Articles & Column

We need to dig much deeper than the theories of corruption or conspiracies to deal with the current crisis in Pakistan. Pakistan’s crisis is created due to its specific path to modernity. The discourse of modernity in Pakistan is a combination of five unresolved conflicting […]

“Yakay Wali” starring the top heroine of her times, Musarrat Nazir was a blockbuster of its times. Released in 1957, it broke all records of popularity, running for 50 weeks in one cinema. Producer Bari Malik raked in tons of money enabling him to buy […]

We are all very concerned about changing the things happening in Pakistan. Unprecedented inflation, unemployment, and extreme income inequality bother us all. There are many recipes on offer as well and the most popular one is of a bloody revolution. The heated and hateful debate […]

There is a saying in Punjabi “ek boti laye bakra mar ditta”. It translates “killing a whole sheep to eat one piece of meat.” That is exactly what happened in Pakistan. Sharifs and Zardari wanted to end accountability. PM Shahbaz Sharif and CM Hamza were […]

Iqbal alias Bala was a hardened criminal reputed to be a top “rasageer”, acronym for a cattle thief, around Lyallpur. My uncle Dr. Abdul Majeed Khan, a veterinarian, was a dedicated cattle breeder. He went to great lengths to assemble his flock of milking buffaloes. […]

23rd March 1973 I participated in a joint opposition’s jalsa organized in Liaqat Bagh, Rawalpindi. It was meant to be an event wherein parties opposed to Bhutto’s rule gathered to express their positions. That was not how Bhutto regime viewed it. They decided to teach […]

Faiz Ahmad Faiz in one of his brilliant interviews mentioned the critical importance of three dimensions of culture, its length, breadth, and depth. A culture’s length, according to Faiz, could be measured in terms of time going back to the origin of a culture at […]

In my younger days I have been at the receiving end of a police “lathi’. Believe me it really hurts. The semi-literate constable acts on command. The viciousness of his strike depends on the meanness of his superior’s orders. There are two distinct patterns. A […]

“Sau Ganday we khaday tay chittar wee” is a popular Punjabi saying. A conceptual translation would be “indecision and stupidity cause great suffering”. This folklore is associated with Ranjit Singh. While rendering decision on a misdemeanor by a poor farmer, he punished the perpetuator to […]

Majha and Saja were in business together. Majha had lent money to Saja who kept reneging on his promises to repay. Majha got fed up and complained to area elders. They were summoned to the council (Pariya) in a nearby village. Both boarded a bus […]