Nazir Abbasi in Kuli Camp on August 12, 2017He lived the life and died the death about which novels could be written. A handsome looking, tall, youthful, walrus like mustached, with razor edged sense of humor (was not really a cliché) which, what his old comrade Mir Theo says could not conceal a melancholy in his wide twinkling mischievous eyes. Yet, his was […]
Topi drama re-enacted? on August 1, 2017The nation’s apex court has sent the elected Prime Minister packing when the country was hardly three weeks away completion of 70 years of independence. And, ironically it’s less than a year away from the general elections in 2018. Many years ago, I had co-authored a play along with my erstwhile colleague and friend Muna […]
I, Army, and the country of Allah on July 22, 2017As a child, I grew up with the love of army as my mamu (maternal uncle) had gone to join the Pakistan Army. He was the first and the last in the family who had become a fauji (army man). We, the kids in the family, will call him “mama fauji” (the uncle army-man). Although […]
The space Zia gave us to breathe our last on July 11, 2017Mohammed Ziaul Haq’s military rule was doubtless the worst totalitarian regime in our country’s history.Surprisingly, however, fields such as literature, poetry, film, television and the theatre had quite a lot of space and freedom to work in. Was this space unintentional or by design? As fiction writer and playwright Abdul Qadir Junejo once put it, […]
The rainbow of history on July 1, 2017During my childhood, I remember coming across a rather macho image of Pakistan People’s Party founding president Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. I saw the image in a peep show through a Kaleidoscope machine carried by a gypsy man who used to frequent my hometown along the Sindh-Punjab border. The year was 1970 and considering the sheer […]