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Karachi summers: Easy, breezy and beautiful
May is a seminal month in Karachi, an intermediary that hints of the pleasures of a South Asian summer. The searing April heat is omnipresent but in late afternoons you can hear the cuckoo’s song that...
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PTI’s allaince with JI: When a move to the right is not the right move
Now that the election euphoria is subsiding and the calls for voting have been replaced by allegations of vote-rigging, idealism has given way to pragmatism and we see signs of practical politics...
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Happiness is just a frame of mind: A fake eye and a haunting past
So what’s the biggest problem in your life? An exam you failed? The fact that your parents spoil your little sister more than they spoil you? Is it the new lawn prints you can’t afford? How unfair life...
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Dear HEC, your degree attestation process is a nightmare
Getting a degree attested - sounds like a simple enough task, doesn't it? Turns out, it can be an absolutely maddening task, trust me. I had been trying to apply for a visa to Canada, and as part of...
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Li Keqiang’s first visit to Pakistan and confusing plans for peace
Excitement is abuzz as the Chinese Premier begins his visit to Pakistan today. Mobile services have been suspended in Rawalpindi and Islamabad as a preemptive security measure and the Pakistan Army has...
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Beckham: An extraordinarily charismatic but, at most, an ‘ordinary’ player
David Beckham has finally drawn curtains on his glamorous 21-year career. Notice the word “glamorous” in my opening sentence and the absence of a single word about football. I won’t shy away from...
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Postcards from Lahore to Cannes Film Festival
“Lahore. The second largest city in Pakistan; the fifth largest city in South Asia and the 26th largest city in the world but more than that though, this is the place of my parents’ birth and the place...
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MQM’s much awaited cleansing
A few hours ago, Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) dissolved the Rabita Committee in Pakistan and London. It seems as if the chief of MQM Altaf Hussain, has finally taken notice of the ongoing problems...
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An open letter to MQM from a PTI supporter
Dear brothers and sisters, While I strongly condemn the brutal killing of Zahra Shahid Hussain, I would like to take this opportunity as an individual to apologise to the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM)...
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The tale of Karachi: Home is where the shackle was
Karachi gives you so much pain at times, nothing else compares. Sometimes the sun strikes harder on us than usual, almost as if to punish us for our sins from the day before. We lose teenagers in...
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The infamous ‘Muslim Room’ and other travel horrors
Recently, I boarded an Etihad Airways flight from Islamabad to Chicago. On a stopover at Abu Dhabi, the plane filled up with a lot of South Asian people; approximately 95% of my fellow passengers were...
View ArticleMy Little baby doll
The huge grandfather clock before me keeps ticking away. It is quarter after five; we’ve been waiting for almost half an hour. When will Dr Hussain, my gynaecologist, call us in? I absolutely hate...
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The young criminals of underprivileged Karachi
It has been seven years since I’ve been running an educational institute for women and children in Baldia Town, Karachi. I’ve studied the people carefully and my basic aim is to spread general...
View ArticleWoolwich: It’s time to confront some obvious truths
Perhaps it might be useful, as we contemplate the horror of the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers in Woolwich on Wednesday, to have a quick look through the history books....
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Dear MQM, PTI supporters are not sorry!
This letter is a response to a letter recently published in The Express Tribune. I sincerely applaud your gracious apology to the MQM, especially at time when Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) supporters...
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The not-so-great ‘Great Gatsby’
I’ve always been disappointed by movies based on books that I’ve read because the director usually fails to bring the literary ingenuity to justice in the film. That’s why I made sure I didn’t read The...
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President Obama’s speech and the continuation of drone strikes
President Obama delivered his much anticipated speech on counter-terrorism at the National Defense University, at Fort McNair in Washington, on Thursday. In the days before the address the focus was...
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The Woolwich murder and narratives of hate
When my phone gently buzzed with a Guardian alert on Wednesday, I was tempted to ignore it but I didn’t. What I read made my heart sink. Someone was talking about a British soldier being hacked to...
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Ask Sayeda: How can anger be controlled?
Hi Sayeda, I really need your help. I have a problem with anger. I can’t seem to control it. If someone says something that offends me, I just blurt out whatever comes to my mind. I end up saying...
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Lahore: Garden of the Mughals
She was my first love, Remnant of a bygone era, Concubine to the king. They sewed her lips closed, Staining the tomb, Of the poet that lay deep within her bowels. She roared with a fiery intensity,...
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