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Bismillāh ar-Raḥmān ar-Raḥīm. Al-ḥamdu lillāhi Rabbil-‘Ālamīn, wa salātu wa salāmu ‘alā ashrafil-anbiyā’ wal-mursalīn Muḥammadur-Rasūlullāh ﷺ. Tasliman kathīran kathīra.
Fammabadu? My brothers and sisters, I am sitting in my hotel room in Cochin. And this is my view, and it’s a lovely view. The water is part of the backwaters from Cochin Harbour. And you can see there in the distance what are called the Chinese fishing nets. And that’s what it is, the Chinese fishing nets. So what they do is they lower that in the morning. And they leave it there for a while. And I am not sure if they put some bait in it, maybe they do. And then they suddenly raise it up. And lo and behold, you get a bunch of fish. I’ve seen these working. There’s another one here which doesn’t have the net on it. I’ve seen these working. The catch is not as tremendous as I suppose one would like. And definitely as the fisherman would like. But it works, so it has been there. It’s one of the iconic sites of Cochin. They are there in several places. This is… One end of Fort Cochin, the other end which is facing the sea also has them. Very pretty.
The monsoon has started in Kerala. And I just came out from Thrissur. From Mopli and Kundai Estates where I was for the last two days, assiduously searching for elephants. And unfortunately didn’t find them. But just the joy of being here in the estates. The absolute silence, except for birdsong. And then the occasional call of the… There are a lot of spotted deer in that estate. So when the spot is spot, a panther or a tiger, then they call, or any other threat. So except for these things, no other soundness, no traffic, nothing. Air quality is absolutely superb. No pollution. It’s an absolute joy, I tell you. Alhamdulillah, I remember the ten years of my life that I spent. Seven years of… Seven of those years with my wife. Three years before that alone. In the tea and… These were rubber plantations. So I stayed in tea and rubber. Very, very beautiful. So brought all those memories back. And thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyable. Obviously the elephants would have… Been the… The icing on the cake. But we’ll leave that for another day, insha’Allāh.
What I want to talk to you about is… To remind myself as I keep doing again and again and again, which is the enormous mercy and blessing that Allāh Subḥānahu wa Ta’ālā grants us. Absolutely enormous blessing. You know, totally amazed and so on. I keep on being amazed. When I wanted to, for example, in this particular trip… When I decided to go and photograph the elephant. There was a report saying that the elephants are in these estates. And they’re causing some damage and all that to the rubber. And the forest department and so on. They tried to drive them away but they don’t go. And so on and so on. So I said, let me go see what’s happening. And take some pictures. When I mentioned it to somebody, they called the CEO of the company… He owns these estates. And immediately he said, please ask him to come. And he will be our guest. And I had this absolute five-star treatment as a guest of the company.
You know, I wouldn’t even have asked for it. I wouldn’t have dreamt of asking for it. But there it was. Two days of absolute bliss. Alhamdulillah min Allāhi ta’ālā… Allāh Subḥānahu wa Ta’ālā is the… One to, you know… Grandest to us. And I asked the CEO when I met him. I said, thank you so much for this. But tell me why. He said, oh no, no. You know, we know you. And we respect you a lot. And so on and so forth. My days in planting and so forth. And he said, it’s a privilege for us. That you come and visit us. And so on and so on. Alhamdulillah. This is the… The key thing is to keep on reminding ourselves of the mercy of Allāh Subḥānahu wa Ta’ālā. And that we don’t deserve this. This is what Allāh Subḥānahu wa Ta’ālā chooses to give us. The gifts from Allāh Subḥānahu wa Ta’ālā. And all we can do and we should do is to thank Allāh Subḥānahu wa Ta’ālā. And thank Him. And more. The more we thank Him, the better it is. And knowing that we cannot possibly thank Him enough.
Allāh says, “If you count the blessings of Allāh, you will not be able to count them.” So let alone actually thank Him for making them for Him, for them. So we continuously say: that’s what I am reminding myself. Now I am sitting in this hotel room. Beautiful view. The…
That’s the… That’s not actually the city centre. But it’s going towards that. So you have got some high rises there. I am actually on the island called Wellington Island. And that bridge is the… Is the bridge that connects the mainland to the island. And that side is the… Is the mainland. It’s a beautiful view. You know. And we thank Allāh Subḥānahu wa Ta’ālā that we are able to see this view. Because He has given us the ability to see. And He has given us the ability to… To appreciate that. Right. There are some five or six giant egrets that took off from the side of the water there. This is going past here right now. I don’t know if His friends will follow.
And… You know. So each thing must be appreciated. And… We need to thank Allāh Subḥānahu wa Ta’ālā. Say Alhamdulillah. That Allāh Ta’ālā gave us this. Because how many people are there in the world who don’t have this? And… You know, Allāh chose us to be because among those who do have it. So the importance of thanking Allāh Subḥānahu wa Ta’ālā. And… Constantly and continuously. My brothers and sisters, the reality of life is which I remind myself and you: is that one day
whatever anybody has will be taken away from them. And they will go to Allāh Subḥānahu wa Ta’ālā alone. Whether it is good. Whether it is bad. Whether it is painful. Whether it is pleasurable. Health will go. Wealth will go. Name will go. Fame will go. Every single thing will go. And… We will be with Allāh Subḥānahu wa Ta’ālā alone. Quite ironically, the things that we truly crave for, which is among the biggest ones, is His name. His name and fame. Ironically, that’s the first thing that goes. Absolutely the first thing that goes.
I’ve mentioned this before. And I keep on saying these things again and again mainly to remind myself that the first thing that goes, the first thing that goes, is your name. When you came into this world, you had no name. You were somebody’s son. You were somebody’s daughter. And if you had died within those first few days, they would not even have given you a name. And they would not have said “So and so” died. They would have said “So and so’s child” died. But Alhamdulillah, Allāh Ta’ālā gave you and me life. And we continued. And we live now. And we are whatever number of years we have lived. But when we die, all our names and all our titles, all our names and all our remembrances will be stripped from us in one second. When my janazah is taken for burial, for chalatul janazah to be prayed in whichever place I die, and ask Allāh Subḥānahu wa Ta’ālā to make their masjid and abu wa sharif, they will not say “Bring So and so here.” They will not say “They will not even say ‘Bring the janazah off.'”
Ya’aq Yawar beg here. They will say “Bring the mayyat,” bring the janazah, bring the body. Ya’aq.
So today I am alive, Alhamdulillah, and I am addressed respectfully. I am addressed affectionately. Right. I am addressed with my name and my titles and everything else. And so also all of you. But the minute we die, we become the body. We become the mayyat, the corpse. Right. At least we have some slightly more respectful ways of saying it. That’s what it means: Mayyat, Corpse. Bring the corpse here. Bring the body here. That’s what they will say for chalatul janazah. Everything gone. One shot. You just stop breathing. Aankhaya bandh ho aur aadmi afsana ban jai. The eyes shut. And the person becomes a story. He was this. He was that. He is. His body is still not cooled. Say he was this. He was that. Even the good things. And this is the reality of everyone in this world. Whether y
Whether you accept it or not, this is what will happen to every single one of us. And that is what we need to keep in mind. So when we gain something, always remind ourselves: “This will not last.” And when we lose something, remind yourself: “This was not yours to do in the first place.” Right? We did not lose anything; how can you lose something you didn’t belong to?
I came to Trissur on the Vande Bharat train, which is a new train that has been started. I must say, it’s one of the nicest trains I have travelled in. Very neat and clean, very orderly. For Indian Railways, it goes pretty fast, and I was able to get around it. It is, I think, about 130 or 140 kilometres per hour. And it doesn’t have the classic sideways swing movement that our trains have, nor does it have the clackety-clack of the track. In some ways, at least, I missed it for a while. I said, “What kind of a train is this? That doesn’t go clackety-clack?” But anyway, it’s very comfortable to me.
But when my station, Trissur, came, I got off. I didn’t say, “Oh lovely! I like this train so much; I’m going to stay on this train forever until it goes to its last station.” Obviously not. When my station comes, I get off. And that is how it is in this world. No matter how comfortable and luxurious our lives may be, no matter how attached we might be to those lives, we will get off when our train station comes. There is no choice in the matter—at least in my case, I made the choice to get off. I mean, you might say that’s an obvious choice. True, it is an obvious choice, but in theory, I could have stayed on. I could have continued to sit on the train and paid for the extra money that I needed to pay. But in theory, I could do that obviously, yet I wouldn’t do that because I’m not insane. But the fact is: you know, in our life, we will not have that choice. We need to—we’ll have to leave. So we should live our lives remembering this.
Whatever good comes my way, I thank Allah ﷻ for it (*Jalla Jalaluhu*) and remind myself that this will go one day. And whatever else comes to me—which may be hardship or difficulty—I ask Allah to save us from all of those things. But I remind myself that this too will go. If I lose something, I remind myself that it was not mine in the first place; I was given that to use, I was using it. The time came to leave it, and so I left it. That’s all.
So it’s not a question of feeling sad and tragic, saying, “Oh my god! I lost this.” You could not have lost something that didn’t belong to you in the first place. So let us remind ourselves again and again of these absolute truths of life. And thank Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala for what He gave us, and ask Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala not to let us get too attached to those things. Because there is only grief for the one who is attached to something that he has to give up one day. By all means, enjoy them, look after them, take care of them. Thank Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala for giving them to you, but do not get attached. Because if you get attached, then believe me, that is tragedy. Because that day is going to come when you and I will have to leave that.
Let us not be like the fish in that fishing net. When the net is lowered, the fish happily go and start eating the bait. They don’t realize that the bait is not floating in the water; it’s sitting on the net. There is a net all around. They don’t see all that. They get so engrossed and completely immersed in eating that bait. That suddenly, when the net is raised, they are up and dry and they die. Let us not be like those fish. We ask Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala to help us to eat, to understand this world, and to live in this world in the way that He wants us to live. And we ask Allah to take us at a time when He wants us to go. *Wa sallallahu alayhi wa sallam*. Alhamdulillahi Rabbil ‘Alamin, Wa sallamu alayhi wa sallam. Amin.