The Side Room

How do you know which friendships are actually built to last?

Saf and Zoheb talk about childhood friends, making close friends as adults, friendship after marriage, and the people who show up when life gets difficult. They look back at the friendships they grew up with, the ones that have lasted, the ones that quietly faded, and what happens when someone you still care about no longer fits the life you’ve built.

They also get into outgrowing old friends, keeping a smaller circle as you get older, whether loyalty should have limits, and how marriage, family and grief can change the way you look at the people around you. Plus, has social media made us feel connected while actually making us worse at keeping in touch?

Zoheb’s wife was also listening in and occasionally joins the conversation. She wasn’t mic’d up for the episode, so apologies for the audio quality when you hear her chipping in.

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Growing up Muslim in Britain meant learning the Quran, praying and, sometimes, being told exactly what would send you to hell.

Saf and Zoheb look back at getting punished for mistakes, feeling afraid to get religion wrong, drifting from prayer as they got older and eventually having to build their own relationship with faith as adults. They talk about relearning the Quran, struggling with prayer (salah), South Asian parents using religion when it suited them, and how much of what they were taught came from culture rather than Islam itself.

Were they taught to love their religion, or were they taught to fear what happened if they got it wrong?

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You get married thinking it’s about you and the person you love, but then the honeymoon period wears off. Money conversations get real, families get involved, everyone has an opinion. Suddenly, we're thrown into discussions about who compromises, who provides, whose parents come first and what exactly you both signed up for.

Saf and Zoheb get into all of it, comparing what marriage has actually been like for them. Someone else (Zoheb’s wife) also starts chiming in from behind the camera and accidentally becomes this episode’s unofficial third voice.

What follows is a very Side Room conversation about marriage, mummy’s boys, in-laws, culture dressed up as religion, divorce, financial readiness and the uncomfortable gap between wanting to get married and actually being ready to be someone’s husband.

At the heart of it is something pretty simple:

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A quick note: Zoheb’s wife wasn’t meant to be on the episode and wasn’t separately mic’d, so she’s a little quieter in places, sorry about that. We’re still improving the setup and getting better as we go.

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Note: This episode includes discussion of bereavement, cancer, suicide, addiction and mental health.

Saf and Zoheb talk about how differently mental health is understood now compared to when they were growing up, especially in Bengali families where people were more likely to be labelled “mad”, dismissed, or told they were affected by jinn than encouraged to get actual help.

Zoheb speaks openly about losing his mum to cancer, the grief that still catches him unexpectedly, and how strange it felt to be dealing with practical things on the day she died while everyone around him was visibly falling apart.

There were calls to make, people to contact, funeral arrangements to deal with, and family members who needed him. To everyone else, he looked unusually composed but in reality, he just felt like somebody had to hold it together.

They get into whether men genuinely process grief differently, or whether they have simply been taught that their feelings have to wait until everything else has been handled.

They also talk about remembering death as Muslims, grief counselling, supporting family after a loss, body image, work stress, marriage, and the small arguments that sometimes reveal you’re carrying more than you realised.

This is a conversation about mental health, but also about responsibility, faith, grief and what happens when the person everyone relies on is struggling too.

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How much of what we call culture is actually something we were simply taught not to question?

In episode 3, Saf and Zoheb look back at the expectations that shaped them: get the degree, do better than everyone else’s child, stay thin but not too thin, respect your elders and never talk back.

They get into emotional blackmail, cousin comparisons, colourism, comments about weight, physical punishment and colourism, including the belief that lighter skin automatically makes someone more attractive.

This is not about rejecting Asian culture or pretending their parents did not love them. It is about asking a harder question: which parts deserve to be passed down, and which should stop with us?

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Saf and Zoheb planned to talk about racism in Britain. Before they get there, they spend a long time chatting like two guys who have completely forgotten the microphones are on.

Eventually, they get to the topic of the day, and the conversation turns to British identity, patriotism, Islamophobia, the language used by the media, growing up brown in Britain, and the strange contradiction of wanting the culture without always wanting the people.

It is funny, blunt and uncomfortable in places, which is probably exactly what this conversation needed to be.

Also, yes, Sharon Law enters the chat at one point.

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Saf and Zoheb planned to introduce The Side Room podcast. What actually happened was football, family history, East London stories, growing up brown in the sticks, racism, school memories, getting jumped, and Zoheb explaining why he came home crying from a school that was not for him.

A messy first episode, but in the right way. You get the hosts, the humour, the tangents and the point of the show: honest conversations from two brown Muslim men who rarely stay on topic, but usually end up saying something worth listening to.

Also, yes - Thanos does enter the chat.

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