Posts Tagged “Pak Tea House”

NYT blog has noted the cyberzine – Pak Tea House - that I founded and manage. Each time it gets cited, I am encouraged that there is room for influencing perceptions on Pakistan (both within the country and outside).

As Pakistan’s government continues to vie with Islamist charities to provide relief to millions of its citizens affected by catastrophic flooding, two posts on Lahore’s Pak Tea House blog are worth reading.

In the first post, “Floods Management: A Perfect Script for a Black Comedy,” the blog’s editor, Raza Rumi, writes:

They say that individual and collective characters are exposed in times of crisis. Indeed the Pakistani ruling classes have exposed themselves for their historical myopia and lack of vision. Political parties are fighting over optics, media perceptions and wasting their energies. TV channels and wise anchors on the other hand are competing who got there first to show the mammoth destruction and who fired more salvos at Asif Zardari. Adding insult to injury, the media remained busy for hours as to the alleged shoe-throwing incident at the president as if that was the topmost priority of this country.

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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. (more…)

I do not blame the young men and women of our age – they have been indoctrinated by the pernicious text-books, Zia’s ideology and the infiltration of Jamaat-i-Islami and jihadis into every nook and corner of Pakistan. This is why Pak Tea House (an e-zine I edit) as a voice of reason, faces the dual challenge of tackling the right wing and handling the global stereotyping of Pakistan as a jihadi haven. Not an easy challenge by any account — Raza Rumi

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