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Mishka Murad: Representing Pakistan atop Mexico’s 14,000-ft peak
The author standing in front of the Nevado de Colima.I’d like to tell you my journey to the summit of the 26th-most prominent peak in North America, was an easy one, but I’d be lying.The Nevado de...
View ArticleJogendra Nath Mandal: Chosen by Jinnah, banished by bureaucracy
Jogendra Nath Mandal has the distinction of representing the Muslim League as minister in the 1946 pre-partition political setup of India.Later, he presided over the historic session of the Constituent...
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Pakistani airlines: Unsafe at any altitude
Even after hours of smooth flying, you shouldn’t get very comfy. Why? Well, if you were to believe the world’s foremost authority on airline safety, Professor Arnold Barnett of MIT, the riskiest...
View ArticleDear Misbah, don’t go just yet
I can pinpoint the exact moment I lost faith in Pakistan cricket. It was the third day of the fourth Test during the tour to England in late August 2010.Captain Salman Butt, swing bowler Mohammad Asif,...
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Taj wars
Rewriting history is quite common in both India and Pakistan. Governments do it, the state does it, and sometimes, so do families.This phenomenon has been a robust and recurring exercise in both the...
View ArticleWhen ‘free speech’ is French for ‘imperialism’
When trimmed down from a universal right to a privilege enjoyed by the favoured class of people, ‘freedom of expression’ becomes a corrupted item in the toolbox of imperialists.As a writer, there are...
View ArticleDivorced Pakistanis speak 18,000 words daily about Imran-Reham divorce: Study
A recently published study shows that many divorced couples in Pakistan haven’t discussed their own divorces as much as they have discussed Imran Khan and Reham’s break up.Parveen Shahkeen, the lead...
View ArticleSet on fire: When no means death for Pakistani women
We were never good at taking rejection as a people, but as men, Pakistanis don’t even make it passably human. They retaliate with counter accusations, and if that does not match the insult their...
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Symphony city — Discovering Karachi’s oldest music shops
Karachi has a distinct soul. While the thriving metropolis is reported in the media for all the wrong reasons, it is not too hard to find pockets of inspiration here.And there can be no better way of...
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‘Looking East’: A trip to Middle Kingdom
The word China conjures a wide variety of different images. A typical Chinese house with curved and sloping roofs, people with their pants up to their ankles and hats in paddy fields or people with...
View ArticleCrackdown on Sheesha cafes: A case of state nanny-ism
Theoretically, there are only two kinds of activities in Pakistan: ones that are good for you, and ones that must be banned in a bid to protect a frighteningly free citizen from him or herself.As a...
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Iqbal’s love: Iqbal’s life
In the late 19th century, the worn tapestries of Mughal glories still told their tales to the subcontinent’s Muslims.There existed then such a thing as a Secretariat of Poetry, run by Nawab Mirza Khan...
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Beyond shiny houses — Lahore’s story
A security guard sits reluctantly on a chair at the entrance to this village. He is wearing a light blue shirt with navy blue pants. There is a cap on his head and a barrier next to him. The barrier,...
View ArticleResearch culture in Pakistan: The ‘undisclosed’ moral decadence
Higher education has seen a remarkable progress in Pakistan recently with an increasing number of students enrolling for Masters’ and Doctoral degrees.However, research culture in the country is still...
View Article‘Area Baazi’: A tale of two Karachis
Nothing divides people more than money; no religion, caste or creed creates more division than our social status.We are measured by the size of our backyard, the make of our car, the price of our...
View ArticleHow the Biharis saw through Modi’s rhetoric
The voters in Bihar have put the BJP and its cow hugging ‘communal politics’ out to pasture.The electorate in Bihar, one of the most populous states in India, has delivered a resounding defeat to the...
View ArticleWhy I set off firecrackers in Pakistan on BJP’s Bihar defeat
I actually did, I exploded four of them. And I don’t care if doing so proves BJP supremo Amit Shah right in warning Bihari voters that if his party lost state assembly elections there, celebratory...
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Pakistan’s greatest cricket captain: Khan or Haq?
Till the appointment of Misbahul Haq as Pakistan’s cricket captain in 2011, former all-rounder, Imran Khan, was overwhelmingly remembered as the greatest captain ever to lead the Pakistan cricket...
View ArticleTrousers vs shalwars: The JI's skewed education priorities
The Jamat-i-Islami (JI) has expressed disapproval over the provincial government’s preference for shirts and trousers as school uniforms in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa over shalwar kameez. They claim that the...
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Table No. 6: Where it’s all in your head
As they say, no publicity is bad publicity – unless it really is of the worst kind and puts one in league with apologists for rapists and wife-beaters and gains one’s infamy for misogyny.Sorry, but...
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