Latest news with #Wajid
New Indian Express
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
When Chai Meets Grief : Writer Andaleeb Wajid on her latest book, which explores layered emotions
How does a mere process of making tea, especially for oneself, trigger layers of emotions? For writer Andaleeb Wajid, the technique holds a metaphor of grief. With around 35 novels under her belt, Wajid's recent memoir Learning to Make Tea for One delves into her stirring journey of navigating the challenges of losing loved ones. 'Tea time in my house wasn't a rigid or fixed event. Every evening, I would make tea for the three of us, my husband, Mansoor; and mother-in-law. My husband preferred it if I made the tea. It wasn't a task that I particularly enjoyed though. However, in the days after they were gone and I returned home, I set about making tea and my mind automatically counted out the cups, for Mansoor, Phuppujan (mother-in-law) and me. I then realised that I would never be counting cups for them again. It made me realise that it was a metaphor for my life going forward,' says Wajid, keeping it raw. Writing the memoir was a therapeutic experience for Wajid – allowing her to process the emotions and find solace in the words written. 'As a writer, it made sense for me to put my thoughts down into words, and I was doing it initially as a form of catharsis,' she shares, adding that sharing the pain has diluted its intensity. In contrast with her other works, the latest stands out in terms of style and approach, an intentional move from her end. 'It's more straightforward and is like having a conversation with the readers. Each reader, who picks up the memoir, would probably feel like we are sitting over a cuppa and talking, unloading our deep, painful thoughts,' explains Wajid. She faced several challenges writing her memoir, including organising her thoughts and reliving painful memories, with each word carrying the weight of her loss. 'Writing itself was painful,' she notes, adding, 'It was haphazard and a bit all over the place. I was reliving each of those days, and it made the pain fresh. Time was the only factor that helped me overcome them.'
New Indian Express
28-06-2025
- Health
- New Indian Express
Iran a big draw for MBBS students from J&K
SRINAGAR: Iran has emerged as an increasingly popular destination for students from Jammu and Kashmir aspiring to pursue MBBS degrees since 2016. Each year, over 300 students get admitted to different medical universities in Iran. 'Iran has left behind Bangladesh, which was once the favoured destination of Kashmiri for medical education. In Bangladesh, living expenses are much higher compared to Iran,' said Wajid Rizvi of Rizvi Educational Consultancy. The seven-year MBBS degree costs between Rs 20 lakh and Rs 35 lakh in Iran. However, with an emphasis on quality intake, the country offers scholarships to students with a minimum of 95 per cent marks. The admission process for MBBS starts in Iran from June to mid-August, and according to Wajid, they are receiving queries from people in J&K despite Iran's war with Israel. Persian (Farsi) is the primary language of Iran, but many Iranian universities offer MBBS programs in English, with basic Farsi taught in the foundation year. Students from J&K find it easier to pick up Farsi because it's similar to Urdu, which is widely spoken in Kashmir, Wajid said. He said students also prefer Iran due to its cultural affinity, quality of education, and safe environment. He pointed out that even when Iran was at war with Israel, the country ensured the safe evacuation of Indian students by opening its airspace for Indian flights.
Express Tribune
15-06-2025
- Express Tribune
Lawyers booked for viral traffic row
Cantt police have registered a case against some lawyers for hurling threats at traffic policemen, making a video of the clash over impounding a motorcycle and making it viral on social media. The case was registered under the PECA Act and other offences. The Rawalpindi legal fraternity protested the registration of a case and demanded its quick withdrawal. Inspector Wajid of the City Traffic Police complained that he was on duty with his team when a video was circulated on Facebook by Advocate Chaudhry Rizwan Elahi. The incident took place on Saturday on Haider Road, where a motorcyclist was stopped for not wearing a helmet and for the absence of a front number plate. The rider, identified as Malik Tajammul, was issued a challan (ticket), and his motorcycle was impounded due to a lack of documents. The motorcyclist introduced himself as a lawyer and called around 15 fellow lawyers to the scene, who allegedly hurled serious threats. Other policemen present helped defuse the situation. However, Advocate Rizwan Elahi later posted the video on his Facebook account, allegedly to defame the police. The complaint states that the video was intentionally made viral to incite public sentiment and malign the image and dignity of the police department. It further alleges that threats were issued to uniformed officers and official work was obstructedacts considered criminal. The police confirmed that a case has been registered and investigations are underway. On the other hand, the lawyers strongly condemned the registration of a case, calling it fabricated. In a statement issued by Asad Mehmood Malik, the Secretary of the Rawalpindi Bar Association, the Association expressed strong condemnation of the City Traffic Police's "illegal, unconstitutional, and inappropriate behaviour" towards their esteemed member and former Joint Secretary, Advocate Malik Tajammul Awan. Despite the matter being resolved at the scene, the Bar Association strongly protested the "baseless and unlawful FIR" lodged against Advocates Elahi and Awan, demanding its immediate withdrawal. The Rawalpindi District Bar declared full solidarity with its members, asserting that the dignity and honour of the legal fraternity would never be compromised. If the case is not withdrawn within 24 hours, the Bar will announce its next course of strict action.
Scroll.in
15-06-2025
- General
- Scroll.in
‘Learning to Make Tea for One': Writer Andaleeb Wajid's memoir reflects quiet strength during losses
In her memoir of loss, Learning to Make Tea for One, Andaleeb Wajid writes, 'When 1st June arrived, I went to the hospital with a heavy heart once more. It was our twenty-fourth wedding anniversary. I tweeted that he was on the ventilator instead of being home with us … I got a barrage of wishes from people, and many said they were praying for him to get better.' On June 3, Wajid's husband, Mansoor, breathed his last, one of the countless lives that were cut short by the brutal Delta wave of the COVID-19 pandemic that raged through the world, hitting India especially hard, in the summer of 2021. The memoir takes us right back to those dreadful months when Death played Russian roulette and people, young and old, rich and poor, men and women, were indiscriminately snatched away from our midst with barely a warning. The pandemic was a great leveller; none were spared, but not everybody was equally impacted. Within a space of a couple of days, Wajid, who herself had tested positive and was hospitalised, lost her mother-in-law and her husband, and life as she knew it changed forever. Learning to Make Tea for One traces Wajid's journey of navigating through devastating loss and coming to terms with a 'new normal' – a phrase we use quite casually but one that marks the truth of Wajid's life. Grief is hard to process and even harder to articulate, and this makes the labyrinthine journey of negotiating it a very lonely one. This is ironic because grief is a universal emotion, one that every single one of us encounters in some shape or form at some point in life. But each grief is different and so is every experience of it, making it a shared but ultimately a lonely experience. The truth of this was perhaps most evident during the cruel pandemic, as its very nature made it impossible for us to reach out to one another at a time when we needed to do so the most. Perhaps there was also a sense of futility that accompanied those worst affected and prevented them from reaching out because as Wajid reiterates, ultimately, they were in it alone. Wajid was surrounded by family, but as she remembers, the presence of familiar faces only heightened the absence of that one face she needed to see the most and was lost forever. Though Wajid writes about seeking help through grief counselling, perhaps for a writer, writing what must have been a painful reconstruction of the past, was possibly the best way of coming to terms with her irreparable loss. Writing as recovery Even as one turns the first few pages of the memoir, a couple of things stand out. The first is the surreal nature of those days of the pandemic when the most regular, natural order of things – the song of a cuckoo, buying groceries, a phone call from family or a friend, were the only sources of relief in troubled times. Wajid's narration vividly brings alive a time when words such as 'co-morbidities' and 'saturation' became part of our everyday vocabulary, and one constantly lived in a state of mental fugue. The memoir also depicts the state of denial that Wajid lived in through those days, and perhaps, in some ways, continues to grapple with, possibly as a survival strategy. The chapter titled 'Everything is Fine' underlines this fact and it is only after one comes to terms with Mansoor's death that the undeniable premise of this memoir is unequivocally articulated – something that Wajid is unable to state at the onset simply because of the immensity of her grief. The memoir tends to meander into the past, digress into anecdotes, mostly about ordinary, everyday things – the Friday ritual of making biryani, Mansoor's love for Tamil songs and branded clothes, their shared love for notebooks – but like a refrain, the memoir keeps returning to the inescapable days and moments leading to Mansoor's death. But it is also through these meanderings that Mansoor comes alive, and you get a glimpse of the person that he was, and the life that he shared with his wife, sons and his mother. Loss is not something Wajid is unfamiliar with, having lost her father at the young age of 12, and two heartbreaking miscarriages she underwent before she had her youngest. But in many ways, the memoir also suggests that loss is what initiated Wajid into her journey of becoming a writer. Women's writing across cultural and other divides has helped women recover a voice that is often silenced. Writing has therefore been a survival strategy adopted by women. Wajid does the same with her writing – the memoir illustrates how writing became a means of emancipation for a girl who was married young. It gave her a livelihood and a career that she could not have otherwise envisioned for herself. In one of her most widely read novels, More Than Biryani, a mother and daughter come to terms with the loss of the father and surviving without the privilege of education and financial independence. But unlike them, Wajid had both and the memoir takes forward the journey she had hesitantly embarked on. It's now a journey that includes several romances, award-winning books for young adults and even a novel that has been adapted for the screen. Beyond carrying on Writing about grief isn't easy, reliving trauma isn't easy, and it certainly isn't easy to let strangers read about it. But Wajid writes this memoir with searing honesty – she doesn't hesitate to talk about a marriage between two very different personalities and how they settled into an easy companionship, of being assuaged by various kinds of guilt and making her peace with them, of her privilege that allowed her husband to have the best possible medical care while hundreds were gasping for breath, her not having to deal with the minutiae of life till she was in a better space, and so on. There is also the danger in such a memoir of infringing upon the privacy of a person who is no longer around to consent to what is being said about him or her. But Wajid does it in a remarkably sensitive manner, sharing just enough about her husband to enable her readers to see him for the person that he was but never over-sharing. Similarly, one sees her and her children at their most vulnerable moments and yet those moments are described with a quiet dignity and not with melodrama. She makes no attempt to evoke a reader's pity. What emerges is a story of quiet strength, of people dealing with the worst hand life can deal but soldiering on, even reclaiming some semblance of joy and demonstrating a resilience that life has a way of squeezing out of you. Many years back, struggling with a personal loss, I had read Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, a thoughtful gift from a dear friend. There was much in there that helped me to understand my own grief, but the opening scene of the parents sitting down for dinner, opening a bottle of wine while their daughter lay in the ICU of a hospital, left me with a sense of disconnect. Siddharth Dhanvant Shangvi's Loss continues to sit on my bedside table because while he so movingly writes about loss, he also perceptively shares that 'grief is not a record of what has been lost but of who has been loved.' But the real and raw feelings that Andaleeb Wajid's memoir evokes made it difficult for me to read it without tears blurring the print, but it also held out gentle hope that tomorrow will be better, that tomorrow one will live again, laugh again, even thrive. And this is what makes Learning to Make Tea for One an inspiring, even therapeutic read.
Business Wire
03-06-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
Pediatrica Health Group Acquires Coconut Creek Pediatrics
MIAMI & COCONUT CREEK, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Miami-based Pediatrica Health Group, a multi-site, pediatric primary care organization dedicated to providing equitable access to innovative care for kids, today announced the completed acquisition of Coconut Creek Pediatrics, owned and operated by Dr. Arif Wajid. With this acquisition, Pediatrica expands into South Florida, making significant progress on its commitment to provide comprehensive pediatric primary care to families across the state and beyond. '…when providers go beyond the basics, we can create long-term positive impacts for generations to come…' Dr. Wajid and his team have established lasting relationships with the families in their community – the countless positive reviews speak for themselves. More than top-notch support staff and a friendly bedside manner, Dr. Wajid takes a holistic approach to care. He has exceeded standards by offering services such as new parent education and support for patients and parents to address issues that impede school and social development. Plus, he has dedicated time and expertise to advancing healthy outcomes through participation in pediatric-focused clinical research. 'Dr. Wajid's approach to care mirrors Pediatrica's Next Generation Care SM model,' notes Pediatrica founder and CEO Roberto Palenzuela, 'When providers go beyond the basics, we can create long-term positive impacts for generations to come. Our alignment on this made Coconut Creek Pediatrics an attractive target for acquisition.' Growing to meet the needs of the community... Pediatrica is already taking steps to continue building on the foundation of meaningful work Dr. Wajid has established. In addition to a full back-office to support administrative work, the team has also welcomed a new pediatric care provider, Shauvron Langrin, APRN. A parent herself, Shauvron knows first-hand the never-ending worry that comes with the territory. With compassion, she is skilled at putting parents at ease by partnering with these families to support care. Adding more resources and providers to the practice means expanding accessibility to care to the community, including families on Medicaid. Watch for more updates on the growth and development of Pediatrica Health Group soon. Learn more about how the company is quickly becoming a formative presence in pediatric care and creating change- for-good by visiting About Pediatrica Health Group Pediatrica Health Group is a multi-site, pediatric primary care organization actively creating better outcomes and brighter futures for patient families and providers alike - providing Next Generation Care for the Next Generation SM. Dedicated to providing equitable access to innovative pediatric primary care, Pediatrica Health Group empowers and supports providers and health care teams with modern technologies and the resources needed to provide exemplary, tailored patient care. Focused pediatric care for families with children from birth to 18 years of age. Learn more at
