and rats run free (how ironic I know). Whilst this may take the best part of a decade, our parliamentarians and government should travel the country, holding parliament in every corner from Dover to Dundee. When the MP Jo Cox was tragically murdered the idea of “the Great Get Together” was born to honour her memory. Whenever Parliament is held in a region, such gatherings should be hosted. At the end of all this pomp and celebration the MPs need to return to Westminster with a codified constitution, a reformed electoral system and a serious commitment to devolving power back to the shires (our local and regional government). The specific forms this could and should take are something I plan to come back to in later writings.

The project relies on a reinvigoration of civic duty, to remember the success of our species is from co-operation. Rediscovering those civic bonds is equally crucial as any policy program, as if we cannot cooperate with our fellow citizens then politics has failed and the house comes crumbling down. It is not enough to fix immigration problems, it is not enough to spend within our means as a country. The action needs to be taken but there needs to be an overarching story about where the country is going. For people to be invested in that story they need to shift to being active participants. Citizen assemblies, taking the power back to the people through local government, and higher quality public discourse are all ways to engage the British public. There are those who may see these proposals as woefully naive. The pitfalls are plain to see, but the cost of inaction is too high to continue.

As part of this narrative refresh the symbols that we use to tell the story need to be updated. Britain needs to “get the badge in” and replace the Union Jack with the Stone Island badge. The iconic logo is a symbol of “exploration and connection”[1], with obvious parallels to Britain’s own story as an Island with astounding naval capabilities and history of seafaring. While the brand is Italian in origin, it is a key part of the British zeitgeist with everyone from Oasis to Dave “getting the badge in.” And while its history with British football is a more complex story, owing to the hooliganism and far right tendencies, it is precisely why the Britain of 2026 should embrace the Stone Island badge. It tells a more outward and positive story: Italian roots, discovered by the British in European footballing adventures, loved by many, a reminder of some of the more regretful behaviors of that generation.

At the very least all British politicians should “get the badge in” where possible. Keir Starmer is already ahead of the curve on this, now we just need the story of national renewal and a reinvigoration of civic behavior.

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[1] About Stone Island | Research. Form. Function.

We begin with a quote from John O’Donohue, we will return to this at the end:

I write to you all after a truly eye-opening experience in Tbilisi last week. On the airplane there I began to jot my thoughts down and I could not fully articulate why I was setting out during Christmas for a land 3,000 miles away. Many of those close to me know my historic aversion to aimless travel and my intense disdain for the ‘hobbification’ of travelling.

When asked why I embarked on this journey, I repeatedly struggle to provide a coherent answer. And yet there are multiple strands which coalesced around my trip to Tbilisi. My overarching draw to this region is a fascination with the historic ‘Silk Roads’ after being introduced to the concept by Peter Frankopan. To me it is a region of the world that does not get the attention it deserves given its rich history. The desire to go there is to connect with this rich history and see for myself what remains of this land touched by the tectonic arc of history. Thus, my trip would be the first and lay the foundation for other trips to this region.

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But also within me was a sense that I needed to break from my routine and open my eyes to the completely unfamiliar. I often wax lyrical about Anthony Bourdain’s approach to seeing the world and so there is also a realization that I must see the world to understand how little I know and “how much more there is to learn.” Speaking to people from different walks of life awakens you to so much about the world but also yourself. The decisive factor was a good friend telling me what an incredible experience he had in the city. This confluence of motivations, some intellectual some personal, combined to create this journey to Tbilisi.

Many colleagues and family members framed their questions in a slightly perplexed tone. Some maybe associate it with the USSR or think back to the struggles of 2008 when Russia invaded. A former manager regaled me of a tale from a 1981 West Ham United visit in the UEFA Cup Winners Cup. What surprised me when planning this journey was the rich history of Islam here. The Caliphate of Uthman (RA) introduced Islam as early as the 650s and it has endured the historical contours of conflict with the Persians, internal religious differences (to the extent they exist), and the spectre of the USSR. What gave me a sense of hope and enabled me to feel tethered to the land was the largest mosque in Tbilisi being 10 minutes from my hotel.

That naturally leads us into the first noteworthy aspect of my trip which was how the city is shaped by religion. There are a great many churches, basilicas, and cathedrals. The nation is majority Orthodox Christian, and you can tell with the litany of churches. I was fortunate to visit two during my visit: Anchiskati Basilica (the oldest surviving Church in Tbilisi) and Sameba Tbilisi (the largest church in the country and one of the largest Orthodox churches in the world).

I sat for around 30 minutes in the Basilica while the priest recited afternoon prayers. It is notable when you walk through Tbilisi that you don’t see many old people – the city has a youthful energy in that sense. In the church however, I saw a great number of old people. They listened attentively and prayed along with the priest. There was one old lady who stood next to the priest and you could sense the fervor with which she followed along. Aside from her, many people wandered in and out, some just to look around as tourists and some to light a candle and say a small prayer. While I am not familiar with the nuances of Orthodox prayers and rituals, I have a great deal of respect and admiration for people of faith. In this age of hucksters, hoaxes, and heedlessness it is important that we remain tethered to the divine.

However, the mosque was my focal point for this trip. Given it was a pleasant stroll away from my hotel I frequented it several times. The place served as a great spot to retreat when missing home or to strike up conversation with strangers – it is easier to do it there because our common faith unites us. The place was relatively empty each time I went, save for Jummah prayers. I had the good fortune of being able to introduce myself to the imam with the help of an Azerbaijani brother translating. We did the usual dance of “where are you from” … “no where are you from.” When telling folks of my South Asian ancestry they would begin speaking in relatively impressive Urdu and we would break into laughter. These moments, although small and inconsequential, really sustained me during my visit. The most intriguing aspect of the mosque was the fact both Sunni and Shia Muslims share the space. The main hall is simply split in two. It is a far cry from some of the division and bigotry that exists between fellow Muslims. Such squabbles are self-defeating and serve only to undermine the faith as a whole.

One of my main worries prior to visiting was if I could find good food for a week. Having a look beforehand I got the sense there are enough good food places and Georgian cuisine aligns with my taste buds enough that I will get by. Most mornings were spent at various cafes in Tbilisi and I consumed a remarkable amount of Khachapuri – essentially just warm cheese filled bread. At its best the dish was a reprieve from the cold outside. The air is cold and it hits the skin sharply. I crave this because it has a certain life-affirming quality to it. But only a specific type of cold: dry with no wind. It evokes a feeling of peace rather than feeling it is imposed on you by mother nature – like with wet and windy cold. The temperature is less relevant in experiencing the seasons, it is the conditions which are the decisive factor. Amidst this backdrop of bone chilling cold, Khachapuri was a source of relief. It was warm, fatty and comforting which helped soothe the soul. The other notable dish was Khinkhali – effectively a dumpling. I only tried this a few times and each time it was the vegetarian variations – cheese, mushrooms, potato etc. I fell in love with this dish because of its simplicity. A recurring theme with Georgian cuisine: warm, comforting, and enjoyable no matter the circumstances.

The cafes were incredible, they all had unique and distinct designs and were vivaciously decorated. My favourite was Café Leila for its great seating and fantastic coffee. Every cup of coffee I had during my visit was soft and silky with no bitterness. It was also fun to sit here and write each morning, to collect my thoughts and take time to let the mind wander. During one café visit I struck up a conversation with a French lady who was travelling around Georgia, on another visit the waiter was curious to know what brought me to Tbilisi. The people on the most part were kind.

By far my favourite part of the trip was my visit to the Bitadze Tea Museum – a small tea shop steeped in the country’s history. In my 2 hours there with the owner I got a real sense of Georgian history as told through the story of tea. From the introduction of tea by Chinese merchants, to Soviet mass production, to the near decimation of the industry following the collapse of the USSR to its now mini renaissance, it crystallised the structural forces at play in this country. It was a surprise to me that Western Georgia is the perfect climate for growing tea. The tea itself is magnificent and gave me an appreciation for the variety of climates that exist in Georgia which make it conducive to growing tea.

Whole days could be spent walking the streets of the capital. The buildings, the graffiti, the barren trees, all add up to provide a sense of a place touched by history and navigating its present. There was graffiti praising the EU, sharing solidarity for Palestine, and demanding freedom from foreign powers. The buildings look beautiful from afar but go closer and you see the paint peeling off – even whole buildings were abandoned in certain parts of the city. Going into the museums contextualizes what you see on the streets. The exhibits I saw were mainly centered around Christianity and Soviet occupation. But there was also an engaging section of the flora and fauna that have existed in Georgia – again you got the sense history and civilization have happened here.

The trip and the city gave me a lot to contemplate. Immersing myself in a section of the world I have never seen opened my eyes in many regards. Simultaneously it clarified certain thoughts ringing in my own head. I must emphasize this account of my journey is not intended to romanticize my visit. I felt incredibly lonely at times and navigating any unknown place without a grasp of the language can be quite scary. I take from this journey all the good it had to offer: a reminder of the kindness of humanity, the awe of seeing a beautiful terrain, the intricate stories behind the seemingly mundane. But none of these are substitutes for the richness of day to day life.

Going back to John O’Donohue I felt the weight of trying to travel in an awakened way and not waste the invitations that lay in wait to transform me. I took some of those invitations and my next journey I hope will allow me to attain the blessings of further clarity and wonder.

Dum Spiro, Spero.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Mohamed Salah and Arne Slot could both do with reading “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas. This is a micro saga that many fans will understand in the world of football. It also transcends football in that it speaks to one of the thornier topics of human existence: our finite time.

Footballers at the highest level are forces of nature. Their bodies are primed to perform at the peak of human possibility. A second of imprecision can at times be the difference between success and failure. If we take a step back it is astonishing the work they do and what they put their bodies under. Can you imagine Cristiano Ronaldo eating a Percy Pig? It could possibly end his footballing career, such are the margins at that level.

And yet despite the endurance required, the intense gym, recovery and athletic regimes these players subject themselves to, they are also just human beings. Whilst this saga is playing out amongst an elite football player at the pinnacle of world football, we must remember it is a story that humans across all walks of life can relate to.

Before I go into this any further. It is work taking a second to contextualize Salah’s raging against the dying of the light.

When he joined in 2017, very few could foresee the impact he would have on Liverpool. That impact has propelled him into the pantheon of Liverpool greats. Only Steven Gerrard can lay claim to being a bigger legend than Mo in the 21st century. He sits 3rd on the club’s all time top scorer list with 250 goals and 116 assists. He has won all the major honors with Liverpool including our first league title in 30 years. As part of Jurgen Klopp’s journey of taking LFC from ‘doubters to believers’ Salah was one of the key men. There is no story of our epic 2018 Champions League run, our 2019 win, our 2020 Premier League win or the 2025 League win without Mohamed Salah. We will never know the counterfactual but in the big moments our Egyptian King delivered for the mighty Kop. The journey and the trophies have cemented our bond with him.

And yet the story is not without its wrinkles. We know Salah was massively accommodated last season by being freed of his defensive duties. That freedom allowed him to terrorize defenses for a time but he has looked far from his best since March 2025.

His story is an unmitigated success. Yet we all know time waits for no one. No footballer will ever win that battle against our decaying bodies. Acknowledging his increasingly apparent flaws don’t diminish his contribution, they contextualize what is happening.

With all of that being said, his quotes after the Leeds game were understandable but also unhelpful.

“I have done so much for this club. I don’t have to go everyday fighting for my position because I earned it. I’m not bigger than anyone”

It is true: Mo has done so much for this club. For all of my adult life Mo Salah has been a constant source of joy. Jinky runs, phenomenal finishes, and sublime assists. Mo has done it all and has the silverware to show for it.

Sadly, at the same time, Mo does have to fight for his position because this is elite football.1 His limitations as age passes are all the more obvious to see. Last season was the beginning of this: giving him the freedom to not track back so he can be unleashed in the attacking third. And it worked! His 2024/25 season is up there with the all time great individual seasons in the Premier League.

And then it stopped working.

Father time waits for no one and life catches up with you fast. I feel for Mo Salah because he is experiencing something deeply human: reckoning with the finite time we have. When we are in the zone we don’t contemplate the end, we just want the gravy train to keep running. I feel for Mo because he is one of Klopp’s finest players, and from an outsiders perspective he probably got the love he needed from Klopp. Arne Slot on the face of it seems more direct but also has a different challenge: building a Liverpool team for the next 5-10 years. Mo Salah is only around for the next two. It can be tough seeing the new world being built when you’re still living in the old.

At the same time he had to deal with one of life’s great showstoppers: death. We don’t know until it happens how we will deal with grief and loss. None of us can imagine how a still relatively young man (he is only 33 for Christ sake!) has taken this loss and he is probably reckoning with it himself.

So I think some perspective is needed. Imagine in your workplace you have been the superstar performer: you close the deals, make the revenue and take your company to great heights. Then you begin to notice you are slowing down. You are modulating to get the same results or in some cases not able to produce that level at all. Along with that you have to deal with the death of a dear friend and someone you worked incredibly closely with. And to top things off the company are bringing in a raft of new faces with the subtext that in two years your contract is up, you’re leaving, and these are the guys to replace you.

I appreciate that Mo wants to fight and claim his place and deliver for Liverpool. Lovers of this sport know the joy of scoring a goal. Imagine scoring a goal and 60,000 scream your name. That is an intoxicating feeling. Then to be brutally reminded that your time is shortly up and this too will be a thing of the past soon. Here I am not referring to the end itself. And ending has a long wind up. The most painful part is knowing the end is upon us. We have to shift gears, we are no longer the stars of the show.

These are heavy things to reckon with and grasp. The most well adjusted wouldn’t fare well in such circumstances. Mo has to balance his impending end as an elite football player and the noise that the news cycle brings with it. Regardless of how this ends, whether it is a Salah vs Slot Hell in a Cell match, a coming together, or a gracious January window exit, we will all look back in time with fondness at the marvel that was Mo Salah at Liverpool.

We started with Dylan Thomas, I hope Mo Salah ends his relationship like Ulysses by Lord Tennyson:

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Mo Salah moved heaven and earth for Liverpool. Any human who dedicates their life to the extraordinary in whatever field knows that inner hunger to succeed is insatiable. I hope he strives, and doesn’t yield, Liverpool may conquer more lands with our Egyptian King even though the sun is setting on his Merseyside reign.

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