Singing in the dark timeson August 14, 2019The power is speaking for its powerlessness since no sadism is without masochism. “Love the day,” Camus said, “that escapes injustice, and return to combat having won that light.” Yet, traversing the long dark tunnel of the history of Pakistan, one can question both Camus’s hope of winning light and Leonard Cohen’s authenticity about “everything […]
The night of the generalson July 20, 2019Based on the novel of Hans Hellmut Kirst, the movie comes alive with a fascinating display of acting by the artists of the yesteryear with rare talents. It takes the viewers to the fateful era of the Second World War where, in the Nazi-controlled Poland, a German general (Peter O’Toole) slays a prostitute, incidentally herself […]
Egypt and pharaoh’s curseon June 26, 2019“You shall read,” says Cosmus, the Duke of Florence,”we are commanded to forgive our enemies, but you never read that we are commanded to forgive our friends”. “We”, Nietzsche adds,”should also respect the enemy in our friend”. From Julius Caesar to Mohamed Morsi, this important lesson of history has always eluded those in the position […]
Political kitchen: what is cooking?on June 4, 2019“Today’s policies and political activity,” Rudolf Steiner says, “treat people like pawns. More than ever before, attempts will be made to use people like cogs in a wheel. People will be handled like puppets on a string, and everyone will think that this reflects the greatest progress imaginable”. While explaining the strings, Somerset Maugham adds […]
The orwellian democracyon May 22, 2019Contrary to cricket, a game of glorious uncertainties, capitalist democracy is a display of inglorious calamities inflicted by the indoctrinated majority on its body politics, a wound that can prove lethal to the future of coming generations. The logic of a free choice -the choice of choosing between black and white -has often been questioned. […]
The spice of spiritualityon May 15, 2019“When a nation is in confusion and disorder”, Laing says, “patriots are recognized” and when a nation is heading to an economic meltdown, the spirits and spirituality are called into action. “Men make their own history”, Marx suggests. “And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did […]
Time for the monsterson April 18, 2019“The crisis”, Gramsci says,”consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” It is time for the monsters. This stands true for not only Pakistan but for the entire world, which has been converted into an Auschwitz or […]
Barbarism: the continued part of civilizationon March 26, 2019“The first man,” Freud says, “who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization” – yet he complains that civilization has changed nothing. “What progress we are making”, he says, “In the Middle Ages they would have burnt me. Now they are content with burning my books”. Freud probably had no […]
Women thy heal yourselfon March 20, 2019Women under capitalism are not only the source of cheapest labor, but have become a socialized sexual object too. In an advertisement, it is hard to discern what is for sale, an inanimate object or a charming animated beauty, paid to promote it. ‘Physician thy heal yourself’, a Biblical phrase improvised by mercurial Nietzsche became […]
Suicide and Kashmir, the existential problems of Pakistanon February 27, 2019“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem” for Camus, and that is “suicide”. In reality, suicide neither pretends to be a philosophy nor poses such awkward questions, or else the world population would not have swelled to nearly seven billion. Despite living in an unlivable world, where people taste death but not life, only […]