Syed Mansoor Hussain

Are we celebrating the correct Independence Day in Pakistan? Some newspapers and the internet are full of this controversy. Under the British act of parliament that gave independence to India, both India and Pakistan came into existence exactly at midnight between August 14 and 15. So, technically speaking, India and Pakistan became independent neither on […]

As far as I am concerned, hanging in the middle of the night is the worst way to legally kill somebody. Yes, I oppose the death penalty but at least if something has to be done absolutely, positively and necessarily so then it should be done with some panache. We already have some guidance in […]

Allegedly, some alleged terrorists belonging to an allegedly banned alleged sectarian organisation allegedly shot alleged live ammunition at members of an alleged minority sect. The alleged members of the alleged minority sect were allegedly taken to an alleged private hospital where they were allegedly declared dead. The alleged Chief Minister (CM) of the alleged province […]

Many years ago, the late William Safire, wordsmith and op-ed writer for The New York Times, tried to coin a new acronym. Sadly it did not take off. The acronym was ‘MANGO’ for Malign Non Governmental Organisation. Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) have recently come under scrutiny in Pakistan. One rather famous NGO was closed down […]

The last few weeks have vacillated between boring and being somewhat amusing. First, of course, Mian Nawaz Sharif, the Prime Minister (PM) of Pakistan travelled all over central Asia and then went off to Oslo where he met Malala Yousafzai and then to somewhere in Russia where he met the Indian PM. On the way […]

Much is being written about the reformation, resurgence or reorganisation of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). A young Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is its new hope. A little less than 50 years ago, when I first decided to support the PPP, a dictator ruled the land, the political left was an international reality and there were […]

For most of my early years in the US, Independence Day -the fourth of July- was my favourite holiday. First, it was a non-denominational holiday and, second, it involved some particular type of food. That as a Lahori is one thing I liked about the US: most major holidays have a certain style of food […]

Our minister of the perpetual frown (MOTPF) recently declared that there would be no ‘unannounced’ load shedding, which I presume he meant in Pakistan. Here I sit in Lahore a few days after that announcement during unannounced load shedding that has far exceeded an hour and is also in the middle of the hottest part […]

They came, they saw and they conquered. Yes indeed, the Zimbabwe cricket team did just that. Whatever we might say of the quality of cricket played at Gaddafi Stadium between Pakistan and Zimbabwe, it was the spectators that won each match. Filled to capacity, thousands of men and women turned up to watch; they were […]

Four relatively important things happened during the last couple of weeks: I made it through another year, I had the first good mangoes of the season, a company called Axact bit the dust and the lawyers in the Punjab went berserk, and beat up policemen wherever they saw them. Much has been written about the […]