How instability is garnered
Chal Way Bullehya Chal O’thay Chaliyay – Let’s go where everyone is blind
Eighteen years later…
It took eighteen years to locate a friend. Much like a star, the moon, a constellation and an ancient river my friend R has been mercurial, moody and elusive. Hiding one day and emerging the other week, and missing for years.
It is for the technology that enabled me to get reconnected. There is so much to ask and years to tell. A long night of oblivion that was - blissful ignorance but somewhere an image lingered, a memory refused to fade and a star never slept. Our meeting this year will be an unpaid debt to ourselves. We parted in such a hurry and matter-of-fact-ness. Little did I know that it would take eighteen years.
I am amazed at how strongly I have felt in the recent days - it has to do with nostalgia and the slowly diminishing youth..Adulthood has phases that can only be described through experience.
I will be there soon. In the city of neems, pipals and crazy auto-rickshaws.
R, please do not go away..
Rakhshanda Jalil – Panchlight and other stories
My friend Rakhshanda Jalil is singlemindedly pursuing her interests and dreams. Her latest book of translation has attracted attention from critics as well as high profile media persons such as Khushwant Singh. In his latest column he talks about RJ and her new book.Bihar in translation
One of my lasting regrets is that when I migrated from Pakistan to India in August 1947, I did not learn to read and write Hindi. It was not entirely my fault as I got postings abroad and even lost much of the Urdu I knew. I was about to pick it up again in my years in Bombay. I envy those who are equally at ease with Hindi, Urdu and English.
One of them is Rakshanda Jalil of Jamia Millia University. She has written extensively about Delhi in English and translated Hindi novels. Though she is equally adept in Urdu, she does not write it, but uses it as her source material.
Rakshanda Jalil’s latest offering is translations of 10 short stories by Phaneshwar Nath Renu — Panchlight and other stories (Orient Black Swan). I had heard a great deal about Renu but was never able to lay my hands on any of his writing in English translation. I was aware that Renu (1921-77) was a Bihari from a tiny hamlet in Purnea district. He was deeply involved in the freedom movement and was jailed many times. His story Maraa Gayaa Gulfam was made into a highly popular feature film. Renu’s stories have the earthy fragrance of the soil of Bihar.
Who is looking out?
Who sees inside from outside?
Who finds hundreds of mysteries
even where minds are deranged?
See through his eyes what he sees.
Who then is looking out from his eyes?
-- Version by Coleman Barks
Open Secret
Threshold Books, 1984
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
who is the one
who sees the external
right from within
who is the one
who casts a hundred magic spells
when watching the insane in love
try your own eyes
see how they see
who is the one
who is looking out
through your eyes for you
--Translation by Nader Khalili
Rumi, Dancing the Flame
Cal-Earth Press, 2001
I have returned, like the new year (Rumi)
Zolf bar baad – Mohsen Namjoo
Bahar Ayee (Spring Has Come)
*By Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Translated by Ayesha Kaljuvee
Spring has come
So have returned suddenly from the past
* *
All those dreams, all that beauty
That on your lips had died
* *
That had died and lived again each time
All the roses are blooming
That still smell of your memories
That are the blood of my love for you
* *
A poem by Sarmad
A special friend sent this poem via Facebook. I have read it again and again..hope the readers like it too
Along the road, you were my companion
Seeking the path, you were my guide
No matter to whom I spoke, it was you who answered
When Sun called Moon to Sky, it was you who shined
In the Night of aloneness, you
were my comforter
When I laughed, you were the smile on my lips
When I cried, you were the tears on my face
When I wrote, you were the verse
When I sang, you were the song
Rarely did my heart desire another lover
Then when it did, you came to me in the other.
Farewell Haqqani Saheb – forgive your peers and colleagues
A personal favourite, Irshad Ahmad Haqqani is dead. This is a huge loss to Urdu journalism as he was the last of sane voices in the vernacular industry. I often disagreed with his centre-right views but his tone was measured and he remained a staunch supporter of democracy. May God bless his soul.
I stumbled on this post at Cafe Piyala that also talks about Haqqani but the best part of it was what Haqqani's peers and junior collegaues had to say about him. I think some of the comments were so shameful that I could not even laugh with an easy conscience. I am quoting the last part of that post here that also is quite a treat:
Whatever they might say about him, he did invent the modern Urdu column, which is half analytical drivel, half dinner menus. Only during the last week, for example, Jang columnist Haroon-ur-Rashid (according to his column) demanded and got desi murghi from the Azad Kashmir prime minister, and Hamid Mir (according to his column) discovered new insights into judicial activism over a Kashmiri dish. I forget the name of the dish but according to Jang / Geo’s brightest star, it is made of mooli and shaljam and served with rice. The host was the Lahore High Court Chief Justice Khwaja Sharif.
Culture, conservation in Toronto – ideas and plans
My friends and I are in the midst of compiling a future project for Art and Culture restoration and conservation -- an initiative very dear to my heart, as I have always believed in conserving cultural heritage so the generations to come shall benefit from global cultures where they are becoming endangered with exploitation and falling prey to decadence due to the age of modernity. No, I do not scorn "modernity", but, I do not endorse the opinion that world culture becomes extinct with the arrival of technology and IGeneration.
No priests needed – search of a Pakistani identity
Raza Rumi wonders why we remain in search of a Pakistani identity
Half-truths are what we love to indulge in. One of the countless crimes committed by President Asif Ali Zardari is that he wears a Sindhi cap instead of a Jinnah cap. That by preferring a Sindhi topi and thundering at the occasion of late Benazir Bhutto’s death anniversary, he undermined his Pakistani identity, is truly mystifying. After all, what is a Pakistani identity and why is the Jinnah cap being elevated to the level of an article of national faith?
If anything, Mr Jinnah’s patronage of Muslim identity mark was an afterthought. His usual attire was a well-tailored pucca-sahib-like suit. It was only in the nineteen forties and that too close to India’s independence that Mr Jinnah started donning the Muslim nobility’s attire.
So what is this fuss all about? Constructing Pakistan’s ideology based on theological interpretation of a universal religion like Islam has been a carefully executed project of the Pakistani establishment and its shadows in the non-state domains. Such cliques have grown bigger, mushroomed and are now essential to our lived reality. Therefore lambasting of Zardari on not sporting a Jinnah cap finds public resonance and broad acceptability within the populous Punjab province where the Urdu press flourishes and finds readers and writers aplenty.
Should we bid farewell to democracy in Pakistan?
It is still not too late that PML-N and PPP and the regional parties sit together and agree on the way forward says Raza Rumi
Many decades ago, our Governor General-President Iskander Mirza had rather contemptuously stated that democracy does not suit the genius of Pakistani people. Immediately after these words of wisdom were uttered, direct military rule not only exiled Mirza but also became a norm rather than aberration. For the last six decades or so we have not been able to overcome this political reality. The unelected institutions of the state are not willing to give up the power they inherited from the might of the colonial state. At best, they are willing to share power to a degree that they deem fit.
It is now clear that within a few months Pakistan is due for another political upheaval. Barely two
years after an election took place, the political elites are back in business: bickering, wrangling and oblivious to their historical role in strengthening the fragile democratic process. The unelected institutions have traditionally been contemptuous of democracy and their conduct in the last two years has not been surprising. The losers at the hand of the military rule – the PML-N and the PPP ought to have learnt their lesson: no matter how adverse the political climate was, the political forces had to stay united for a common cause.
However, the brief interlude of political cooperation led to mistrust and misgivings among the political players. First the restoration of judges and a partisan interpretation to the issue of independence of the judiciary created a rift between the two parties. Second, the imposition of ill-advised Governor’s rule led to widening of the gulf. This was followed by the long march that led to the restoration of the deposed judges. In the process, the co-chairperson of the PPP was termed as a leader who did not keep his promises and time and again betrayed the trust of Mian Nawaz Sharif painted by a prejudiced media as an innocent victim.
Saadat Hasan Manto – part II
After partition of India Saadat Hassan Manto arrived in Lahore sometime in early 1948. In Bombay his friends had tried to stop him from migrating to Pakistan because he was quite popular as a film writer and was making reasonably good money. Among his friends there were top actors and directors of that age—many of them Hindus—who were trying to prevail upon him to forget about migrating. They thought that he would be unhappy in Pakistan because the film industry of Lahore stood badly disrupted with the departure of Hindu film-makers and studio owners. But the law and order situation post-partition of British India was such that many Muslims felt insecure in India, just as many Hindus felt insecure in newly created Pakistan. That was the reason that Manto had already sent his family to Lahore and was keen to join them. Manto and his family were among the millions of Muslims who left present-day India for the newly created Muslim-majority nation of Pakistan.
Saadat Hasan Manto- Writer of Stark Realities
(Courtesy Iftikhar Chaudri) Saadat Hassan Manto (May 11, 1912 – January 18, 1955) was a Pakistani Urdu short story writer, most known for his Urdu short stories , 'Bu' (Odour), 'Khol Do' (Open It), 'Thanda Gosht' (Cold Meat), and his magnum opus, Toba Tek Singh'. Unfortunately having spent life on both sides of the border he was portrayed as an Indian writer in Pakistan and in India he was portrayed as a Pakistani writer. But truely he was a writer of the subcontinent above distinctions of coutry or religion.
He was also a film and radio scriptwriter, and journalist. In his short life, he published twenty-two collections of short stories, one novel, five collections of radio plays, three collections of essays, two collections of personal sketches.
Site Maintenance
My site is undergoing periodic maintenance and some upgrades, I apologize if some of you encounter time outs or errors while browsing.
RR
Folklore sans frontiers
There is no alternative to peaceful coexistence within South Asia, says Raza Rumi
As we crossed the blood lined Waagah, after three hours of soul-destroying bureaucratic tangles and multiple forms filled in by the guardians of our borders, nothing changed. It was an eerie reminder of how the two Punjabs are but one. The roads were dusty and rural life remains as time-warped as ever. The street vendors were selling dirty, unhygienic food items wrapped in a thick cover of flies; and the money changers and CD-sellers attacked you with a frenzy that one is used to back home.
I was part of a delegation from Pakistan that was driving to Chandigarh to attend the SAARC folklore festival organized by Punjab’s legendary writer Ajeet Caur. This was a motley crew: ten Punjabis of various stripes, and five Sindhis who have travelled all the way from Bhit Shah to Lahore. We were greeted with garlands and the usual Punjabi warmth by our hosts at the border. This was my first trip to India via land or, as they say on visa forms, “on foot”. One could not escape the strange sensation of striding across a “hostile” frontier.
Farewell, Asim
Dear Asim: you left us in such a hurry - you will be missed, always..RIP
Asim Butt: A rebel from his conventional background, Butt continues to defy the conformist meanings of family, career, security, sexuality and that elusive bourgeois pursuit of happiness. Inspired by the Stuckism movement of art, Asim holds painting as a powerful medium of communication. This standpoint brings our young Pakistani Stuckist at odds with the skin-deep novelty and claimed nihilism of “conceptual” art and postmodernism. The pursuit of art in this worldview thus merges into an impulse for a renewal of spiritual values in art and society, or what is known as “re-modernism.” More here
URS TODAY-Hazrat Baha-ud-din Zakariya (RA) Multan
Iftikhar Chaudri's excellent note on the great saint:
Hazrat Baha-ud-din Zakariya(RA) was a Sufi of Suhrawardiyya order (tariqa). His full name was Al-Sheikh Al-Kabir Sheikh-ul-Islam Baha-ud-Din Abu Muhammad Zakaria Al-Qureshi Al-Asadi Al Hashmi. Sheikh Baha-ud-Din Zakariya known as Bahawal Haq was born at Kot Kehror, a town of Layyah District near Multan, Punjab, Pakistan, around 1170.
His grand father Hazrat Shah Kamaluddin Ali Shah Qureshi al Hashmi arrived Multan from Makkah en route to Khwarizm where he stayed for a short while.In Tariqat he was the disciple of Renowned Sufi Master Shaikh Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi who awarded him Khilafat only after 17 days of stay at his Khanqaah in Baghdaad.
Bulleh Shah’s admission
Bulleh-a aashiq hoyiyon Rabb da,
Hoai Malamat Lakh Tenon Kafir Kafir aakhdey,
toon aaho aaho aakh
(Bulleh Shah)
Bulleh lover of G-d, a million blames occur
Your title is apostate, answer yes, yes, so it is.
(translation by JH)
Madam Nur Jahan
(Published in The Friday Times) - The twentieth century trajectory of Pakistani music and stardom are epitomised in the life and works of Madame Nur Jehan (1929 - 2000) also known as Malika-e-Tarranum. Had there been no partition of boundaries, musicians and composers in 1947, she would have been a subcontinental diva. A common Punjabi aphorism, loosely translated, states that there never was and never will be anyone like Nur Jehan. With her incredible talent, fiercely independent persona, flamboyance and ingrained humility, she surpasses even the best of global icons. The complexity of her life and times have yet to be appreciated: breaking with convention, she defined a new set of rules in the patriarchal entertainment industry, manipulating it where possible to ensure that she would not become the archetypal exploited South Asian singer. Her wit and lust for life remained till the end, and with the exception of not having died in her beloved Lahore, she died with no regrets.
When nine years ago, the Queen of Melody breathed her last breath in a Karachi hospital, the circumstances of her death were considered peculiar by Believers. Even in death she achieved what ritualistic Muslims seek all their lives – to die on the holiest day of the year. The twenty-seventh night of the holy month of fasting is widely believed as a night when all prayers are answered and the gates of forgiveness are let open. This is reportedly the reason that her Karachi-based daughters hastened her burial. (Other less spiritual accounts explain it as a consequence of conflict among her children by different husbands, and the struggle to control family assets).
To undo the vicious past
It's about time a civilian Pakistan functions as a peaceful country with fair share of resources put into people's welfare by Raza Rumi (published in the News on Sunday)
That Pakistan's endemic political instability is a function of its inherent power imbalances is well known. The continued spells of authoritarian rule have also retarded the growth of political parties and other necessary institutions essential for democratic governance. We are a country trapped in our history, our self-fulfilling conspiracies and intrigues that are also rooted in the various phases of colonial era. Our geo-political situation, celebrated by a rentier state, has not helped us either. From the 1950s we have been in close partnership with global powers that are viewed as the ultimate saviours of a dysfunctional polity.
In 1971, we lost half the country. While the seeds of discord in East Pakistan had been laid by West Pakistan's ruling elites, our vengeful neighbour took full advantage and supported the Bangladeshi liberation movement. By all accounts, this was an avoidable tragedy had the national security-obsessed state dominated by West Pakistani vested interests could have seen the writing on the wall and fixed the issues of federalism that still haunt us.
Remembering Benazir Bhutto
I am reposting my piece that was written a year ago. It seems that not much has changed in these twelve months
It was only yesterday that we were mourning for the loss of an icon of our times. The much loved, and passionately hated Benazir Bhutto whose tragic murder in broad daylight was the greatest metaphor of what Pakistan has turned into: a jungle of history, ethnicity and extremism. Little wonder that Bhutto’s worst enemies cried and lamented the loss of a federal politician whose life and times were as unique as her name. The populist slogan – charon soobon ki zanjeer (the chain of the four provinces, literally) could not have been truer than the most tested of axioms. As if her death were not enough, the state response was even more brutal. Why did she participate in public rallies? On that fateful day of December 27, 2007, why did she invite death by sticking her neck out – literally and metaphorically? This was tragedy compounded by invective and betrayal. After all, had she not received a tacit understanding from the then military President, General Pervez Musharraf?
The official machinery then went to work in a super-efficient frenzy. Within hours, the murder scene had been washed away, right opposite the Liaqat Bagh in Rawalpindi where Pakistan’s first Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was also shot dead. If anything history repeated itself with a bang – only to restate that Pakistani Prime Ministers are dispensable accessories of the power game. The misogynistic thirst for blood-letting once quenched, patriarchy dictated that the autopsy of a woman became an issue of honour, confusion and violation of the law. How telling, that the laws of the land remain subservient to the imperatives of culture and tradition.Full piece here
The tender tea house
I was quite pleased to read this piece. Aside from fact that it talks about me, the constant rememberance of Pak Tea House is a welcome sign. The memory is not fading, not yet..
From Partition onward, Nasir Khan writes, a dusty cafe was the centre of Lahore’s literary life.
Pak Tea House sits on Mall Road in Old Anarkali, nestled between tyre suppliers and motorcycle workshops. Before Partition it was the India Tea House, but 1947 and a quick paint job changed that. No one knows why it became – along with several similar shops on the same street – a favourite haunt of so many intellectuals. Maybe it was the cheap but good milky tea, or the extra-sweet biscuits. Perhaps it was the literary sensibility of the first post-Partition owners, two brothers from India. It might have been the radio on the counter that was constantly tuned to Lahore’s call-in request programme. And, for scores of struggling writers and poets, the availability of food on credit certainly had something to do with it.
What is the threat? What is the way out?
By Raza Rumi (The News on Sunday)
Not unlike good old Nero, who carried on with his self-involved pursuits while Rome burnt, our enlightened brigade from the Urdu and the English medium worlds have been quite busy with their hobbyhorses. With thousands of homes churning out a suicide bomber per minute, the national discourse or the flimsy excuse for it, has been truly remarkable. First came the minus one formula, backed by the 'be-ghairat' Kerry Lugar bill and now the centre of universe has shifted to the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO).
If one were to follow the trails of verbosity and poisonous write-ups in the print and electronic media, the storyline is as simple as follows: one fine day, late Benazir Bhutto and her 'corrupt' husband sitting thousands of miles away from Pakistan issued the NRO to 'protect' their wealth. As if these political leaders in exile and wilderness had the legislative and executive authority to issue an Ordinance.
My Lahore is bleeding again – an eyewitness account
I am grateful to Khurram Siddiqi for his timely and rather chilling account of what Lahore underwent this evening. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of Lahore tragedy. Raza Rumi
Today, two bombs struck Allama Iqbal Town's 'Moon Market'- a place that I remember from my childhood when our family used to visit Lahore- many members of which, at the time, lived close to. My cousin Usman was actually at a store in the market when the blast went off, and survived by some miracle. He came home shocked and changed from a full grown man- into a tepid young boy again; he said that he had just witnessed hell itself. I was taking a nap since I've been sick over the last few days- and woke to the sound of a cacophony of ambulance sirens; I now live almost across Jinnah Hospital. The bomb went off in Iqbal Town; I've tried to illustrate where all of this happened on the map here:
View Moon Market Blasts in a larger map
I walked across to Jinnah Hospital's emergency ward- not that I condone people amassing together when they shouldn't be there- but I wanted to capture some of the sounds of the aftermath of mass murder. What you'll hear in the audio linked below is police officers trying to get people to clear out (I was standing clear of the entrance)- and make way for an ambulance that was about to pull in. Audio Link
New Education Policy
A policy matter published in the iWrite Magazine
Raza Rumi responds to the new education policy for Pakistan
Yet another educational policy has been announced for Pakistan and its hapless citizens. We should not cast aspersions on the motives of an elected government, for we have been bitten by endless rounds of authoritarian rule which have not only destroyed the institutions of civilian governance, but have also demolished the integrity of our curriculum and mode of instruction. Decade after decade, dictators chose to glorify martial rule and later legitimized the abuse of jihad and violence. Even those who have studied at elite, expensive schools have somehow been doctored by the same curse of malicious textbooks. The surreal curricula have glorified looters and plunderers like Mahmud Ghaznavi only because they happened to be Muslims by a sheer coincidence of birth. Not to mention the Hindus, with whom we have coexisted for nearly a thousand years; they have been painted as treacherous, villainous and vile creatures ready to destroy the Muslims.
One would have expected that a legitimately elected government, representing the aspirations and pluralism of Pakistan's small provinces would take a strong stance on the revision of pernicious curricula. Alas, this is now a distant, buried dream for all. The policy is silent on that. This is a government that is waging wars on terrorism rather successfully and with clarity of purpose, but the educational policy makes little mention of the madrassa reform which is now an imperative for the very survival of Pakistan as a viable state. Thousands of madrassas scattered all over the place, funded by external powers preach hatred, bigotry and a reversion to the Dark Ages. Who will reform these madrassas if the national education policy does not even bother to lay out a strategy and provide resources? The new policy promises that by 2015, the budgetary allocation for education would increase to seven percent of the GDP from the current 2.1 percent of the GDP. This is surely promising but how can a policy not envision the need or the strategy to mobilize such resources? Have we not heard such sanguine proclamations in the past?
Tilism means magic (book review)
Raza Rumi relives the enchantment of the dastans (published in The Friday Times)
Musharraf Ali Farooqi and the Urdu Project have revived a tradition that was fading in the age of instant communication, sms lingo and a dying reading culture. When I started reading the book, I could not help remember the day when my Uncle, Zaheer Ahmad Bhutta, a man of letters and book-lover handed over a set of Tilism-e-Hoshruba to me in my early childhood. I distinctly remember the summer when I devoured all the abridged versions, feeling thirsty for more. So I read them again. As a young man I dared to read the originals and could not help being pleased with myself. Tilism and its magical kingdom remains a part of me, and of many others of my generation who grew up on its diet of bravery, magic, lust and a peculiar aesthetic.
Tilism is a wonderful product of our composite Indo-Muslim culture that took centuries to evolve. This is why it defies the clergy’s diktat and religious bigotry, and its characters are a mix of all that the Indian context offered to outsiders such as Arabs and Central Asians. It is a larger than life metaphor for our past that has been lost now. Perhaps forever.
Hoshruba, Book One: The Land and the Tilism begins by telling us how Amir Hamza and his armies have chased the giant Laqa to the dominions of King Suleiman Amber-Hair on Mount Agate. While out hunting nearby, Hamza’s son, Prince Badiuz Zaman, follows a unique fawn and enters the land of Hoshruba.
Love is a mirror
With love you cannot bargain
there, the choice is not yours.
Love is a mirror, it reflects
only your essence,
if you have the courage
to look in its face.
-- Translation by Azima Melita Kolin
and Maryam Mafi
Maulana Azad’s interview given to Shorish Kashmiri, 1946
I was intrigued by this interview of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad given to the famous journalist Shorish Kashmiri for a Lahore based Urdu magazine, Chattan, in April 1946. This interesting document has been discovered and translated by a former Indian minister Arif Mohammad Khan. Covert Magazine and newageIslam website have recently published it. The contents of this interview are difficult to agree with. Azad is speaking from a nationalist angle, anti-Pakistan movement platform.
However, the narrative has some interesting observations and predictions for Pakistan that cannot be rubbished simply because Azad was a Congressite. This interview was conducted over a period of two weeks (parallel to the proceedings of the Cabinet Mission) and has not been documented in any book except that of Kashmiri’s book on Abul Kalam Azad, which has been out of print for decades. Its discovery is a welcome step towards better historiography on both sides of the border.
Q: The Hindu Muslim dispute has become so acute that it has foreclosed any possibility of reconciliation. Don’t you think that in this situation the birth of Pakistan has become inevitable?
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Recent Posts
- How instability is garnered
- Chal Way Bullehya Chal O’thay Chaliyay – Let’s go where everyone is blind
- Eighteen years later…
- Rakhshanda Jalil – Panchlight and other stories
- Who is looking out?
- I have returned, like the new year (Rumi)
- Zolf bar baad – Mohsen Namjoo
- Bahar Ayee (Spring Has Come)
- A poem by Sarmad
- Farewell Haqqani Saheb – forgive your peers and colleagues
- Culture, conservation in Toronto – ideas and plans
- No priests needed – search of a Pakistani identity
- Should we bid farewell to democracy in Pakistan?
- Saadat Hasan Manto – part II
- Saadat Hasan Manto- Writer of Stark Realities
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Raza Rumi @ flickr
- Asim Butt's mural for T2F, Karachi
- T2F remembers Asim Butt
- Haris Gazdar at the memorial
- Asim's friends will always miss him
- George recites his poem
- Sabeen speaking about Asim Butt
- In attendance -
- The tribute to Asim Butt
- Asim's picture published by GT
- Another mural for The Second Floor-Asim Butt
Pak Tea House
- Robert Gates’ Visit to Pakistan
- Drone attacks and US reputation —Farhat Taj
- Dr Afia needs justice which is seen to be done: Barrister Amjad Malik
- PAKISTAN: Constant violence against women in 2009
- Former corps commander, 2 ISI officials booked
- Even SC can’t take away president’s immunity: Aitzaz
- Poem: The Dance of Solitude
- Flaws in the judgment
- Is Article 227 indispensable?
- Nahid and the Secretary: Liaison d’Amour
Development Industry
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- PAKISTAN: Reinventing microfinance
- Dissent as Democracy
- Pakistan 4th on regional list of adult illiterates
- International Development Law Organization on Davos
- Food, Inc. (2008)
- Free access to Anthropology journals
- Pakistan’s new education policy
- Is aid working? Is this the right question to be asking?
- Outrage as global poverty Ministry racks up £6m business class travel bill
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Tags
- West Bengal in turmoil – end of an era? - 2 emails
- Imam Hussain: The Beloved of the Beloved - 1 email
- Shah Ast Hussain - 1 email
- Holi has a Muslim History too - 1 email
- On Bhagat Singh, his vision and Jinnah’s support for his struggle - 1 email
- Voices of the oppressed – Dalit literature - 1 email
Meta
Pages
- “Man-Bitten” Ghalib: introducing himself
- ‘Author’s Plea’- Foreword of Aag ka Dariya by Qurutul-ain-Haider
- ‘O City of Lights’ by Khalid Hasan – A book review
- About Thumri
- Adieu Naguib Mahfouz
- adsense sample
- Amrita Pritam is no more 2/6
- An Essay on Nizamuddin by Marta Franceschini
- Basant Moods – Lahore and Beyond
- Bulleh Shah and Rumi 2/5
- Contact
- Dhaka by degrees
- Dhaka by Degrees – TFT
- Documents Archive
- A little more recogniton..
- A Little poem
- A recent Book on Faiz Ahmed Faiz
- Another accidental painting
- Fresh translations of Faiz
- Glimpses of nineteenth century Iran
- How Art made the World
- How the British Raj took roots in India
- I finally moved here – “You lack a foot to travel?”
- Little Flute, Why So Proud?
- Mother Goddess – Indus Valley
- Murree Ghosts – my recent painting
- New paintings inspired by the golden Bengal
- New translations of Parveen Shakir
- No Tolerance for Richistans – Obscene Wealth is not victimless!
- Ominous shadows
- Pakistani media – an alternative view
- Qurratulain Hyder
- Story of a Painting – Mehrgarh, Indus and Ghalib
- Sufi Zikr – inspiration for a painting
- Faiz translated by Vikram Seth
- Femme Feryal
- Halaku, when you will come to Baghdad this time…
- I found Roses in Konya… 2/3
- I found Roses in Konya… 3/3
- I will meet you yet again – Amrita Pritam
- Ideology of intolerance
- Images from Data Saheb’s Shrine
- Images from Mahboob Ali
- Jal gaya tha ik roshniyon ka shaher
- Kafka Country – published in the Friday Times
- Kafka Country published in the Friday Times
- Links
- More of Bulleh Shah – keep swooning
- Mughal Princess Zebunnissa
- Muslim Bloggers from India
- On Qurratulain Hyder –
- On Vidya Rao
- Peace to Beirut with all my heart… 2/3
- Petal to Petal …..More of Parveen Shakir
- Qasmi – Urdu literature mourns a giant 2/4
- Qasmi, Literary Fueds and National Neglect
- Raza Rumi
- Revisiting Kabir – the Weaver, the Myth, the Master
- Shared visions: Khushwant Singh and Fahmida Riaz 2/2
- Teray Ishq Nachaya – Bulleh Shah – full text
- The Lost Jewel – Rediscovering Hazrat Ali’s Letter
- This world without Dr. Schimmel… 2/3
- Tum bilkul hum jaisey nikley
- Web resources on Qurrutalain Hyder
- Why I love Pakistan? Top 5 reasons
- Darwin and the grand unity of life
