Fathers and Daughters

When Abu liked to talk of the moon, sitting by the sea, he was quite the man. He would tell me complicated things about life, and how to live it as a running clock with no hands. To feel its essential present.

Life Long Commitment vs. Singledom

Marriage, I think, is highly overrated. Marriage being the perfect happily ever after and the solution to life’s problems is ‘just a myth we’ve been fed since childhood’

The Psychology of Mothering

It is interesting that as our culture is changing and many women are reluctant to take on motherly duties, more men are becoming motherly and nurturing.

Lost That Loving Feeling

Is love bound to end? Is very relationship doomed to
die a natural death at the hands of time?

Sunset at Uluwatu

Anjali and I had spent the afternoon in Tanjong Benoa. A small touristy cove off the Southern End of Bali, it had been a typical beach bumming day banana boating, snorkeling...

Indian Supreme Court says- ‘Live in is marriage’

A momentous turn that will create upheavals in Indian society from bottom to top.

Psychology of Men's Honour and Women's Sexuality

When Eastern women become financially and emotionally independent their husbands start losing control and become abusive and violent

The Landlady

Why do we exercise our right to hate so much more often than the right to love, anyway?

In Search Of Baby Chips

I switched on the projector inside my head, loaded up a dusty reel from the 1960s, and began: “Once upon a time there lived a little boy who often visited Lahore's Anarkali bazaar...

The Other Woman

She was a friend who just happened to be a woman...or, was she?

The Price of Loving Karl Marx

Spouses have to offer financial, economic and social sacrifices to maintain a marital relationship with creative personalities. Karl Marx was no exception.

Superseded

A divorced woman, suspects misfortunes to rob her again in a new turn in her life; this time it didn’t end up tragic.

The Durrani Family Saga

The poor in Pakistan must be given an alternate to the clergy to take them out from the spiral of ignobility in which they are caught.

Vanaja: A Movie That Moves Your Heart

Either Writer-Director Rajnesh Domalpalli is one of the luckiest first filmmakers around or true contender for future international movie fame.

No Choice But This

A Three Act Play ... what does a father do for a son paralysed neck down...

We are family

White

A lone tear escapes her eye. And burns a trail down my cheek.

My Life Story

When I close my eyes in solitude and think about the goings-on in my life during the past 17 years, I realize that a big part of my life is gone, withered away, wasted...

Images

It is almost 8 evening in Mississauga.I am walking outside. There is an urge to get out the house and walk on the pavements.

Moral Bankruptcy of Political Leadership in Pakistan

The pundits are saying that Musharaf & Bibi are ideological allies. As if these two camps actually have ideologies.

The Choice of Leading a Gay Life

‘forcing them to marry hoping he or she will change’ – such a approach invites anger, irritation, tensions and worse absolute breakdown of relations.

The Horse and The Zebra

“Do you know the most important difference between a horse and a zebra?” Shazi asked me after the first drag of his cigarette loaded with hash. “And don’t tell me that a zebra has stripes and a horse doesn’t,” he added

Worlds Apart

‘Home? Where was home, anyway? Don’t they say home is where the heart is?’

Allama Iqbal and His Women

When we study the psychological aspect of Iqbal’s life, we find out that despite having a sensitive heart and a brilliant mind, he had to struggle against many romantic contradictions through out his life.

Fake

some folks smile easy. for others it is a chore. point is, smiles cannot be cultivated. one is either born with it, else, you just fake it. and when confronted by a mirror, the fake ones fall off...

Pakistani Media to Face Wrath of the Government

Eleven new amendments have been introduced in the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA), which would help the Musharaff regime to control the electronic media including TV channels, Internet and mobile TVs.

Splinter

They were the couple, everyone said so, back in those days. The lightness of him, the gold hair and blue eyes around her dusky skin, like the demarcation of borders of countries in an atlas, setting her aglow.

Commercialized Sports

The days of feeling empowered over defeating former colonial masters are gone. That is a small satisfaction and it cannot compensate for our lowly performance in many fields.

On Zillae Huma Usman

What good is the facade of encouraging educated women to be at the forefront at the expense of their life?

A Teacup in My Hand

Sonya sat at the kitchen table, early Monday morning, with a cup of hot tea. She had some time to herself before setting off to battle her job, and the tensions that went with the package.

Adam Khor Ayash Gorillay

Is everyone these days tripping over themselves to conform to this stereotype of being hip?

Electric Illusion

Everyday we are taking another step to form what is so called “emotional attachment” with the machine which humans created. Instead of forming bonds between humans, we are forming this relationship with a machine to create our own perfect worl

The Fall

I used to have such a round full face as a child. Plump red cheeks, the sort of face that aunties kiss and uncles pinch. So why is it that in every picture I see of myself I am frowning deeply, so very serious?

The Quality Of Pakistani Research

A first glance at the publication lists that are now popping up will lead anyone who is not a domain expert to believe that the HEC’s strategy of throwing money at the dismal state of higher education in our country is bearing fruit. However, a clos

Sex and Censorship in the Cinema

There is a growing trend in cinema, especially so-called Independent and World Cinema, to show real sex on screen. This trend is especially true in Europe and raises the interesting question of censorship and its value and place in a civilised society.

Out of the Woods Yet

One evening, as I was packing for the day, my eyes set on an intriguing post in the electronic bulletin board, “Wet weekends at Hermann’s Palace”. The post carried the address and a map as well...

Jasmines in Colorado (final part)

Nothing in life had prepared me for the past four months. The highs and the lows; the excitement and the pains; and most of all, the truths and the lies. I feel like an amateur caught in a world made for professionals...

Waiting for Enlightenment

After almost five years of ‘enlightened moderation,’ it seems there is more continuity than change. And, with each passing day, it becomes harder to see how such a policy can hope to stem the tide of religious radicalism that is overwhelming P

Gear-up for a Power Internship!

So, it’s very important to get an insight of the profession you want to choose in the future. In this regard internships — a short attachment with a progressive organization — could be a viable solution.

When Romantic Love Does Not Mature

Since intimate relationships bring out the best and worst in all of us it is important to know what hurdles people have to cross to initiate and maintain healthy and mature romantic relationships

Cyber Love

Online shopping is attractive because a lot of products of different brands, packages and prices are easily obtainable. The same is true of Internet dating. A wide variety of individuals are available

Opinionated Jaahilism

If society were a person, it would be an obese one. Just like all the useful flesh, muscles and tissues are in a small amount buried under the mass of useless meat on an abnormally enlarged body, only a small number of people actually serve any useful pur

Internet Relationships – Blessing or Curse?

As a student of human psychology I feel that the mystery of internet relationships stimulates people’s imagination and they start the relationships where reality merges with fantasy

Pakistan Bans Blogspot

I don’t know what appalls me more: the sheer idiocy of such a blanket ban; the horror that someone thinks they’ve just struck a blow for Islam; or this insidious thought that, in Pakistan, we have no rights, only privileges

Great Expectations, Little Sense

When books are written to primarily sell, it’s no wonder that we end up confounded. The case studies presented are mostly those of successful, large organizations, which may be irrelevant to the vast majority of readers

Unfaithfully Yours

Are we going to be ostriches or we are ready to face the reality, the truth of extra-marital affairs?

What Drives Men and Women of Indian Subcontinent to Infidelity?

It seems that there is a conspiracy of adulterers particularly in the midst of the Islamic communities of the Indian subcontinent.

A Whiter Shade of Green

If I have never written a single word against Musharaf then I have neither written a single word for Musharaf either. Until now. Right now.

Muslim Leadership: An Oxymoron?

A good Muslim leader can be simply defined as someone who has the ability to embrace the changing world of Islam

Muslims Not Married in America

How hard is it to find a good man? Or a good woman for marriage?

Dusk

Dusk prays for me to transform. Out the pavement through the sliding doors of life into a crowded capsule of deafening music and empty conversation. Your spirit shaped with rumors; a cesspool of redundant make-do conversation.

Punch Drunk Love

He lay on the drawing room carpet; face down, totally drunk and vomiting. My eyes welled up and I could not stop my sobs.

Maelstrom

One didn’t hate a slug, after all, for being a slug. One hates a slug only when it touches upon something hidden deep within ourselves.

A Fobby Love Story

My love vocabulary increased tenfold here, with words like relationship (it was always love, what the hell is a relationship?), breakups (no breakups in pakistan, either you marry the girl or her parents marry her to someone else), ex ...

Censorship

There are no organized measures or standards by which these arts are being banned. Any one who has an objection need only to voice their concern, before the “offending” artwork is banned from public display.

Dark Places

Helena’s story rekindled some age-old longing that had been put away in a back corner of my heart. A love I had shut out in pursuit of education, in pursuit of foreign places and exotica.

Oh So Vicious

She had instructed me to stay away from him because she really liked him. She was only joking about how he was the type that I usually went for. She was one of my close friends; a little boy sacrifice from my side wasn’t a big deal- at that point.

Half a Confession II

Body sponges, change of sheets, the general bull shit and I cannot help but smile -- what everyone prays for and dreams about -- I had taken for granted -- the leisurely life style where people around me would do my bidding without me having to lift a fin

Daughtering

I am afraid I will say things like I hate you and you killed my father to my mother if I see her again…

Children of Dictatorship

I have always referred to my contemporaries as Zia’s children... We were socialised in a culture of sectarian and communal hate, drugs, guns, Pajeros, and with a false consciousness based only on abstinence. Not much has changed in this generation o

SoulMate

There’s something about finding a soulmate. You just know what the other person is. You never have to explain yourself or even tell another about you. You just know.

Premala ka Pyar

She waited with patient resoluteness for the rising sun as he slept with his fingers entwined deeply in her hair…

The Baby...

Sometimes he was unable to hide his impatience with her when he came home from his job at the pharmacy and saw her sitting in the same hunched over position as he had left her that morning.

Eternal Love

He had always felt her presence. She was there with him, in him, by him.. She was inside of him. She was him. And he was her. Collectively, they were a living yellow that which becomes, or is, with a natural unavoidable union of blue and green. It was wri

The Gun

A life which, after his retirement kept him on edge, surprised in a world that had changed so drastically since he had entered the service so many years ago. His wife was the biggest surprise.

Judicial Murder of a Prime Minister

Bhutto was removed from the political scene of Pakistan to satisfy the power lust and perpetuate the rule of the vily military dictator General Zia Ul Haque

Strangers Upon Meeting

Ama thinks I am with Fahad and Fahad thinks I am with Ash. Perfect. I park the car outside Meer’s house and opened the rusty gate. The main door was slightly ajar and I inwardly prayed that his mother wouldn’t be around.

What Dreams Are Made Up Of

I will disappear from your sight, but I’ll always be sneaking glances at you whenever I can. I will never call you but your voice will be playing in my head everyday. I will never write to you but will imagine what you are doing at every minute of

If This be Treason, then Make the Most of It

After having freed from the Western Colonialists almost all Muslim Asian countries have had been under the influence of dictators and kings, who control the absolute power -- the root-cause of Islamic fundamentalism, which has engulfed the Middle Eastern

Understanding Innovation & Its Sources

It is a mean by which entrepreneur creates a new wealth producing resources or ends existing resources with enhanced potential for creating wealth.

OPEN’s New Beginnings

He said, “If somebody tells you that it can’t be done, prove them wrong.”

My Best Friend

My friend looked excited and as he saw me look up, asked, 'You see?' And pointed his finger at the article. I looked back at the article to figure out the reason behind my friend’s excitement. My eyes suddenly fell on the writer’s name: Sameer

The Corrupted Daughter

What makes us corrupt? I sometimes wonder whether it is related to the awareness of having nothing or all. She was searching for someone within herself, someone who was there, yet missing or hiding.

From Jinnah to Jamali

Pakistan is not a failed state; the magnitude of our failure is much bigger than that. Pakistan is the name of a bankrupt culture that has been rotting since the fall of the Moghal Empire.

Our Mother

And together we stand as one before our mother. Our mother, who at times didn’t give enough and at other times gave too much, until she ran out of herself.

Memory and other Poems

My mother says
if women did not forget,
they would have just that one child.

I am the result of her forgetfulness.

India Pakistan Friendship, Why Now?

What has changed geopolitically that has forced both countries to reconsider their long-stated positions?

Enduring Operation Freedom

The work documented American knee-jerk reprisals since September 11th.

Shashank

An eulogy

To Taj -- In Dutch Company

To live in India and not to see the Taj Mahal is like to have eyes and not to know beauty. For over 25 years, I had not known beauty.

Indifference and Difference

Has Shampa started liking him? She hasn’t told him though. Could she be in love with him? The difference between their ages is hard to ignore...

Kahan Se Aap Zamaney Ke Bad Aye Hain

When I first saw her she was about fifteen. I was in Senior Cambridge. We lived in a Catholic hostel where it was compulsory to attend the morning Mass at dawn, six days a week...

To Love or to Like?

Cross gender and cross generation friendship is an under explored subject in literature and in movies. Yes, we have Sugar Daddies and Mammas and Trophy Wives and Girl Friends. But that is exploitative and not the norm.

So Far Away From Me!

in today’s world where people get their would-be spouse to sign an affidavit of compensation lest they cheat on them, chastity is indeed expensive!

Foreign Qualified

ilm hassil karo chahay is kai liyae tumhain cheen bhi kyoon na jana parai

The Beast and I

When I talk someone else, it is his cynical, mocking voice I hear in my ears. When I look into another person’s eyes, I peer instead into the center of his soul, glimpsing uncharted, thrilling vistas and promises that excite and repel me.

Miscued Doldrums; The Saga Revisited, The Feud Recreated

The age-old anti-Pak syndrome grips dejected Indian musicians...

When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History

The 70th anniversary wasn't noticed in the United States

The Great Game for Central Asian Oil

The Imperialist Ring from Yugoslavia to Afghanistan

Open Letter to Those Opposing the Iraq War

And the truth shall prevail. Whether someone likes it or not.

Can we Stop the War

Can do our bit to stop the War on Iraq?

Parveen

Between the muffled sensation of her oblique breast

The Case For and Against The Satanic Verses

Evaluating Diatribe and Dialectic as Art

Sohail Rana: Musings on music

His adorers are surrounded by a lifetime of numerous memories of his immortal compositions.

Perfect Women. Imperfect Men

women should also be able to fulfill their responsibilities towards their homes

The King’s Gambit: Chapter 5 (The Diplomat)

Carl Davis had just lost one group of swing votes in his home state. He was going to make sure he did not lose the other group also.

Democracy is Like Virginity

All The Way To Maine

How some Pakistani and Indian kids found out that the enemy has a face.

Worldwide India-Pakistan peace movement begins?

It is time for Indians and Pakistanis worldwide to re-humanize their enemies

A Contrary Opinion

why not give the goodwill to someone who has only been brutally honest with us

From The Table

You can’t dance around or over me, cannot provoke me, arouse me or hear the scream of my soul.

Deja Vu

General Musharraf should be open and honest

My Sahib

An English translation of Saadat Hasan Manto’s ‘Mera Sahib’

White Charade

Based on true events, circa early ‘90s, Karachi, when The White Charade became a symbol of terror

The Chicken Hawks Of Pakistan

The military should accept the fact that it is a dictatorship

Degrees of Horror

Someone in Kutch is just a few degrees removed from me

Democracy in Pakistan: The Missing Link?

Democracy has long been a buzzword in Pakistan

Ismat Chughtai’s Autobiography -- A Transalation

Let her, said my father

Is the Language of New Fiction Androgynous?

Does literature too have sex?

Pakistan - The Way Forward

An Activist’s Appeal

The Bombing

A temporary replica of Ka’aba was recreated for the occasion.

Prayers

You eternal, me temporal

Her Other Self

Why did she wake up in nightmarish sweats chased by dark fears?

Compilation of Opinions on the Military Takeover in Pakistan

Peoples opinions and reactions

Of Boylove and Boylovers

We (even in the oh-so-liberal West) live in a more conformist society that we are led to believe

Deprivation

This is my story. Leave me and you die

Kargil and the Myth of Losing the Media War

Consider for a moment that you are NOT a Pakistani

Citizenship Rights for a Better Future

The autocracy established in colonial India is alive and well in contemporary Pakistan

Justa Simple Sad Poem

Tears congealed into words

Giving Way to Intolerance

During the last many years, religious intolerance and sectarian fanaticism have created a war-like situation in Pakistan

On Being an Ex-Expatriate

What’s it like to come back to Pakistan? An ex-expatriate speaks.

Calligraphy of Coils

A conversation with Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali

Azadi

A woman in Tehran intervenes when her husband becomes a smuggler of alcohol

The Good, the Bad and the Anxiety

Can’t we make choices about how to lead our lives without someone out there thinking that we are breaking a religious or cultural law? Who decides what these laws are anyway?

Poet Sheikh Ayaz

He was incarcerated many times for his seditious writings and was also sentenced to death, but escaped gallows due to the sudden change of government.

Love Means Never Having to Say You Are An Infidel!

Can you be a Muslim and marry a Jew? A closer look at inter-religious marriages.