The Only Wealth They Cannot Colonize
my father’s legs burned at twenty-five, and he walked again. they can own your time. they can never touch the place where your imagination lives.
When my father was just 25-years old, his legs were burnt so badly that his toes melted together.
An industrial accident in Iran in his second job as an adult.
And a massive corporate cover-up after.
He couldn’t walk for six months.
Hospitalized in one room with morphine shots.
Burns so scathing, he would scream at the top of his lungs.
Most people never come off painkillers that intense without lifetime addiction.
And yet, he did.
My grandfather, Abba, who had never left his small town of Bahawalpur, got the news and traveled for the first time to a world completely unknown to him, just to sit beside his young son.
He even thought it might be the last time.
Two men who had no roadmap, no money, no privilege, only grit and love, became each other’s survival.
My father is a strong mofo.
Cuz that dude healed.
This guy walked again.
He rebuilt his life.
Because when the world burnt his body, he grew the only thing they couldn’t touch:
His imagination.
He became a trader, an investor, a man who understood trends before they were trends.
A man who created generational wealth for his daughters so that we wouldn’t inherit the same fires he walked through.
My sisters grew up still in survival. Because my parents were building wealth.
I grew up in safety.
Excess.
And access.
And yet… I inherited something far more valuable than security:
my father’s ability to imagine beyond the system
his refusal to bow to smallness
his instinct to see the world not as it is, but as it could be
his willingness to "bend reality" before he bent himself
When teachers told me to “pay attention,” I didn’t.
When teachers told me to "sit still", I ran outside of the classroom Not because I was rebellious, but because I already knew, even at 5 years old, that:
My imagination was my real currency.
Not the homework.
Not the systems.
Not the noise.
And that’s what no company, no partner, no institution, no country, no boss, no system can ever take from you.
They can own your time.
They can shape your roles.
They can demand performance.
They can collapse your confidence.
They can burn your life down.
But they can never, ever touch the place inside you where your imagination lives.
That’s your private kingdom.
Your inheritance.
I inherited my father's rebellion.
I inherited my grandfather's quiet power and patience.
If everything around you falls apart, if you lose your job, your relationship, your city, your identity you can still imagine your way into a new life.
You can still envision a world where you fit.
You can still rewrite the story.
Because imagination is the only wealth they cannot colonize, cannot reduce, cannot burn, cannot own.
And that is the lineage I come from.