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How Fatima Jinnah died — an unsolved criminal case
Fatima Jinnah was not only Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s sister, but his guardian and political companion too. After Jinnah died, she was looked upon by people as a natural successor to her brother. But, there...
View ArticleThe (physical) road to saving newborns in Pakistan
"After my first delivery at the city hospital, women from my village questioned me with surprise that why did I go to the city hospital for the delivery when it was possible at home? They said that if...
View ArticleHow do we reinvent Pakistan's national dream?
A country caught in multiple crises, always drifting from one catastrophe to another, giving birth to monsters that quite often go out of its control. That’s how the world generally identifies...
View ArticleMy ‘pick and mix’ Muslim female identity
In her chillingly brilliant dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood writes about the handmaids being “the people who were not in the papers. [They] lived in the blank white spaces at the...
View ArticleA Saudi beheading, an IS beheading
The beheading took place in Makkah. A Burmese woman named Laila Bin Abdul Muttalib Basim, who lived in Saudi Arabia, was first dragged on a public street. Then, she was grabbed by four policemen, while...
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Obama goes to India: A fly-on-the-wall review
Obama goes to India: A fly-on-the-wall reviewBy Nadeem F. ParachaNadeem F. Paracha is a cultural critic and senior columnist for Dawn Newspaper and Dawn.com He tweets @NadeemfParacha
View ArticleWhy Pakistan should celebrate the eradication of dracunculiasis
Way back in the later half of 1980s, US President Jimmy Carter was on his visit to Ghana. During his tour, he happened to visit a small village. It was in this forgotten corner of the universe that Mr...
View ArticleExcellent healthcare is being provided in Pakistan, but...
In their skilled hands was my mother’s ailing heart; a dedicated and experienced team of attendants, doctors, and nurses toiled to restore the rhythm of an offbeat organ. It took several days and...
View ArticleCall them ‘Dictators’, not ‘Kings’
It is clear that any attempt to draw the West’s attention to Saudi Arabia’s history of glaring human rights violations, would require an urgent amendment to the terminology we regularly use to describe...
View ArticleKarachi: Here lie the living
Pakistan was declared the third cheapest country to live in according to the cost of living index in a report published by Numbeo.com. Kudos. It is incidentally also the cheapest to die in.Consider...
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The change of guard and class in Pakistani films
Till about the late 1970s, the Pakistan film industry was regularly releasing an average of 80 films a year. In fact, there were also periods when the industry put out over a hundred films in a single...
View ArticleWill Amir's return hurt Pakistan cricket? No.
It was quite an effort by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) to vouch for a player, who not only corrupted the game of cricket, but also belonged to a country where corrupting the game was never a new...
View ArticleIntroducing my mother to Facebook
Many of us frequently bemoan our inability to use technology and social media in particular in a moderated, responsible and conscientious sort of way. I have lost count of the number of times I have...
View ArticleBullets and backpacks: Arming schoolteachers is a stopgap
When you think of a classroom, what comes to your mind? Everyone who has been fortunate enough to see the inside of one, can narrate their own experience. But besides the exquisite calligraphy and...
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Pakistan at centre stage in New York City
The American-Pakistani playwright, actor and novelist, Ayad Akhtar, has two plays showing in New York during this busy tourist season. The Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Disgraced, and the powerful The...
View ArticleKing Salman's shady past
It has been a month dominated by Saudi Arabia. Last week, I wrote about the beheading of a Burmese woman in the Holy City of Makkah. The Saudi King was not dead then, but he died a few days after the...
View ArticleBullets and backpacks: Arming school teachers is a stopgap measure
When you think of a classroom, what comes to your mind? Everyone who has been fortunate enough to see the inside of one, can narrate their own experience. But besides the exquisite calligraphy and...
View ArticleGrave matters: A bazaar atop a graveyard
A cobbler began mending shoes by the edge of a Christian graveyard in Kot Addu in Muzaffargarh. Since he was making an honest living, most people did not mind his little setup near the five-kanal...
View ArticlePakistanis, can we trust each other?
I was recently in Lahore for some fieldwork towards my PhD and I can tell you what everyone else will tell you: it’s actually, really quite bad. But, that’s not what this blog is about.Sure, during my...
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Temple run: Searching for the lost Guru Mandar
'Guru' is a Hindi word; it means 'teacher'. But the mainstreaming of the word is due more to Sikhism, wherein the religious leaders are called gurus, such as the founder of Sikhism, Baba Guru Nanak....
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