And how to build a Compromise Resilience CICD Pipeline. Trishan Kuppusam of Datadog will show us how they developed the industry's first end-to-end verified pipeline that automatically builds integrations for the Datadog agent. Let's look. Hi, hi everyone. I'm Trishan Karthik Kuppusami, I'm a Staff Security Engineer at Datadog, where I work on things like how to build a Compromise Resilience CICD, which hopefully will make sense in a few minutes. So let me set some background, some context, some motivation for this. Why are we talking about this? So Datadog, as some of you might know, is an end-to-end observability platform for your organization. Spends all the way from your network, infrastructure, all the way to your application and services, ultimately to your end-users. And so when something goes wrong, let's say there's a latency problem, for example, your DevOps, your security, and your business now can all use the same tool to diagnose exactly what went wrong and fix it on the spot. And so the agent is this piece of software that you typically install in your containers and hosts to gather metrics about your services. And you can think of integrations as plugins or add-ons that add superpowers to the agent, as it were. Let's observe even more. So for example, one of our favorite integrations is GitLab, and we're hoping you're using both today. So what happened was that a year or two ago, we had this problem where we wanted to decouple the integrations to release the integrations from the agent, because the way we typically release them was every six weeks together with the agent. Now, as you can imagine, this proved problematic. So for example, what if we wanted to beta test new versions of integrations with our customers? We couldn't do that so easily. So we wanted to decouple them. And of course, the state of the art for doing this is to use something called CI CD, one of the most famous examples being GitLab, which has done a wonderful job with pipelines and so on. And so, as I like to joke, so now you use this robot sitting in a cloud in the sky. It's got access to your code signing keys. Every time your developers check in code, this robot takes out a key, builds the package and signs it and puts back the key and releases the software. Wonderful. So you have on-demand, you have DevOps now, basically, which is great. And also good security reasons for doing this, actually. You'd rather have a single point of auditability and logging where you know who's using the key when, right, for example, robot, as opposed to a distributed team of developers. So great. That's the state of the art, CI CD, which is very good. So let's talk about what can go wrong because this is a security talk after all. You have to be optimistic here. In good times, 99.9999% whatever the percent of the time, everything's good. Nothing goes wrong. Life is good. The problem is when any of these pieces get compromised. So for example, imagine someone runs a video developer signing key perhaps to sign good commits, for example. Or your GitLab repository, for example, gets compromised. So someone tampers with the source code. Or let's say your GitLab pipeline gets compromised, right, the runners, for example. Or the container registry used to pull images, used to run the GitLab jobs. Or when your key or file servers get compromised. I think you get the idea. I'm sort of belaboring the point here. The point is that there are many pieces that can go wrong. And the thing is that it's sort of a gray swan. It's not even a black swan problem. A black swan is an unknown unknown. This is a known unknown. It's not a question of if you will get compromised, a question of when and you want to be prepared for it. Because like I said, 99.99% of the time, that thing goes wrong, life is good, but rare event that happens, it's negative infinity. That's the outcome. And so the state of the art is we have DevOps, which is great. But we're missing DevSecOps here. Let's talk about how to fix that. So let me try to convince you this is not merely some sort of a Hollywood bad hacker sci-fi kind of movie kind of scenario. This is actually problems that have happened in the real world, right? Let's take a look at three horror stories. One, as you might recall, is the flame malware from 2012, not too long ago. What happened was that someone, many suspect it's a nation state attacker, pretended to be Microsoft. They wanted to get to Iran, you see, to dismantle their nuclear program. And what they did was break, unfortunately, a poor hashing algorithm called MD5 that was used back then. It had theoretical weaknesses. But these attackers, whoever they were, found a novel cryptographic attack on MD5 that even academics had not seen before. And so they produced a fake certificate that looked like it came from Microsoft and propagated these updates all the way to Iran, where it cost the centrifuges to every once in a while very subtly mess up. So imagine this is a very high, very sophisticated attacker. And depending on who you are, this was a good or a bad thing, right? We're not playing with amateurs here, certainly. Scary story number two, more recently, Sea Cleaner, which is a popular Windows cleanup tool. I remember using it as a young man, myself, many decades ago, while they were busy being acquired by Avast, the security company, famous for making antivirus software, for example. While this acquisition was happening, unbeknownst to both of them, someone had compromised their build infrastructure and used to build malicious code that was then sneaked in to Sea Cleaner. Millions of downloads, but they were interested in 11 or so particular companies, one of whom leads to a scary story number three seems to have been Asus because they got their own software updates back later. And the suspicion is that they got to Asus by poisoning the well, Sea Cleaner well, and then they made their way through Asus. So we're not playing with amateurs. We're playing with very serious professionals, nation-state attackers even, who are interested in breaking into your CI CD pipelines, something you should think about, very seriously. And so, as a response, some might say, well, why not just use GPG or TLS, right? Wouldn't that solve the problem? No, remember, we're talking about nation-state level attackers. They're not going to be phased by a single key used to sign everything kept on your infrastructures. This is like the equivalent of keeping the keys to your house under the carpet. It's not going to buy you the security that we're looking for here, unfortunately. The property that we want is something that we call compromise resilience. What does that mean?  I hear it's a very common problem this day. So, but don't worry, we got the solution. We'll build you an impenetrable fortress. And so, as a king, you should be very suspicious. It's got to snake oil salesmen. It's no such thing. I know there isn't. Or it'll be prohibitively expensive. The point is that you cannot prevent the compromise, right? Because if that's invisible, it's not outright impossible. What you can do is to mitigate the impact of a compromise. So, you build defensive depth and security. You have multiple layers so that attackers, for example, emotes are under the alligators and flamethrowers and whatnot. And you get the idea. Point is, attackers look from far away and say, you know what? I got better things to do with my time. I'm going to move on to another target. So, that's basically compromise resilience and a nutshell. And so, how do we do this? Well, we're going to propose using two pieces of software, two pieces of technology called, in total and tough, that I claim, gets you this property. There's this joke. I don't know how many of you have seen this vitamin water ad, said it's 4 AM. Do you know where your vitamins are? So, I've twisted this joke for my own nefarious purposes to say it's 4 AM. Do you know where your CICD is?  It looks like a pipeline released something malicious. Do you know what happened? Let me tell you a story. So, I used to be a developer in a software company, one of the very few that had the privilege of being audited by DMFDA. Do you know why? It's because we made software for a big pharma to run clinical trials. You can imagine, very serious business. So, we needed to have the ability where auditors could walk in, say, randomly, 10 years later. 10 years to releasing a version of software. And they would say, show me the output of your unit and integration that prove to me that your software did what you claim it did back then. And we want the same auditability. We want the same compliance. For some of you, this may even be a compliance requirement. So, you can think of a CICD like this. X is the source code that a developer produces. And your CICD is basically applying a function f to x, your source code, and produces a package y. And what you want is the property that when you download and install a package, before you install it, you say, does y equals f of x? Is the correct x the source code? Is it the correct application, correct packaging of the source code into the package I'm looking at right now? So, that's the basic idea. And how do you do this? Well, one piece of the puzzle is in-toto, which secures the distribution of your source code, packaging it in your pipeline, right? So all the way between the developers and your CICD. And tough is the tool that solves the other half of the problem, which is to secure distribution of your packages from your package or boss tree to your end users. And you put the two together. I claim you get this property called end-to-end security, which lets you detect attacks anywhere between your developers and end users. So let's take a look at how that works. Unfortunately, I don't have time to go into all of the gory technical details, but here's what you need to know. We know that the problem exists. That's the bad news. The good news is that there are tools that you can use today to fix the problem. They call in-toto and tough, and that's all you need to know. In-toto and tough gets you compromised results. Okay, so let's talk about the first piece of the puzzle, in-toto, which remember solves the problem of detecting attacks anywhere between developers and CICD. The problem that in-toto solves is kind of a nice metaphor is the game of telephone that kids like to play. So imagine transmitting a source code to your CICD all the way to your end users, for example, sort of like playing the game of telephone that kids like to play. Used to be fashionable, I guess. I don't know whether they play it anymore, but imagine that attackers got in between these kids and tampered the messages. That's sort of how in-toto works. In-toto tries to guarantee the authenticity and integrity of these messages while it's being passed. So, for example, the first kid here says peace, and the second kid, slowly the message sources of noise which can think of as attacks. And unfortunately, fleas get delivered to your end users, which is a bad idea when you want to deliver peace. So let's try to fix that problem. How do we do this? Well, the basic idea is to define the software supply chain. You remember the f of x problem. This is basically what you're doing. You're saying this is my f of x. Here's what my f of x may look like. So Alice, who's the administrator, may say my supply chain looks like this. It consists of two steps where Diana is allowed to write source code, and she produces a sign at a station saying, I promise I produce food out of pie with this hash. And the second step is Bob, who's allowed to package the source code that Alice wrote. And Bob says, I swear I got food out of pie with this hash, and I produced a package star.gz. I simply compressed the file and serve it to users. And I produced a star.gz with this hash. Great. Now, what happens when it uses, before they install any package, they first inspect it. And all of this is done transparently using another robot, basically taking care behind the scenes for you, using software libraries. What happens behind the scenes is that Alice can say, look, before you install the package, make sure you get a sign at the stations from both Diana and Bob, and of course the supply chain itself from Alice, and check that all the rules that f of x is indeed the case. So for example, here we see that inspection is, you untar the food out of pie with gz. Make sure that, first of all, the tar.gz is correct. What would Bob produced? And then you untar the file and say, okay, food out pie was the one that Alice produced, and there was no attack in between. See? So no one other than Alice can tamp it with a source code. Okay? And so that's how you get supply chain integrity. Now, let's talk about the second piece of the puzzle, which is the update for Immokrtof for short. And that solves the problem of the so-called last mile distribution, which is the distribution of this build source code that you're end users. And the metaphor, the problem that Tuft solves, you can roughly think of it like this. So I don't know if you remember, but back in the 80s or 90s, there was a terrible, terrible attack in pharmacies, where someone malicious, obviously, went around and deliberately tamp it with medical drugs, people's medical drugs.  So you can think of Tuft, what it does is, so in total is the thing that tells you, hey, my software is a list of ingredients. So Diana produced this ingredient with this dose and Bob produced that ingredient with this dose and the whole medical drug is composed like this. That dose did those and mix it together, put in a nice little pill. Tuft is the software layer that says, why should you trust this medical drug in the first place? You see, it's like the seal of freshness or authenticity in the hologram sticker that says, yep, FDA approved, good to go. Nothing has been tampered with. That's the rough idea. And so I don't have time to go into details, but basically uses design principles that believe me, a grandma would have told you as a kid. I don't know about your grandma, but by grandma told me, if you ever need to launch a nuclear weapon someday, son, make sure you use the two-man rule, which is actually the case. What the US military does, for example, is that you actually have physical separation, where not only are two keys required, but the same person cannot turn the two keys together. You literally need two different people. And the same idea, we have structural signatures here. So we also use design principles. Grandma told me, don't put all your eggs in one basket. So that's why you see multiple eggs all over the place here. Grandma also said, make sure you use cryptographic agility. And that's the story of the Hydra. So for example, remember the flame malware attack? That happened because unfortunately, you used one weak hashing algorithm called MD5. In tough, we use multiple hashing algorithms with different designs. So shot two and shot three, for example. So unless you can break them both, you're not gonna be able to break the security system. So anyway, you put all this nice design principles that grandma told you, and we actually designed this in collaboration with Tor, who wanted to obviously protect the software updates from people as powerful as the nation's data attackers. Okay, enough theory. Let's talk about practice. How do we actually apply tough and in-toto in practice for the data doc agent integrations? Remember, it was the original problem we were trying to solve. And I claimed that putting the two together, you get end-to-end security. Okay, so here's what our software supply chain looked like. Earlier we looked at a demo. Let's take a look at a real-life example. So our software supply chain's got three steps. The first one is called DAG as in like good DAG where developers use UPG keys sitting on the UP keys and trusted hardware. So you can't even export the keys. So they signed the sign at the station saying, yep, I produced this source code with this hash and I'm checking it into our Git repository. Great. Now, CI CD's broken into two steps where it says, I swear I got this Python source code from the Git repository and I'm packaging it into a Python wheel, which is simply a zip file. You can think of it as star.gz, basically. And it packages the Python source code into the zip file. And then we have a third step called wheel signer, which basically takes this packages and in-toto metadata, puts it together in this tough seal of freshness and authenticity and integrity and distributes it in a nice coherent package to end users. And when our end users install this, they have no idea that all the stuff in total verification actually happens behind the scenes. What happens behind the scenes is that we tell the agent, hey, look, first make sure that the wheel was produced by the wheel signer. Great. And then unzip it to make sure the source code was signed by our developers. So you can see that unless you get developer signatures, even if you break into our CI CD, develop a key, sorry. If you break into our CI CD, you won't be able to forge developer signatures, which is where we get the end-to-end security from. Okay, and then we add tough. I know the picture looks complicated, but at least simpler than it looks like. Basically, we're solving three problems here. What we're using tough is to say, first of all, there are many keys to the entire system, including distributing developer keys. Think about it. How do you safely distribute the developer keys, the software supply chain? That's what we use tough for. So one root key that we distribute with the agent, and then you can change transparently, rotate the keys in the rest of the system and the end users wouldn't even know. We know because we've actually done it several times now. And so what we use tough for is to distribute the software supply chain in a compromised, resilient way. So just because someone breaks in our pipeline, they won't be able to rewrite the supply chain. They won't be able to rewrite the public keys used to verify the supply chain. And even though they're a machine and those are the things colored in red, signing some things, they're not signing the crucial bits. They won't be able to mess with developer signatures without being caught. That's all you need to know. That's the level of detail you need to care about. If you're interested in more gory technical details, please visit this link here. Okay, so what does all that gobbledygook get us? Let's see. Well, when nothing has gone wrong, clearly nothing, but I think it's important to also point out that your end users actually, our end users actually don't see any difference with or without Tuffin and Dota, which is to say that we add very little performance or network overhead to the security system. So most of the complicated, the setup, the price of the setup is in one time setup with the whole thing and then the system basically pretty much maintains itself after that. Okay, well, let's see where the real beauty of the system lies. One is, okay, so if our developer keys are compromised, yes, theoretically what can happen is that attackers can release malicious code. But remember the compromised resilient property I was talking about earlier, like the medieval fortification. We believe we've set the bar so high that this is actually more theoretical than a practical or let me explain why. First of all, our developer signing keys are trapped on UB keys. We generate them on the hardware. We never export them. We are unable to export them. And so unless you physically attack one of our developers, sorry, please don't do that, you won't be able to get the keys, okay? That's the point. You can't remote the run away with the keys. And the second thing is that we require you to touch your UB key every time you do a signing operation. So even if this malware is sitting in there on our developer's laptops, saying, hey, you should sign me our developers would say, wait a minute, what's going on? I'm not signing anything right now. This is fishing. And the third thing that we could do but we've not done for the sake of usability right now is require at least two different developers to sign up on the same source code. Right? This is so that the developers can more easily release source code. But you can see how it can easily increase the security of the system without actually answering usability too much. So in practice, our little pickies are very, very unlikely to get compromised. And the beauty of the system comes through the rest of the way actually. So what happens when our GitHub repository in this case, but could be GitLab, gets compromised. Nothing. We don't lose sleep. In fact, we've seen accidental DOS attacks where developers sign mismatching versions. Basically what the GitLab pulls doesn't match what a developer signed you to, not merging branches properly. And so it looks like an attack but it isn't. So it tends to be a very good test of this thing in practice. And the point is that even if our Git repository gets compromised, we don't lose sleep. Because the attacks won't be able to propagate. Basically the downloaded would block it, as you see here. What happens when GitLab gets compromised? Same thing. We don't lose sleep. What happens when we contain a image registry that GitLab uses to get compromised? Same thing. Don't lose sleep. What happens when our key servers or file servers get compromised? Same thing. You get the idea. The point is that our download is transparently on behalf of our agent verifies this stuff and endota metadata. And the moment it smells a slightest submission of an attack basically denies installation of the package. And I should mention, I should take the pain to mention that as far as we know, this is the first in the industry. We haven't seen any public discussion of any similar system. This is the first compromised resilient, at least the first publicly discussed compromised resilience CICD that we have seen. And note that there's no trusted hardware here except for Ubiquis. The cloud is perfectly untrusted. You don't need trusted hardware such as Intel, GX and similarly complicated trusted enclaves which have their own security bugs these days. All you need is something like Ubiquis. In fact, you don't even strictly need it. And you have this very high level of security. So the point is, as I said earlier, the bottom line is there is a problem. Yes, which is the state the CICD practices. Unfortunately, typically we don't build compromised resiliency in CICD. That's the problem. But the good news is, there's two pieces of technology, open source technology, both of which are on the CNCF which you can use today to secure your own GitLab pipelines. And they're called in-toto and talk. Gives you end-to-end security anywhere between your developers and users. I should mention, should take some time to mention that all of this work wouldn't have been possible without some great people at Datadog, NYU and VMware. And I don't have the time to personally shout out to each of you, but you know who you are. And thank you very much.


This is the last lecture of this course. It is titled varieties of writing processes. The lecture is divided into three parts. The first part is titled impromptu writing, landscape exercise, part two is titled creative stance on bilingualism, part three is titled writing about the divided cell and part four offers concluding remarks. Before we start off with these four parts, let me introduce an idea which we have discussed earlier. The idea was very eloquently expressed by Paul Dawson in his creative writing and the new humanities. I like to read the quotation verbatim. The process of writing a short story begins, Wilbur Schram advised in the story workshop, not with a handbook nor with a search for distant and unusual material, but with yourself.  So, this emphasis on the search for one's own self has been the dominant idea that we have shared with you earlier and this is the idea that we are going to build on in this last lecture as well. We look at a combination of spontaneous responses to certain you know material that was provided to the students, but we are equally interested in individual projects whether they are analytical in nature or they are purely creative in nature because as we have pointed out earlier, we do not make a sharp distinction between the two in the preliminary stages. The impromptu writing is also based on the judgment that I as a teacher had to make in terms of the readiness of a particular group for independent creative work. Very often these decisions are based on intensive interaction with the students and one cannot quite assume that every methodology will work with a new group. So please keep that in mind, but I certainly felt that the group that I was teaching this year was ready to undertake independent writing projects and in fact, it would be better for them to undertake some impromptu activity and hence this is where we started off. So, here is the report on impromptu writing landscape exercise. The idea behind this has been actually discussed earlier in lecture 10 and 11 where I had indicated that it is vital for us to explore our own personal relationship to our natural environment. Now the term natural environment can actually include the social environment also because that whatever exists is natural in a sense, but I was actually thinking also specifically of nature in terms of landscapes, plants, animals, the sense of the cosmos and therefore, you can perhaps go back to this lecture in module 1 in order to once again refresh your memory in terms of the subtext of this exercise. However, so far as this particular group is concerned, these ideas were not discussed with them. So, it was really a very, very fresh activity for them without any analytical preamble or backdrop at that point in time. The exercise also assumed that the students by then had internalized various discussions of plot, character, etcetera pertaining to the short story. We had discussed the notion of Aristotelian energetic plots. We had also discussed how poor onwards there is a radical departure from plot based narrative to character based narrative without necessarily a linear pattern of beginning, middle and end of the Aristotelian kind. And we also had talked about various other experiments and we had read fresh work both modern and postmodern, Indian and western in order to increase the base of our reading experience. So, it was assumed that the students would have internalized some of these ideas in their own way. And for each of these landscape video exercises, specific guidelines were also provided to the students. So, let me give you the guideline that was provided for the first exercise titled, The Old Woman in the Garden. And I had said describe the landscape seen from the perspective of the old woman. Describe her action or actions ideally without dwelling on the cause of her state of mind. So these were the guidelines given to the students. So here is the video clip and followed by the response of various students. These are selected responses. I had 22 students in this group, out of these I selected the responses that seemed interesting and evocative. The others were also quite meaningful. The ghost of Mrs. Malik. Many many years ago, in a small town nestled among the Nilgiri Hills, the town spoke used to say that they saw an old woman roam the streets calling for her son. It is the ghost of Mrs. Malik, they said, there is simply no other explanation. The Maliks were one of the oldest families in town, landlords by profession. They owned vast tracts on the hills, green, lush and verdant. The family was well respected and loved, that is until now. The heir to the property, Raj, wasn't like the old folks. He was bent on selling the land to developers and making a fortune. The town's folk were worried about the peace and tranquility of their isolated town. It would all be lost if hordes of tourists came and degraded their environment. Words of his intentions reached the trees and bushes as well. In one of the gardens, the council of trees gathered in the night. The chief counsellor was a majestic old eucalyptus, incandescent in the soft moonlight. The other counsellors included oaks, teaks, ebony and a host of other bushes and shrubs. The entire garden had come alive and was listening as the counsellor spoke. Said the eucalyptus, my friends, we have gathered here to face an extremely grave turn of events. Rumour has it that soon our garden will be no more. There were gasps of horror across the garden. To a human passing by, it would only be the wind whispering in the leaves. If we continued, this garden and countless others like it will be obliterated. We will all die unless we do something about it. A sturdy teak interjected, but what can we do, sir? Now that the situation is clear, we must all think. The root of the problem is Raj, the scion of the Malik family. He has taken the decision. There has to be some way of turning his mind. Silence encompassed the garden. The trees were thinking solemnly and their faces were grave. Many hours passed, not a single word was spoken. Then, just as it was breaking dawn in the eastern sky, a young boy spoke up. It was the daughter of the chief counsellor, a slender young eucalyptus. I have an idea. I believe we can yet turn the situation to our benefit. Raj's mother, Mrs. Malik, used to love us as her own. She cared for us, made sure that we came to no harm. Alas, she is no more and this peril stares us in the eye. But she continued, Raj holds his mother in great respect. We only need Mrs. Malik to tell him not to go ahead with his plans. But how do we do that? She is no more, her father interrupted. No father, she continued, I am ready to do it. Give myself up. Using the ancient magic given us by the gods, I can take the form of Mrs. Malik and go and dissuade Raj. They will think it is her ghost, which is all the better for us. My daughter, you know this means you will never be a tree again. You will never live with us, grow with us. Once you take human form, it cannot be changed back. Yes, I realize that, but it must be done and I am ready to do it. Without another word, she started the transformation. It was long and painful, but just as the sun rose, she was standing in the garden in the form of Mrs. Malik, draped in the white saree. She walked towards the gate, slowly hobbling, like Mrs. Malik did. The other trees wished her luck and sang her praises, but of course, she couldn't understand their words anymore. She reached the gate, stepped out. She turned once and rested her eyes on the beloved garden, perhaps for the last time.  With one last look, she turned around and walked away. Thus came about the story of the ghost of Mrs. Malik. Thank you. Solace, Vihla must slowly reach for her walking stick and set out for the gardens. The sun had already risen and she was late. For 50 years, she attended to the institute's gardens. She was now too old and weak to plant new saplings and till the soil. The many years of hard labor had bent her back, making even walking a difficult task. But come what may, Velama would go to the gardens every morning to see if all was well. The plants were her only family now. Her husband, who was a peon in the institute, had died long ago and her son had left her. She had no one now, no one to help, no one to take care of her. Nobody other than her and she had nobody else other than her plants. To her, all the flowers, shrubs and trees were her own children. She knew and remembered when each plant down to the smallest blade of grass was planted. The tiny seeds of neem, mango and teak that she planted 50 years ago now towered over her diminutive frame. After spending some time in her garden, Velama slowly stretched along to Mr. Mishra's house. She used to earn a living by working as a maid. Now all that she could do was to cook and the only house who she went to now was Mr. Mishra's. Everyone else had faded into her past. Sometimes she wondered why her time hasn't ended. Everyone that she knew had either left the world or left her, saved the Mishra's. When she reached the house, she was surprised to see a crowd of people at the gate. She peeped through the mass of people to see old Mrs. Mishra crying, another person whom she knew had passed. Mrs. Mishra, through her tears, spotted Velama and called her in. She hugged her and cried. The funeral was scheduled for that evening. Mr. Mishra's son had flown in for the ceremony. He was to take his mother back with him after the funeral. After the funeral, Mrs. Mishra gave Velama whatever money she had, hoping it would be enough and then she too was gone. Velama went to the gardens again that night. She sat down on the bench and went into an eternal somber. This is a piece I wrote in the classroom exercise. The red shoe flower. The trees looked down on her. The leaves shield her from the scorching heat. The green hedge surrounds her with her soothing arms and yet she looks them through. She is too lost in her thoughts to notice the welcoming garden. The old lady is on a search, the search for the shoe flower. She remembers her granddaughter as her eyes plead for signs of a flower. Bring me a red one, brighter than the rest she had said. Maybe she would fail to see even one. The soft breeze rustles the leaves as if a sign from above. She is tired and exhausted. Yet she will not abandon her search. Her hunchback weighs like a burden on her. She scans the garden for the final time. And behold, from the holes of crowded leaves a shoe flower stares at her as if playing hide and seek. Her heart leaps in joy. She has fulfilled her promise. She walks up to the flower and reaches for it. Just as she was about to touch it, her hunchback pulls her down. Again, she strives with all her might. Her hunchback pulls her down with even greater force. The flower is out of reach. She's now exhausted and disappointed. The old lady who couldn't bring a flower, her granddaughter would say. With thoughts of her granddaughter, she moves towards the gate. A wind blows on her face and rustles the leaves as if to say they tried. She takes her staff and closes the gate. The old lady who couldn't bring a flower, her mind played. She could not disappoint her little girl, but she had. With all her might, she straightens her back to bid goodbye to the little red shoe flower, brighter than the rest. There was a soft breeze, the garden swayed. The garden had disappointed the old lady, the old lady who couldn't bring a flower. Now that you've washed the old woman in the garden exercise, let me just make one or two concluding remarks. Instead of focusing purely on the way the old woman perceived the landscape, I felt that the students ended up giving causal analysis. Somehow they felt that unless they anchored it in certain specificities, they would not be able to project their ideas properly. Whereas what I was hoping for was a very limited exercise, I think they made it into a much more ambitious project and it was done spontaneously. So there was no time lag between seeing the video and writing. They also seemed to have preferred the role of omniscient narrators. That doesn't surprise me, it does empower you to be able to talk about different characters in depth. They also interestingly did not feel stalled while writing. That I found very interesting because what to me was a limited exercise, it became slightly different because they seem to be ready to write. These are the observations I wanted to share with you and now let's move on to the second video. It's titled Sunset on Pawai Lake. And the guidelines that were given to the students once again have to be kept in mind. I'd mentioned the following guidelines. Write a description of Pawai Lake in two or three different states of mind. Do not mention the cause of that state of mind in the write up. And then on a separate sheet of paper, identify the state of mind of the character or characters to help judge the evocative qualities of your write up. So again, this was a very clearly defined guideline but you would for yourself see what the students did with that exercise. So here is the video clip and the student responds to the video clip. This was an impromptu response to a video that was shown by madam in class. Now the story. Ferdinand dug his stirrups into his horses side urging the beast forward along the narrow path through the forest. They had been riding for many hours now through dense forest and thick undergrowth. The trails were narrow, clearly not meant for horses. Although the progress had been slow, Ferdinand quietly egged on hoping to make it before nightfall. The locals he met at his trading post had told him countless stories of a beautiful lake nestled between hills and forests. Not more than a day's ride from Mahim. He had been dying to go there for a long time but the company had kept him busy. Three long months he had cursed the company for giving him menial desk jobs. He had been recruited by the company at Lisbon with the promise of an adventurous life as a trader trading with the exotic Far East. When he was told that his assignment was to be at the company outpost in Mahim in India he had jumped in excitement. But once he was there they had restricted him to menial paperwork. Ferdinand had made up his mind.  That holiday came only after three months three long months of paperwork and Ferdinand had wasted no time putting his plan into action. He was thoroughly enjoying the ride. The wind in his hair, the sound of the stock of his rifle quickly hitting the saddle and the thuds made by the horses hooves. The last hour of riding was particularly challenging. The land had begun to steep upwards. Ferdinand was hoping for the path to even out soon. And after some minutes of riding the path evened out and the vegetation slowly started thinning. Ferdinand spotted a clearing in the trees and in quiet anticipation drove his horse faster towards it. The view took his breath away. He had made it in time. All the hours of riding the long journey to India all were suddenly worth it. The deep azure blue waters with streaks colored orange by the setting sun brought a sense of peace to Ferdinand. The thick green trees and the surrounding hills made the lake seem like an artist's palette a beautiful mix of colors. The gentle breeze over the lake surface blew away the sweat from Ferdinand's face. He got down from his horse and found solace in a part of the world as he had untouched my man, a gift of nature. The piece which I'm going to read right now was actually written in a creative writing exercise which was done in class. We even shown a short three minute video of a landscape and we had to describe a bit from a character's point of view which without explicitly saying it implying a state of mind. This is the piece which I wrote, just titled The Man in the Gray Suit. The man in the gray suit looked on as the sun set behind the forest, overlooking the lake. Weeds covered large areas making what once might have been a massive lake looked rather tame. Not a single fisherman was to be seen, not even the old timers. The sun rippled as he saw it through the cloud and smoke, probably from a factory placed there beyond the forest. In the distance he could see the silhouette of a building looking rather out of place. Long, shiny threads like a spider's web twinkled in the fading light. Electric cables maybe. The water rippled and shone in the somber shade of blue-green and on the far shore, trees still stood tall. On the same shore near the trees, a few stills jetted out awkwardly from the ground. Large streamings of huts that might have existed. The birds soothed past before even sparing it a second glance, having learned not to expect anything worth seeing anymore. While writing this piece about the title, The Man in the Gray Suit. The title, the gray suit is a attire which is mainly inspired by high-profile bankers, stock market bankers in the last street to be specific. The person whom I wanted to display over here was a character who has become a successful person as he's gone to the city and has become a rich person, but he's coming back to the roots, the place where he was born and he spent his childhood. What I wanted to imply was when he goes to the place of his birth, he finds out that it's not the same place anymore. He's dismayed at the decay that this once thriving ecosystem has fallen into. The people who live near the shore don't live there anymore. No, buildings have come up, factories have come up. The village, the life, the culture that it was, has stopped to exist anymore. His dismay at finding out that this was what I tried to imply through this piece. In terms of concluding remarks, I'd like to once again mention that the question was modified. That was really very interesting and I think the reason it was modified is because they were sort of really yearning to write and that was a very healthy state of affairs. And so it was modified and the students promptly imagined events and characters with connection to the landscape. So they kept the landscape in mind, but it's sort of complete narration of a whole set of interrelated ideas, events, characters, theme, et cetera. And I think by then the story writer in them had become dominant, a wonderful state of being and wonderful to be in a class such as that. In the second part now, we will move to some of the analytical concerns that the students also wanted to work on. Now these are individual projects because often we did work as a group. So this landscape exercise, all the students were together, although they wrote separately, but there was a sense of collective sharing in the sense of also reading the answers later on to each other. But the creative and critical work that I'm going to share with you now, these are really individual projects and very often creativity courses thrive on the initiative of individuals. So unless you really want to do something different or you want to sustain an idea, the individual projects really don't grow in magnitude. From that point of view, I would say that the first one that I'm reporting in terms of the demands of bilingualism, I think Himanshu was already deeply involved in this idea and it was by sheer chance I feel that I noticed this concern in the way he wrote the Trofimov piece. So if you want to understand the trajectory of Himanshu, then you can maybe go back to the Trofimov piece that he wrote and from there itself, you can begin to see that his mind works in terms of bilingualism and also the plurality of our cultural situation. So this, he wanted to carry that forward and in order to do so, he also read Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy and we have offered that reading in lecture four of module one. He also read the Hindi translation of that famous book, the translation is also very well known. So he read both because he wanted to carry forward this idea. And finally, he presented these ideas in the following video you can see that. My name is Himanshu Singh and the essay I'm gonna read out is about bilinguality. In a discussion with a friend a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about how when we spoke Hindi, certain words have been substituted irrevocably by the English counterparts. It was at that point in a moment that we had a great self-awareness that we both had a shocking realization. Even though our discussion was in Hindi, we had unintentionally used the word substitute. We collectively pondered on it for a while but could not find an Hindi equivalent. Since then, went to a massive egoistic drive and practiced great self-restraint not to look up the translation anywhere and figure it out myself. Obviously, I still don't have an answer. Such is the beauty of language itself that it is continuously intermingling and adapting itself. Hence, for the bilingual person, no definite boundaries are there in the thought process, language-wise. Primarily in Western classical and modern literature, most of the authors were functionally unilingual. Hence, even though there have been translations and good ones at that, the chastity of the language has been more or less maintained. But since the rise of post-modern and post-colonial literature, thriving in a world much more cosmopolitan, multilingualism is a feature which is becoming increasingly common. But wouldn't an author write in his mother tongue exclusively, some might ask? Surely that is the best alternative. I beg to differ. The flow of writing is a plasma of thought in all languages, dialects, expressions that the author experiences, the said and the unsaid. He has to channel it one way or another to encapsulate it in one language. As philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein has once said, the limits of my language means the limit of my world. It wouldn't be incorrect to say that an author's capabilities vary with language. Rabindranath Teghours works in English are nowhere celebrated as his works in Bangla. Even in the Western world, translations of his Bangla works are more famous than those originally in English. Vijay Tendulkar, although an excellent screenwriter and playwright in Hindi, has written his most powerful works in Marathi. But more than capability, it depends on the writer's comfort level. The most important things are the hardest to say as words diminish them. Amitav Ghosh paints vivid landscapes of the Sundarbans in English, not Bangla. Salman Rush depends down his mystical tales like Haroon and the Sea of Strawies in English, not Urdu. Although, there are exceptions. Singer-songwriter Rabi Shergil, who mainly composes rock ballads and has a largely Western influence, still chooses to sing in Punjabi. It is not always necessary that a certain cultural setting in plot type, a certain language is necessary. A comparison can be made between Khushan Singh's Train to Pakistan and Bisham Sahani's Tamas in Hindi and English respectively. Both have communal violence caused during the 1947 partition at their centre. Even though both are structurally different, but nevertheless great works of literature respectively. Another point to note is in terms of multilinguality. Bisham Sahani inculcates Urdu, Punjabi and its various dialects in his novel marvellously, something that might not have been possible in English. Such has been the norm till now, but as always is, it can change with time. One notable exception is a new sub-genre, rapidly rising in popularity within the corpus of Indian English fiction. Dubbed as campus literature, it is usually comic or satirical word which is set in the enclosure of a university and highlights the follies of academic life. Also, as a university is a microcosm of society at large, it displays the conflicts of life of the young urban Indian, albeit in a detached way. This genre has marvellously captured the vein of multilingualism that exists in India and the identity crisis that often comes along with it. Personally, being a multilingual person myself, each language has a special insignificance and occupies a different quadrant in my thought sphere. When I wish to speak of philosophies, abstract ideologies, metaphysics, English is the language I prefer. To describe these in any other language, my vocabulary will fall woefully short. On the other hand, to describe emotions like nationalism, freedom, equality, spirituality, I prefer Hindi. As it seems pertinent somehow to do so to maintain its chastity, although love, sorrow, hatred, and the remaining spectrum of human emotions can be conveyed through Hindi and English, it may not always be as heartfelt. Two languages, Urdu and Punjabi, which I am not exactly fluent in, but somehow works in these are very close to my heart. One share in Urdu that I especially admire is this. Ye fasle teri galiyon ke hum se taina hua. Ye fasle teri galiyon ke hum se taina hua. Hazaar baar ruke hum, hazaar baar chale. Conversely, another piece of poetry in English, which I found rather appealing, is as follows. You say the weight of the world has kept you from letting go and you think compassion is a flaw and you'll never let it show. And you show your hurt in a way that no one will ever know, but someday the weight of the world would give you the strength to go. In the end, I would like to say that language is the archive of history. It is the soul of the intellect, the dress of thought. Diversity of language, in my view, is the biggest celebration of literature and should be so for everyone else. Another individual project that was undertaken revolved around writing about the divided self. Now, I actually in this course have looked at this idea in different ways. And I requested Abhishek who was interested in pursuing this idea in great detail. I sort of requested him to go back to module one, where we had talked about the creative state of mind, experience and knowledge in great detail. He studied that and the idea is that there we had actually talked about the fragmentation of our consciousness in terms of various disciplines. So, what are the ways in which we can bring them together, the energies of different modes of knowledge. Are there points of convergences that we can identify in our creative writing or our creative projects of different kinds. So, those were the ideas that we had discussed. So, he went back to that particular discussion, examined it in great detail, thought about it at length. He also looked at the discussion of Atwood and Borges in order to see what that sense of the doubleness of the writer is all about. So, after studying this material and also responding to the suggestion that he could look at this idea that habit, established habits often become impairments to creative thinking. So, he put all of these concerns together and he was able to see what we were trying to suggest and he came up with his own take on the divided cell. Here is Abhishek's take on this very complicated issue. Hi, my name is Abhishek Raj. I am a third year student in chemical engineering and ma'am presented to me this great opportunity to write a very special kind of creative piece. This was a short story where the objective was to try and somehow bring out this thought that creativity is present in everything and everywhere and it's not just when you're doing something that people would associate with creativity like writing or acting or something like that and if we applied creativity to every domain like for example sports, like for example regular coursework, we would find that our lives would greatly improve and that everything would become easier if we just found the creative solution to the problem. So, I began to grapple with this piece and to think of a way of applying this creativity in everyday life. I started thinking that along these lines that if there was a way of bringing out this thought that the principles of creativity make everything simpler then that our entire course of life would change for the better if we were able to somehow find that voice, that creative self. But how would I bring that out in a short story? That was the real challenge. Coincidentally actually we had been dealing in class with the Argentinian writer Borges and two of his most famous pieces Borges and I and everything and nothing are based on what I believe is a similar kind of search where there's this ambiguity of what is the writer's identity, what is his voice and that struck me as something very universal. Every one of us goes through this search for our creative self. So, that was something that I found myself relating to and I thought that if I had the right literary tool that I could really bring out that distinction properly. So, in the very next lecture I actually found the solution to my problem because ma'am was teaching us about this principle of the doppelganger and how it's very effectively used in a lot of literary pieces. So, when she was teaching us about this immediately struck me that this is something that really could be used. What if there was a doppelganger of our protagonist where the doppelganger somehow symbolizes the protagonist's creative self. So, the doppelganger would find the simplest and quite often the most elegant solution to the problems that the protagonist was facing and in this way he was somehow able to change the way the protagonist views his life and influence it for the better. So, then with a little bit of humor and a free flowing conversationalist style the short story basically wrote itself once I had this idea in place. I wouldn't say that this short story is didactic but the message that I hope to convey and I hope people would imbibe is that you know if we just allow that creative self to help us if we kind of just relax, remain composed and calm and try to listen we would all find that creative voice and that would greatly benefit us in the long run. I am not what I am. Late again for class. I knew what I was going to get when I asked to enter that room and at Monition then lots of homework. I had never taken any real liking to that course and evidently those feelings were mutual as I would soon find out when presented with my examination results. Why is everything about this so hard for me? I wondered in frustration as I held my rather poorly composed answer script in my hand but then the strangest thing happened. Can I see that? A shadowy figure said next to me. It was brightest day in the rest of the room but for some inexplicable reason I couldn't see anything more than a silhouette next to me. Rather unrelenting silhouette it would seem. Let me see that. And it immediately snatched away my answer script. Hey what are you doing? I began but realized my words were falling on Caesar's ear. This mystical silhouette began writing on my answer script and with a ferocity scratching out my shabby nonsense and almost effortlessly as if born with a talent replacing my words with what I can only describe as a charismatic flair. Done the silhouette declared and without so much as a wink at the man whose answer script he so brazenly had usurped and completely ravaged or so it would seem he sprinted after the professor and presented to him the sheet of paper. So I sat there in stunned silence as my answer script was being perused by my teacher and my usurper. My stunned silence would briskly escalate to jaw dropping astonishment. When I saw the teacher smile scribble something on the paper and hand it back to the silhouette. The silhouette pranced on back and tossed the paper at yours truly then professionally reoccupied his place in the seat next to me. My paper had been reassessed and I had scored the maximum. How did you do that? I turned to ask only to find that the silhouette had been replaced by my annoying friend Vikram. What? You said you had a bad test. This is bad? What is good then? He's lousy at that. I heard the coach say about him. I didn't quite know how to react but I just smiled and thought I could help him out. The boy had been taking penalty shots all morning but had failed unfailingly in every attempt. He needs a bit of calm. This kid has no composure. I stowed along to the penalty spot and picked up the ball. As usually tried to stop me with his incessant whining not you again who are you why do you keep interfering in my stuff. Many a time had I wanted to tell him why I keep interfering in his stuff as he so callously berates. Trouble is though he can't even see me anymore let alone hear what I have to say. So I just go about my job the way I always have walking in the quiet night like the moonlight and saving the clowns behind every day.  Where did that come from? First the test now this.  I heard the distant squeals of indignation from a supposed friend Vikram. I never liked that guy. Extremely annoying. Since the football incident word had spread and now for some reason all the students in my class were under the impression that I was some kind of hypocrite. I am an extremely poor penalty taker. I pleaded with them but they just coughed at me and accused me of fishing for their compliments and attention. How could I be a hypocrite? I couldn't explain myself how that happened. I didn't even take the penalty. Why would they all think I scored? This silhouette was proving to be a big nuisance. Next time I'm going to put my finger right into his face and right on cue. Little miss sunshine pops out again from behind the cabinet and joins me as I put on my gloves and lab coat to perform the experiment. Okay listen pal, you need to mind your own shadowy business.  You need to quit. Has anything I've done put you in any harm? I asked a little irked by his impetuousness. How could he be so blind? And I am not shadowy. You just can't see me properly. It's your own fault. Well at least now he had begun to hear what I had to say. That took long enough. My own fault? My own fault. This prankster was really starting to push me over the edge now. First the guy, whatever he is, fixes my test, then he takes my penalty and now he has the gall to tell me I can't see him. He's a shadow for goodness sake. Nobody can see him. Just then Vikram, who happened to be taking all my courses as well, came shooting straight through Mr. Shadow personality and reminded me we were on the clock. He actually gesticulated too by pointing at his watch. Why do people always feel gesticulation is necessary to prove a point? This kid was blind. Everything needed to be pointed out to him. I was growing weary of his incompetence now. Even here in the lab, a little boy wonder was struggling with his Bunsen burner and his tongs. How much more was I going to have to do? Surely not too much more. I had been saving his backside for months now. And sure enough across came the teaching assistant and that loose of firecracker on our little champ, reminding him that the tongs were expensive and he'd best avoid burning them. It wasn't my fault. Those tongs are poorly designed. Anyway, before I could get myself together and make any attempt at reviving the flaming tongs, guess who was back beside me to provide his penny's worth. And with an attitude this time to boot, you really need to stop burning stuff. This is the third pair of tongs in the last month. I told you those tongs are poorly designed. I of course as usual fixed his little situation and as usually he made me abscond again, choosing to replace me once more with the sweetness and reticence that accompanies his good friend Vikram. You did that on purpose.  Scoundrel, mind game player. That's it. This is the last straw. Our friendship is at an end. It's not my place to judge, but such people should not be allowed to carry the human race forward. I tried to call Vikram multiple times that week, but he didn't answer. Clearly he felt I had somehow cheated him by making him think I was a goof. I really thought I was a goof, but silhouette clearly was hell bent on making me think otherwise. Oh well, he hasn't actually put me in any real harm. I thought as I bustled once more into my final class of the day, introduction to creativity and creative writing. This was something I was looking forward to. It was so different from the other things I was doing, a real release. And with the kind of stress I had been under, I was due one of these. I walked in, wished the professor and sat down. But the class was empty. Is everyone late? I inquired. Suddenly almost ashamed I was the only one on time. No. No one else is coming. The kid nearly fainted. In truth, he did faint. I had to revive him with some cold water splashes and a shot of tequila. Okay, the tequila was for me. Now you know what I look like. I told you I wasn't a shadow. He was never had the patience to see me clearly. It was me. I was looking into a mirror, a talking mirror, but a better mirror.  I don't get it. I mean, I just, you were, I was. I am. I am you. Maybe a little bit more composed and better looking and possibly less of a tongue burner, but you get the gist. I am you and you are me. You nailed that test in class. You smashed in that penalty and you cracked the lab experiment. I am you and you are me, but that's not possible. I mean, I'm, I'm horrible at that course and at football and in the lab. I mean, I have to do those things, but I've never had any good skill in them. I mean, I was always just an amateur. Who are you? Speak for yourself, brother. I'm not an amateur. I'm an expert. And since I am you, so are you. You are excellent at that subject. You are a fantastic football player and you are outstanding in the lab. The fact is you wouldn't have been able to do any of those things if you couldn't do them. But since I did do them, you did them too. Get it now. But what are you? I am your creative soul. Thus the monocle. He gesticulated at the monocle. Again with the gesticulation, why do people feel the need to gesticulate? I noticed the monocle.  I could tell he had a problem with my monocle, but I was all right with that. Soon he realized that if I'm wearing it, so was he and he learned to love it. Why did monocles ever go out of style anyway? The point is this kid, don't ever count yourself out in anything. If you take three deep breaths and just relax, you'll see me next to you. Hopefully not a silhouette either. You'll see the real me, which is the real you. Get it now. As he said the last words, he disappeared again. But this time I felt a warm buzz inside me. I could tell he was there, making himself comfortable next to my right kidney. As I stood out of that empty classroom, I realized it really was empty, much like I was when I entered it. I wasn't when I left, though.  I had imbibed my creative self. This was a new beginning for me, without a shadow of a doubt. Finally, I'd like to offer some concluding remarks about these projects that have been shared with you. The projects were critically examined as the students were working on them. Usually the evaluation was more in terms of fine-tuning or refining the process of writing. But once they made the final submission, after that these have not been edited. I would like to end this presentation with some of the questions that we posed in the end semester examination this time. These questions reflect the aims we had described at the outset. To provoke fresh possibilities, we posed different kinds of questions. These are presented to you. In semester examination, HS 456, Understanding Creativity and Creative Writing. Instructions, please answer each question carefully to maintain coherence and clarity. Reread your answers to ensure that they are free from linguistic errors. Question number one, new writers or writers in the early stages of their work search for their elusive voice, theme and form. Respond to any one of the following questions in this context. A, to highlight these terms of engagement, read the given introduction to 20 under 40 stories from the New Yorker, published in 2010. Describe in your own words the ideas that Treesman has highlighted about the challenges and qualities that the selected writers have grappled with. Give a suitable expressive title to this essay. Or B, what according to you are the writing challenges that you as a new writer foresee? Do you place yourself in any specific literary tradition? Do you have a sense of your direction? Question number two, based on close reading of Borsches and I, respond to the following thematic and form related questions. Item one, should be answered in one sentence only. For item two, the justification should be tightly tied to the Borsches speech. It should be answered in two to three sentences only. A, it is a monologue. Item one, meaning of the word monologue. Item two, justification for your view in two, three sentences only. B, it explores the writer's equivocal sense. Item one, meaning of the word equivocal. Item two, justification of the given statement. C, does it offer a version of the doppelganger theme? Item one, meaning of the word doppelganger. Item two, justification of the given statement. D, can it be described as a parable? Item one, meaning of the word parable. Item two, justification of the given statement. E, your response to the narrative, empathy or estrangement. Item one, give the meaning of both the words. Item two, give reasons for your response. Question number three, read the given short play titled, Breath written by Samuel Beckett. Answer the following questions. A, map the plot structure keeping in mind the Aristotelian notion of plot. You can use Fritag's Pyramid. B, discuss the theme of the play. C, what are the stylistic features of this narrative that make it a powerful piece of writing? With these words, I would like to sort of conclude the presentation. I would also like to point out that we are full of this optimism that you, the viewer, the future student, will be able to chart your own path through these exercises. Thank you very much.


حجاج بيت الله للحك قد قصدون من كل بج عميق أتم لابنا للمال والأوطان وأهلهم تركون حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة الشوق يحملهم حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة حجاج بيت الله للخير العجينة everyone is responsible for their own actions and no soul will be burdened with the actions of another person as I mentioned before the best part of the Hajj was the Arafat but then again you cannot take lightly why the Muslim part and the Minna and Rami of Jamarat والتواف كل أسpect of the Hajj was significant after Arafat it was the when the Maghrib time comes after the prayer it was the walk to Dadafah and one of the scenes that I saw on that walk was this road full of people wearing this two piece of cloth the air arm just plain white simple unstitched cloth and you see these people just walking down the street to Mazdalifah millions and millions of people where your eyes cannot even see the end of it and you will think that these guys are actually walking down for their judgment it literally felt like it was judgment day and people are just walking a straight path and they're just going to Allah and be judged that was the experience that I got in Mazdalifah this is Mazdalifah we've come to do walk where you stay in this place and collect stones to throw on the Sheytan it's not exactly as I expected I did expect more sand, there's pavement but people are spread across the area sleeping where they can all united in one cause there are tents there but most of the people are on the road sleeping together united everybody's in white we can't tell which country where they're from I'm the unity today is the final stage of the pelting of the Sheytan small, medium and large is to not only get rid of our sins but all the habits that cause these sins so that we never ever do them again Insha'Allah once we reached Mazdalifah we basically just had to sleep over there and it's actually a badad to sleep in Mazdalifah and before we sleep we had to pick up the pebbles small stones to hit the Jamarat the Sheytans the three Sheytans in the Jamarat now you may think that it's just picking up the stones and hitting the Sheytan it's way more than that it's basically arming yourself with ammunition against the Sheytan of current times it's thinking in your mind that what if the Sheytan comes today what will your what will your action be what will you do how will you react to it and when you're hitting the Sheytan you're thinking that what are you getting rid of so once in Arafat you have been forgiven but what about your next life and what about the time that you will spend after the HUD picking up the stones was like picking up a vice that I had or somebody else had some that I was looking to minimize or completely completely throw out on my life was maybe a temper a temper sometimes in discussing with other people and putting forward statements it can be quite heated although I'm not one to be hot tempered but occasionally you know the Sheytan gets the better of us you would think that this is just words but when you're there and you're actually hitting the Sheytan at that time it's quite a powerful experience when you're hitting the stone you do feel like you're getting rid of it and the desire of that it's so strong in your heart is that you know that you will do it and if you won't do it if you're not able to do it you will try your best to do it you cannot forget it and I know we're still humans we're not making mistakes but the point is to try so this is the last stages of our Hajj journey this post-Halak as you can see has been shaven off and we've pelted the Jamarat again last stage is Bukuf we're just resting having a good conversation by Islam and it's coming to an end it's a sad time because we've been very close to Allah and the test will be now to keep that closeness when we go back to the UK Canada, Tanzania all our prospective locations and to keep our prayers in check read them on time with Allah's zikr and thought with us at all times because the west is very very testy over here everybody's reading the wars it's a nice brotherly unity environment and it's a little bit easier because the places we're in are very holy all of them we've been blessed that all the prophets that have been walking around these lands and that's why there's an aura a feeling of holiness about them and so I'm going to miss that yeah right now we're in Jamarat actually we're now where we hit the Jamarat and I believe this is the most excited excitement part of the Hajj it's because that when you go the first time when I went to the Jamarat and I'm hitting the Shaytan you're thinking you're just hitting a stone wall but you're actually hitting your inner shaitan in yourself and you can actually feel it that even though after an aura you think that your sins have been forgiven but you have to prepare yourself you have to arm yourself to stop from doing anything wrong that you were doing before and this was the perfect time to do it and let it out on the Shaytan in yourself and stone the Shaytan to whatever your biases are to whatever you were doing wrong before that you will not do it again so for example when you think of greed and you hit the Shaytan thinking that I'm not going to be part of this greed anymore and you're subject yourself completely to Allah and not anymore lustful desires or could be any other desires that are not Halal in case of Islam we don't know if this is our last hour I mean we still have a couple of hours here to spend in our recoup from Tazor and I'm still wondering if I will be able to finish this Haj but Insha'Allah I'm looking forward to it and this is a spirit where everyone should keep they should try to do this Wajib Haj as soon as possible I've noticed that these last 3 days they've been quite taxing on me although in a good way but I didn't know what to expect but these last 3 days have really grateful for my life back home in Canada we've got working water and nice bathrooms over here most things are kind of makeshift and it's really put things into perspective and also makes you remember they have and have not peoples or countries of the world per se and just now I can put into perspective how easy my life in Canada is compared to these 3 or 4 days that have been I don't want to do but Insha'Allah I'm happy that it's the last last day or so I will be missing the barakah that is present in this tent and Insha'Allah we can only pray that our hardships and our hardships is accepted firstly I've already decided I'm going to speak to my friends I haven't done Hajj that they must book their next flight the next year immediately because before I came on this trip I read somewhere that spending the £3,000 £4,000 on anything else is pointless it's a big sin so what you should do if you're buying a car for £6,000 put £3,000 aside and go to Hajj this is a must so I will tell all my friends to do this it's the spiritual reawakening of your soul your soul has no food and nourishment in UK in America, in Canada, in Kenya anywhere the most important place is the holy Kaaba and the precincts around the holy house which we pray towards where the angels do their own tawaf above this area so the reward for this is something separate the reward to your soul is the most important thing do not delay this Hajj if you're religious I know you will make it somehow but please do not delay it nobody knows nobody has seen tomorrow I can assure you of myself that I will be able to live tomorrow and see the day or night this is one of the most important pillars of Islam it's wajib on you that you completed I have seen people regretting it not doing it early and I've known people in this group that are actually doing it for their parents and they would wish that their parents would have done it themselves and it's only people realize when it's too late that we should have done it so my message to you is please do it as soon as possible because nothing is guaranteed and actually Imam Ali says to delay is to lose there may be someone who is next year next year but next year might not come so it's very important to see if there's time and if there's funds and if there's an opportunity to seize that opportunity to essentially make yourself a better person whether that in this case it's performing the Hajj it's fulfilling an obligation of the religion and I didn't know what to expect when I signed up for Hajj I knew generally what was required of me but you know part of it is also taking your physical strength and taking your emotional strength and using them together to accomplish this very important part of the religion and I would say to anybody who is thinking of delaying the Hajj not to do so simply because you don't know if you're going to be you don't know if there will be an opportunity for you to perform or do what you want to do it's best to put your best foot forward and do it as soon as possible


The Taliban have taken the strategically important city of Ghazni. It's the 10th provincial capital to fall to the militants in less than a week. Ghazni is on the major Kabul-Kandahar motorway, linking militant strongholds in the south to the capital Kabul. Taking Ghazni's thought to increase the likelihood that the Taliban could eventually aim to take Kabul itself. Almost a third of the country's 34 provincial capitals are now under Taliban control. The insurgents have moved at speed, seizing new territories almost daily, as US and other foreign troops withdraw after 20 years of military operations. Heavy fighting was also reported in the city of Kandahar on Wednesday. The Taliban claim to have taken over the city's prison, although this has not been confirmed.


After the play, personal foul, leg hit, kicking team number 14, 15-yard penalty, first down. Delay game, offense, 5-yard penalty, fourth down. Illegal substitution, 12 players on defense, 5-yard penalty, first down. Pass to their parents, offense number 17, 15-yard penalty, second down. Recovered by the defense, first down, quarter-Atlantic. Timeout on the field. All 11 offensive players never came set. It's a full start offense, 5-yard penalty, first down. Intentional grounding, offense number 2, loss of down at the spot of the foul, they're down. Charge timeout, Ohio State, their second, 30-second timeout.