The FAST grad who nearly died and found the spirit world

A brother visits the studio

The episode opens with Muzamil noting that this conversation is different from the usual format. His brother, Syed Muneeb Hasan Zaidi, is visiting from the United States and has agreed to sit down at the studio. Muzamil explains the professional context briefly — Muneeb is a presales solutions engineer at Protegrity, a data protection company — and then moves on quickly, making clear that the professional side is not the point today.

Muneeb describes Protegrity’s core function in plain terms: “What we do is fine-grained data protection from databases. Aajkal kaafi ransomware aap logon ne suna hoga — we encrypt or tokenize the data, so even if they have that data they won’t be able to do anything. It’s useless for them.” With that out of the way, the conversation turns to where Muneeb actually came from.

Born in Jeddah, landed in Islamabad

Muneeb was born in Jeddah in 1982 and spent his early years between Mecca and Jeddah. Around age nine, the family moved back to Pakistan — first to Lahore for a year, then to Islamabad in 1992. The move from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan was a cultural jolt. In Jeddah, the social world was multinational: Arabs, Syrians, Bangladeshis, Indians. “Pakistan aane ke baad pehchana ke achha nahin, India is our enemy. And we were like, okay, that’s weird — kyunke wahan par us tarah ka concept hi nahin tha.”

Lahore felt fast and unfamiliar. Islamabad, by contrast, felt like Jeddah — quieter, cleaner, friendlier. The family settled, and Muneeb studied at PF’s school from sixth grade through FSC.

As a student, he was uneven. He topped his class in computers at both matric and FSC level, and scored well in English. Urdu was a consistent weak point — he scored in the low thirties out of seventy-five. Physics was worse. He failed physics in FSC Part One and had to sit both parts together in the final exam. “FSC mein yeh tha ke bahar se students aaye the jo party kar rahe hain, ghoomna phirna, hangout — not really caring about studying. That was one of the major reasons.”

Getting into FAST — barely

When it came to university, the choice was obvious. Both of Muneeb’s older brothers had graduated from FAST Islamabad in computer science. The family had owned an MSX computer since their Saudi days, and the interest in programming was genuine. “Mujhe yaad hai jab hum Saudi Arabia se Pakistan move hue to hamare paas ek computer hota tha — MSX, like Commodore 64. So interest rate se aaya tha.”

The FAST entrance interview did not go well. An interviewer challenged him on whether his interest in computers was real or opportunistic. Muneeb was rejected. He was waitlisted at Islamic University. Eventually, a spot opened at FAST, and he took it.

First semester: 1.94 GPA. Physics and calculus both scored a one. The director, Dr. Aftab, called in a handful of students whose FSC scores had also fallen below the 60% threshold. The message was direct — the board wanted them removed, but he was giving them a chance. Get the CGPA above two, or leave.

Muneeb did. Computers and management courses carried him. Physics remained a problem — he failed it again in the second year and passed it in summer school. By graduation, his CGPA was 2.74. “Main average student tha isliye. 2.5 se upar to FAST achha CGPA consider hota hai par.”

He was also, as he puts it, a legacy student. One brother had graduated on a full scholarship, finishing in the top five of his batch. The other had been building games from scratch in the late nineties, before Google, before Unity. The comparison was constant and the expectations were set before Muneeb walked through the door.

The shadow of high-achieving brothers

Muzamil raises this directly — the pressure of growing up as the youngest in a family of high achievers, in a society that benchmarks children against each other relentlessly. Muneeb is honest about it. The comparison happened. Teachers and relatives pointed it out. But he reframes it: “It was more like I need to prove myself. I have to make sure that I am successful. I think that’s the feeling. And I won’t take it as negative — because if I did not have that guidance, because it’s not only that comparison is happening, that guidance was also available.”

The brothers were not just a standard to be measured against. They were a resource. When Muneeb had a decision to make, he asked them. The decision, he says, was always his own — but the map was already partially drawn.

From FAST to NCR: the cold email that worked

Muneeb graduated in 2005. The IT industry in Islamabad at the time had a particular texture — small software houses, LAN gaming tournaments, a hip subculture forming around technology. “Software houses mein gaming bhi aur ek way three tournaments ho rahe hain Warcraft 3 ke — everyone would just bring in their computers, connect karo network se, shuru ho jao.”

The company everyone wanted to join was NCR — specifically its analytics division, Triad Data. The pay was 32,000 rupees at a time when most software houses were offering 15,000 to 25,000. There was a laptop, a formal culture, and international project exposure across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Muneeb failed the first test. He waited. He watched batchmates start their jobs. Then he wrote a letter. “I really want to join — my friend is working there and they have told me great things about the company and I would like to join you guys, whatever if there is an opportunity, and I’m sure I won’t disappoint you.” NCR called him in for an interview. They liked his communication skills — essential for a company dealing with international clients. They offered him a place in the November batch.

He had briefly started at Motorola in the interim. He left, returned the laptop, and joined NCR. Within a month, he was on a live project. Within two months, he was leading it — a Belgium engagement.

A decade of airports: Belgium, Dubai, Qatar, South Africa, Switzerland

What followed was a decade of international consulting. Dubai for Mashreq Bank. Doha for Qatar Airways. Johannesburg and Cape Town for South African Airways. Then Switzerland — a year-long project in Bern, with quarterly flybacks to Pakistan and weekend trips across Central Europe.

“Switzerland mein we were in the capital Bern. Jury jaana hai, Geneva jaana hai — aap kahin bhi ja sakte hain. Almost every other weekend hum Geneva ja rahe hote the.” The company covered transport, accommodation, and food. Every weekend, a different Swiss city. Jungfrau, Zermatt, the top of Europe.

During the Switzerland posting, Muneeb got engaged. His H1B visa had been approved in 2008 through a third-party consulting arrangement. The 2008 financial crash made the timing difficult, and his brothers — one at Microsoft in Seattle, one at Electronic Arts in Vancouver — advised him to stay in Switzerland rather than rush to the US into a collapsing job market. He took that advice.

By the end of 2009, he had married, resigned from Teradata, and moved to Atlanta. Within a month of arriving, a friend from his Teradata days pulled him onto an AT&T project. He worked as a contractor until his green card came through — faster than expected because his place of birth was Saudi Arabia, not Pakistan. Once he was a full-time employee, the planning began in earnest: a house in 2013, a daughter, Arya, in 2014.

The hotel room in Los Angeles

In 2014, Muneeb was on a project for MGM Studios in Los Angeles — a six-hour flight from Atlanta. His routine was to skip sleep the night before, catch the early flight, and sleep on the plane. One Monday, it didn’t work. He couldn’t sleep on the flight. He arrived, worked through the day, picked up food, and returned to his hotel room around 6:30 in the evening.

He lay down on the bed, turned on the television, and felt something shift. “Ekdam se ajeeb sa meri body ke andar shock sa hua. And I started feeling my heart beating — tuk tuk tuk tuk tuk — bahut hi se. Mujhe feel hua tha aisa laga tha ke mera heart jo hai woh bahar nikal ke aa jaega.”

He tried coughing. He couldn’t reach his phone. He lay back and started to see clouds, and figures standing on those clouds, speaking in Arabic. He felt himself floating. The room began to shrink as the clouds expanded. “Unhone mujhe call kar rahe the — come up.” He started praying. He bargained. Arya was six months old. He wanted to see her grow up.

The heartbeat slowed. Then stopped, or seemed to. He saw what he describes as a time-lapse of history — civilisations rising and falling, the same mistakes repeating, pyramids being built, and something he interpreted as the Kaaba — not the earthly one, but something above it. “Jab yeh is tarah ki cheezein maine dekhi to obviously aapka dimag pad jaata hai.”

He woke up. The clock read 7:11. Barely two or three minutes had passed. “I can assure you it was not that — us se bahut zyada time guzarta tha jo at least maine cheezein dekhi nahin aur saara kuch hua tha.”

Back in Atlanta, he saw a doctor. Full physical, ECG. The results came back clean. “You’re in the top 99th percentile. Your heart is healthy. I don’t know what happened. It might be a mild heart attack. Might be something else. But you’re good to go.”

What the near-death experience changed

Muzamil asks what shifted after that night. Muneeb’s answer is not dramatic. It is quiet and specific. He had been a weekly traveller, Monday to Thursday, every week, for years. He was building toward a partnership. He was making good money. And then: “Main travel kar raha hoon, making good money, plans aayenge — I am going to be a partner. Very corporate goals. Poori zindagi naukri karke grow karna hai. And then — what’s the point? I could have died that day and everything would have been — wahi khatam ho jaati hai.”

He also noticed that his wife was managing everything alone. The child, the house, the daily life. “Mere bachche ke saath time bhi nahin guzaar raha. You start questioning all the things.”

The year after, he took his family on a West Coast trip to visit his brothers in Seattle and Vancouver. Then a Euro trip — ten to twelve countries across Central Europe. In early 2016, they came to Pakistan. And alongside all of this, he started reading.

Astral projection and the spirit world

The near-death experience opened a question Muneeb couldn’t close. He researched near-death experiences online, found the term NDE, and then kept going. He read across Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. He studied Sufism, Kabbalah, shamanism, and meditation traditions. “Ek jo common theme thi woh sab ki yahi thi — be good with people, achha karo har ek ke saath.”

But what he was really looking for was something more direct. He found it in astral projection — the practice of deliberately separating consciousness from the body. “Astral projection is forcefully getting your spirit or consciousness out of your body and then moving around in this world or in the spirit world, which is outside of this world. It’s a different dimension, if you will.”

He began meditating for an hour before sleep, lying flat in pitch-black hotel rooms during his weekly travel. “Meri yeh neech ke main baith jaoon kahin par — nahin. Raat ko sone se ek ghanta pehle let ke hamesha karni hai. Aur usme bas apne mind se har tarah ki thought nikaal do.” After roughly three hundred hours of practice, he says, he began to see things in the dark — the ceiling, the room’s outlines — and eventually achieved what he describes as the experience he had been working toward.

He is careful not to over-explain. Muzamil notes that Muneeb has read extensively on religious mythology and spirituality, and invites listeners who are curious to reach out directly via Instagram.

GPA is not destiny, and social mobility is a mindset

Later in the discussion, Muzamil brings the conversation back to a question that runs underneath the whole episode: what does Muneeb’s journey say about the relationship between academic performance and life outcomes?

Muneeb’s answer is grounded in his own record. When he applied for an Executive MBA at Georgia Tech, the dean flagged his undergraduate GPA. “Everything is good lekin aapka GPA kam hai. Why is that?” Rather than withdraw, Muneeb wrote an essay explaining his international consulting career, his travel, and a photography and videography business he had run on the side. He got the GMAT waiver. He got in. “Agar main is par baitha rehta ke yaar mera to GPA tak kam hai main to apply nahin kar sakta — to mera shayad na hota kabhi bhi.”

On the broader question of social mobility, Muneeb is direct. He acknowledges that three brothers from Islamabad all ending up at major US tech companies — one now at Apple Maps, one at Facebook after stints at Google and Microsoft, and Muneeb himself at Protegrity — looks like privilege from the outside. But he pushes back on the framing. “Fast ke teen ladke fast se graduate karke bahar baithe ho sakte hain — woh yeh bhi soch sakte the ke yaar wahan to MIT wala jaega, UPenn wala jaega, Georgia Tech wala jaega.”

By the end of the conversation, Muzamil asks Muneeb how he sees Pakistan in thirty years. Muneeb is cautiously optimistic. He has noticed a startup culture that wasn’t there three years ago, a young population moving into its prime, and energy around fintech and agritech. “Pakistan bahut achha upar ja sakta hai if they keep on going in the right direction.”

The episode closes at the one-hour-thirty-minute mark, with Muzamil noting it is one of the longest conversations the show has had — and that Muneeb has only touched the surface of what he has been exploring.