Life is Beyond Civil Service on December 31, 2024Life impels you towards arenas which are not meant for you, yet because of unsurmountable circumstances, you tread them. Most of the people who graduated with me recently, I feel, are in an incredible anxiety for their future. Some have decided to avail themselves of scholarships and get off scot-free from here. Others aspire for […]
Regime of Truth and Creativity on July 19, 2024It might surprise many how the word creativity had entered English dictionaries in 1875. It begs the question of what was the significance of this word for ancient or prehistoric humans. Cave arts, primarily in the Paleolithic period, across the world suggest that in ancient times, creativity must have been a sort of an extempore […]
Give us the truth, not favours on January 20, 2024Diogenes was sauntering on the streets of Athens when someone stopped him and asked a question that merits attention: “What is the most beautiful thing in the world?” Diogenes averred: it’s parrhesia. Parrhesia is an intimate and visceral relationship with the truth. It is to speak the truth in its unadulterated form. To tell people […]
Cross-Cultural Understanding in South Asia on December 23, 2023In the modern world of profound interconnectivity, cross cultural understanding is very key for economic integration and sustainable development. However, cross-cultural connectivity has the potential to create a very harmonious environment for different states to converge on collective economic prospects. The essential part that is missing in maintaining regional peace is cross-cultural understanding. The cognisance […]
A Pale View of the Hills — emotions of grief and fallibility of memory on July 12, 2023Kazuo Ishiguro, the Japanese-born British novelist, is a master of telling the delicate story of someone who is enamoured of suppressing his feelings. He is a phenomenal and inimitable storyteller. Ishiguro develops a story from the very humdrum lives of ordinary people, but when he develops a story, the story becomes unique in its own […]
Reviewing S. Akhbar Zaidi’s Views on Political Economy on July 10, 2023S Akhbar Zaidi writes in his 2014 paper, “Rethinking Political Economy in Pakistan,” that Hamza Alavi, being the precocious theorist on Pakistani statehood, left some significant areas under which all the underlying forces of state rest. Simply put, Hamza Alavi’s notion is based on the nexus of power that exists in Pakistan between the military, […]
Life is Elsewhere is a critique of poetry on July 4, 2023A novel that continuously reminds us that poets and their vocation are instrumental in shaping the opinions and values of a certain epoch. Life is Elsewhere, written by Milan Kundera, was completed in 1969 and published in 1973. “I wanted to solve an aesthetic problem: how to write a novel that would be a “criticism […]
On forgetfulness and loneliness — unique jahan of Mah Zaib and Shay on August 11, 2022It was drizzling initially, then it poured. As he left the hostel and moved towards a nearby hut, he remembered a rainy day when he was flanked by Mah Zaib in the corridor of university. His memory of that day was about how Mah Zaib was feeling the rain, and inveighing that such rainy days […]
Jahan of Mah Zaib and Shay — on sadness and being lost on August 6, 2022Night was falling and darkness was descending upon the refugee village. A wind from the northern side was gently blowing. Mah Zaib was sitting with her mother and remembering past things. The crickets were producing eerie chirps. Mah Zaib asked her mother about her childhood. Like, she asked:” Mother, can you tell me how was […]
On depression and suicide — the unique jahan of Mah Zaib and Shay on August 3, 2022One fine morning, Mah Zaib and Shay are busy with a thought which has been nagging their minds for some time now. The thought is why people take their lives. This question is like a huge field open up to numerous interpretations. ” How are your vacations going in your village?” Shay with a partly […]