The friendly opposition? on April 22, 2012The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) is not acting like a traditional parliamentary opposition party. After the first few months when it was a coalition partner of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), the PML-N has sat in opposition. Many politicians, especially Imran Khan, often refer to the PML-N as the ‘friendly opposition’. I believe that Imran […]
All Pakistanis cannot emigrate on April 15, 2012Emigration or a Hegira (hijrat) is a hallowed Muslim tradition. After all, the Muslim calendar starts from the day that the Prophet (PBUH) and a small band of his followers emigrated under cover of darkness from Mecca to Medina. The reason they left was to escape ‘religious’ persecution. Present day Pakistan has many Muslim immigrants […]
Moustaches are here to stay on April 8, 2012During the few weeks I spent in the US, one of the things I noticed was that ‘facial hair’ is making a comeback. Three major movie stars, George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp are often seen in public sporting facial hair. Even among contributors to the esteemed The New York Times op-ed pages, Tom […]
Rumours denied! on December 25, 2011During the first ‘martial law’ some 50 odd years ago, Pakistan did not have a free press and no TV either. All the major newspapers were taken over by the government but the people that did the day to day work in these newspapers were still quite independent. News was strictly censored but we learned […]
Grand unifying conspiracy theory on December 18, 2011Frankly I do not give an ‘athlete’s foot’ about ‘Memogate’, my only quibble with the darn thing is that it should not be pronounced ‘Meemogate’. But I am entirely perturbed about the news that close to 150 goats were stolen in one night in the Faisalabad area. One hundred and fifty goats! Just imagine the […]
The health of our leaders on December 11, 2011A few years ago while reading a book about the history of tuberculosis (TB), I came across an interesting reference. The author quoted the person who discovered Streptomycin, the drug that finally brought TB under control, that he received a letter from the personal physician of a ‘leader of a country’ enquiring about the availability […]
Let us be thankful on November 26, 2011Last Thursday, the US celebrated Thanksgiving Day. I was lucky enough to spend it in Lahore with a part of my family visiting from the US, and for that I am indeed thankful. We are mostly preoccupied with the toils and the troubles that we face in our daily lives but it is worthwhile to […]
Pakistan in a parallel universe on November 20, 2011The world as we know it might just be coming to an end. No, I am not referring to the impending end of the ‘euro’ or the Imran Khan ‘tsunami’ or even the ‘Memogate’. What has me entirely hot and bothered are two things that happened recently. First of course is that this Friday, the […]
KEMU: fix it or kill it on November 13, 2011Recently five former principals of the King Edward Medical College (KEMC) along with the representatives of the King Edward Alumni Association as well as members of the Young Doctors Association (YDA) sent a letter to the chief minister (CM) of Punjab requesting that the King Edward Medical University (KEMU) should be reverted back to the […]
US politicians and Pakistani politicians on November 6, 2011One of the fun things I do every four years or so when the US primary campaign is in full swing is to compare US politicians with those in Pakistan. Most likely Obama and Biden will be re-nominated by the Democrats. The Republican field is however open. Before I proceed I want to assure my […]