One day in May on May 8, 2013May 11, 2013. The E-Day. The day of jagged egos, of transient earnestness, of swaggering electables, of hollow entreaties, of electing. The day people of Pakistan, gingerly — in its warped history that reads like Dante meets Cervantes, mixed with Shakespeare, high-fived by Euripides, prefaced by a wise-cracking Rushdie, shaking head with a grim Camus […]
From Lahore with love … II on April 30, 2013Friday 12, 2013, amaltas-gulmohar-scented, burst like a hot-air balloon, balmy, canopied by a clear white-blue sky, and I, anticipative to meet the famous Dr Shashi Tharoor, went over my list of questions, figuring out what the dress code for going to an official meeting in Delhi was. Clad in black, as the call from Tharoor’s […]
No on January 7, 2013December 16. It was a typical cold Delhi night. The Life of Pi ended and they stepped out, talking and laughing. Life awaited them with its most warped script. As they stepped into a bus to travel a few kilometres home, the longest evening of their lives unfolded. The men in the bus saw an […]
The punishment on July 4, 2012What is wrong with us? Why this insatiable need to gnaw at things until they collapse? Why a sense of glee when someone on the other side falls? What is it about being the outsider that we soil the glass looking within our own souls? What is with the impatience that we do not ever […]
If truth be told. on June 20, 2012The economy is at an all-time low. The inconsistent foreign policy spirals downward into nothing-doing-without-an-apology imbroglio, turning the big ‘bully’ into a ‘don’t make me angry’ hulk of a super ‘freak’. Power crises make quotidian living a waddle in a yearlong ghetto and the fuel wars reduce stuttering mobility to a snail’s pace. Education is […]
If truth be told… on June 13, 2012The economy is at an all-time low. The inconsistent foreign policy spirals downward into nothing-doing-without-an-apology imbroglio, turning the big ‘bully’ into a ‘don’t make me angry’ hulk of a super ‘freak’. Power crises make quotidian living a waddle in a yearlong ghetto and the fuel wars reduce stuttering mobility to a snail’s pace. Education is […]
The son on May 30, 2012Whenever he talks about his mother, a feeling of suppressed grief, a restrained anger seems to burden his every carefully enunciated word. Whatever he says is heard, analysed, dissected, lauded and ripped apart, depending on whom the listener swears allegiance to. Nothing he says ever goes unnoticed. Most of what he pronounces reveals his undisguised […]
Spitting on the moon on April 25, 2012It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor — Neil Gaiman.Nothing is sacred. The rancour does not rest, even after four years. It is no longer simmering, layered. The patina of forced […]
The prime minister on April 15, 2012May 27, 2012. Mr Yousaf Raza Gilani will become the longest serving prime minister in the history of Pakistan. Hallelujah. Pakistan, a proud democracy. After 65 years, 16 prime ministers (a couple of lifetime chairpersons of their respective parties served twice), four military dictators, six caretaker governments later, here we are. Doing our best, and […]
Recognising the bad, celebrating the good on December 29, 2011Pakistan is in trouble today. Like never before. The economic meltdown has a nightmare scenario, apparently cratered irreparably. The already scarred foreign policy has taken the form of an amateurish comedy of errors staged by the myopic. The infrastructure is in a horrifying freefall. Unemployment, power outages, unfettered inflation, badly-structured educational and health systems, breakdown […]