Last week, in a blog titled ‘The Convenient Curtain of Myth‘, I tried to show the dangers of viewing international politics through popular mythological conceptions which produce theories like the India-US-Israel triangulation as a conspiracy to destroy Islam and Pakistan. Little did I know...

How do you, indeed? Meera does the rounds via SMS jokes about her English. Meera helps a damp squib sink to the bottom of the Indian box office. Meera’s alleged husband turns up demanding his house and crores back. Meera predicts she’ll be linked to Musharraf and Clinton next (you wish, M). Meera...

In case you haven’t been able to keep up, here’s a short recap of the last five months in Pakistan cricket. We became World Champions, but were branded as match-fixers by a very bored politician. We beat our arch-rivals in a major ICC tournament, but developed a habit of losing ODI games to our perpetual...

Return to Karachi after a five-week vacation and you’ll find that things have changed dramatically. I am not referring here to the steady decline in the state of the country’s affairs, but the fact that Liberty Books, hitherto the most visible bookseller in the city, has gone into book publishing....

In the midst of an impassioned mob at the New York Yankees ticker tape parade, I came across an unexpected sight. A few feet from me, with an equally obtrusive view of Broadway, stood a tall Caucasian man holding an Urdu newspaper, the words ‘Pakistan Times’ in a bold Arabic script across...

Recently, I met some jihadis who have been in the business of holy war since the 1990s. I was surprised to hear that even though they were in support of the jihad in Afghanistan and Kashmir, they were opposed to the idea of destabilising Pakistan itself. When asked who was responsible for the suicide...

I had a bizarre encounter with our corner shopwallah the other day, which went something like this. ‘Ayee?’ (Has it come?) ‘Abhi nahin. Kal try karna.’ (Not yet. Try tomorrow.) So I did, and he still didn’t have it. This continued for several days, our conversation going from business-like,...

The day after the terrible terrorist attack at Islamabad’s Islamic University that took the lives of eight innocent students, certain TV news channels ran a footage of a dozen or so angered students of the university pelting stones. The first question that popped up in my mind after watching the spectacle...

A Paki is a Paki no matter where and what. Those complaining of racism abroad should also look at the way they’re treated at home. Please get it right: it is not always your colour or, of late, religion that may be responsible for the way you’re treated by goras and Arabs alike; it is the Pakistani...

In his prose work, Allama Muhammad Iqbal foresaw the trajectory of the Pakistani masses, writes Khurram Ali Shafique. The best resource for understanding the work of Allama Iqbal is the collective experience of the Pakistani masses, including the unschooled. Call it a dream, but I consider it to be...