March, 2009

Blogger Tazeen Javed returns to the Dawn Blog for a weekly dose of satire. Waking up on a Monday morning is an ordeal in any case; waking up to ghastly news is a double whammy. Picking up the newspaper on a Sunday is easier – you can easily forego the news section and go directly to the magazine (or sports section if you are a man) and have breakfast in peace. But no such luck on a Monday. On Mondays, you have to grow up and read the news as it...

Toronto-based Taimoor Farouk shares tales from the Pakistani diaspora with Dawn.com. Canada’s largest celebration of home cooking and eating, the 17th Annual Good Food Festival & Market, starts next month near Toronto. One hopes that the two-day event will help clarify some misconceptions about the word ‘curry’, which much of the Western world thinks comes out of a jar labeled ‘curry powder’. Since arriving in Canada, I have learnt what...

I would feel much happier writing a piece about the disappearance of crime from our country, or perhaps the evaporation of poverty, however, no such luck for Pakistan right now. Hence, I have resorted to taking up the one thing that is fast diminishing in our neighbourhoods and beyond – footpaths. Where once there was a ‘footpath culture’ – there exists no such thing now. Take a moment, recall the days of the random musician or artist, doing...

Dawn.com’s Huma Yusuf looks at the Pakistan Day awards ceremony and wonders what it means for Pakistan today. Another Pakistan Day, another awards ceremony. On Monday, President Asif Ali Zardari gathered “outstanding” Pakistanis – both military personnel and civilians – around him at the Aiwan-i-Sadr to confer all manner of stars and medals. Often, the announcement of civilian awardees sparks controversy as the chattering and politicking...

Blogger Tazeen Javed returns to the Dawn Blog to provide a weekly dose of satire. If analyses and common sense are to be believed, the world is facing a financial mess because people spent more wealth than they created. Then they thought that if they put off payments for some time, they would just vanish into thin air. The tragedy is that none of the debts vanished into thin air and all those deferred payments finally caught up with us. While there...

Dawn.com’s Huma Yusuf takes a look at media coverage of Mukhtar Mai’s recent wedding. Last Sunday, as the Long March heated up and tear-gas shells and stones littered the entrance to the Lahore High Court, news broke of Mukhtar Mai’s marriage to Nasir Abbas Gabol, a police constable who was assigned to protect her. The news unleashed a media firestorm that says more about international perceptions of Pakistan and the fallacy of objective...

What unraveled as a series of unfortunate events in the country, which later took the face of a revolution, as some may say, also triggered off a sad and absurd story of a bouncing cheque. As it turns out, our leaders often remember to express their appreciation and gratitude to our talented artists and celebrities when they are normally in their last days. Take the case of Pakistan’s legendary ghazal singer. Who knew that imposing the governor...

Blogger Tazeen Javed returns to the Dawn Blog to provide a weekly dose of satire. Sometime back, Newsweek named Pakistan the most dangerous place on earth. Now, the American magazine Foreign Policy has come up with its own most dangerous place. Surprisingly, it is not Pakistan. They name Somalia as the most dangerous country. In addition to a detailed article about the perils to life in Mogadishu, the Somalian capital, they came up with a chart of...

I have always been the kind to disapprove of protests, marches, vigils and the likes. I always thought they served no purpose other than getting easy publicity. However, I have no shame in admitting that the long march has proved me wrong and has forced me to believe otherwise. The restoration of judiciary may not have been the direct outcome of the long march or the lawyers’ movement; it may have been brought into enforcement by a ‘foreign hand’...

Dawn.com’s Musadiq Sanwal reports live from Islamabad as the second lawyers’ Long March arrives in the capital. While lawyers and political activists of the PML-N march on, they will have updates from the protests, the word on the street, and stories from the sidelines. Return to The Dawn Blog for live updates, feature stories, and multimedia specials. 17.52 PST, Lahore/Islamabad: Former SCBA President Aitzaz Ahsan joined the list of lawyers’...