"This is unbelievable!" - Facing my death in India

I’m on the motorway from Baroda to Baruch for a family wedding but this is no normal drive - it’s a death trap.

There’s horrific traffic on the way so our driver has just switched sides, driving on the hard shoulder against incoming cars.

If that wasn’t enough, he’s speaking with one hand to his ear with his mobile phone, with no seatbelt!

To make things more comical, my uncle-in-law who is a retired state commissioner has plastered a Government board on the front windscreen to ensure we don’t get stopped by police.

“This is unbelievable!” I say out loud, leaning forward in my seat, wondering why everyone is so calm.

“This may be unbelievable to you but to us, this is very normal. Welcome to India, Omar,” Rafiq chacha says, smiling.

I look at every car that drives past us, and not a single driver looks at us - nobody is surprised in the slightest about what we are doing.

As we switch back to the correct side of the motorway, I turn around, and there are at least a dozen cars behind us, who followed us when we switched sides.

I’m one week into my trip in India, where I will spend another two weeks.

I’m here for the first time, staying with my wife’s family.

India, I must say, is full on. Intense. Everything about it is intense.

When you arrive at the airport for the first time, a cacophony of sounds fill the atmosphere. Beeping horns. Everything seems to be moving so quickly. You don’t know where to look or what to focus on. People are sipping piping hot chai in tiny, plastic cups. There is a vibrancy, an energy, it’s pure manic.

As we enter in to Baroda, a city close to Ahmedabad, dogs are everywhere, often sleeping in the heat of the sun. Little children are playing in heaped piles of dirt. The occasional buffalo crosses the road and I see a monkey swing from a tree.

Cars and motorbikes zigzag around each other. Cars go the opposite way around roundabouts. There are no road rules. But surprisingly very few accidents.

Somehow, it works.

Rafiq chachaa, my wife’s uncle, was a high-ranking official. His face is stern. He carries himself with a sense of conviction. When he speaks, it’s bold, loud and thumping.

He seems to epitomise the last remaining generation of Indian men who proudly wear their manhood.

The area I’m staying in is 100% Muslim. “You’re safe,” says my wife’s cousin, Talal, Rafiq chacha’s son, “you won’t find any political trouble around here.”

That was one of the things I was cautioned about before I came - tensions between Hindus and Muslims are seriously high, particularly in North India, stoked up by a fascist government that seems to be in bed with Israel, who are encouraging their blind followers to economically boycott Muslims to hit us where it hurts.

India is currently beset by a terribly corrosive political climate, a ticking time bomb that is due to explode, one which follows the oldest playbook man knows: create an enemy among a minority, inflame tensions, lie about them, and use that to rally a sense of nationalism among the majority to win upcoming elections.

If only people could see how they are constantly being used as pawns in a self-serving, egomaniacal dance by those in power to gain more power.

We don’t learn. How many more tyrants will it take?

Perhaps that’s why the Quran tells us stories of the archetypal pharaoh: the same despotic characters pop up again and again throughout history.

The problem is that we don’t prioritise education enough - education not just found in school textbooks, but education about our inner world: our predisposition to anxieties, fears, trickery and self-importance.

A society that is educated can think for itself. A society that thinks, can question, challenge and effect change.

The Quran challenges our thinking so that we can challenge the thinking of those who rule over us: we have the answers in our book, we just need to open it again.

We, just like previous generations, will come and go. These tyrants will come and go - but their impact, sadly, lasts for generations.

A week before I leave, I fly with two of my wife’s cousins to Bangalore, the financial district of India, to visit an old friend, Yakub bhai.

Yakub has become graciously grey since I last saw him when he lived in London. He asks whether I’d like to visit his mother, who is now bed-bound and only semi-conscious.

I enter her bedroom. Her face is gaunt, her chin is sunken, but there is a beauty, a radiance about her face that draws you in.

I place my fingers between her fingers tightly and close my hand on hers.

She grips mine with whatever strength she can muster. She’s never met me before but Yakub has told his mother about me. She produces a faint but calming smile, as if she’s happy to see me.

Despite her condition, her face is glowing, her vitals, Yakub tells me, are still in tact.

In her face I can clearly see what she would have looked like 40 years ago. I see a young woman who was sophisticated, intelligent and warm to others.

I say salaam to her as I leave, knowing it will be the last time I’ll see her.

As I leave India, I reflect on the dichotomous nature of this great country.

A country rich with traditions and faith with an inept and divisive government bent on destroying everything good about the country.

The glitz and glamour of Mumbai, paired with the deep poverty of pockets and slums round the corner of 6 star hotels.

The exhilarating (and death-defying) stunts on motorways, and the slow, monotonous pace of everyday life for millions.

India really does symbolise the dunya.

A couple of weeks later, when I’m back in London, I get a text from Yakub bhai. His mother is no longer with us.

I tell him that I will pray Surah Yaseen for her, and when I go upstairs that night and open the Quran, the page opens exactly at the start of Yaseen.

Yes, India may be in trouble, but we have a Lord who is communicating to us through His book; guiding us to our way out of the problems - perhaps the answer is on the next page we open.