My name is Shaban Ali Nadvi, and I am from UP.   I was born in Basti, which is in eastern UP. I attended a madrasa in my childhood, and later I acquired higher Arabic education in Lucknow. In 2018, I joined an office on a salary of five thousand rupees a month, but in my heart there was a thirst to acquire more knowledge and to become well-educated. Those days, I did not sleep well at night. I was restless. I didn’t know what to do, but I really wanted to grow in knowledge. So, I quit the job and went off to Mysore for a PG Diploma in Community Service for a year. After that, I did a PG Diploma in Applied Islamics from Yenepopya University, Mangalore. After I completed this course I joined the All-India Muslim Development Council—Masjid One Movement, and now I’m working there as a co-coordinator.

I want to share some things about my past. From my childhood I have been a bookworm. I loved reading novels, historical narratives and biographies. I have read many novels in Urdu, Arabic and English, and this has helped me improve my writing skills. I recount how eagerly I would make sentences and combined them and would read papers that I found anywhere.  I used to do carpentry work, and then, after I left this, my elder brother taught me literature.

 Writing is my hobby. I wish I could write all day and night! When I start writing an article or reading a book, I often completely forget what is happening around me. Very often, my mind is occupied with thoughts about what to write and how to write. If something insightful or otherwise interesting happens around me, I try to write about it. I try to highlight some moral lesson that it contains so that it may touch people’s hearts.

Through my writings I would like to promote awareness of social evils and encourage people (including myself) to work to work to overcome them, to promote positivity in order to overcome negativity. I want to make us grow in our awareness of moral values. I try to introduce this value element in my writings.

Nowadays, many of us have completely forgotten morality. Humankind may be ‘marching ahead’ (as some people think) in the field of technology, but what about the moral aspect? What is the use of technological ‘sophistication’ if the heart is not imbued with love and kindness and a passion to help others (including non-human creatures)?

These days, many youngsters hardly read any books, especially those that have a moral dimension. They are more interested in games, mobile phones, the Internet, spending time with friends or chasing their dreams of making money. But that is not the lesson we were taught by our foremothers and forefathers. My writing work is only to help promote awareness of the wisdom and the life-lessons that had been handed down over the generations but that we have forgotten.