India only wants Kashmir, not its people

I belong to the generation of the 90’s; a time when struggle for the independence of Kashmir was passing through its bloodiest phase. A few months before it all started, I was enrolled in a prestigious school in Srinagar, but my education started at home.

As one of my former principal writes in his memoirs – which appeared in the school magazine a few years later – we had only 60 working days that year ─ the rest of the year was consumed by curfews, crackdowns, and strikes. Living in a posh colony shielded me from the outside world; I couldn’t see what was happening outside my fortified home, but even walls couldn’t stop the voices of freedom pouring into my life.Like any child who recites nursery rhymes, I recited my own,

Rural to Runway

Most people in Pakistan confuse ‘ethical’ for ‘ethnical’ but the term ‘ethical’ should acquire the clarity and visibility of a neon sign now that it is gaining steam across the world. It can be incredibly pertinent to Pakistan and Pakistani fashion especially. What do ethics have to do with fashion? More than you think.

Who is better -- girls or boys ?

Whenever girls and boys gather at a place, a very controversial and oft-heard argument arises, ‘Who is better — girls or boys?’

Why Pakistanis lost faith in Democracy?

                                   
A recent poll of six Muslim countries revealed that Pakistanis by far were the least likely to favour democracy. Compared with Turkey, where 71 per cent of the respondents favoured democracy, only 42 per cent of Pakistanis held the same view.

The silence surrounding Pakistan’s most serious threats

There’s been much discussion lately about the “water kit,” a mysterious contraption that a purported Pakistani engineer insists will enable cars to use water as fuel.

Yet missing from this debate is a basic but critical fact: Pakistan is dangerously water-deficient. Per capita availability hovers just above the scarcity threshold of 1,000 cubic meters. In several decades, availability could plummet to 550 cubic meters.

So even if this bizarre water car somehow defied the laws of physics and managed to work, it would be unsustainable — unless it used the Arabian Sea as a giant filling station, or guzzled bottled water

How long can I tell lies to my children?

 “This is the story of a little boy and his mother who were poor but honest,” I told my sons when they asked for a story. “His father was dead, so they lived on whatever money his mom brought home, working as a domestic help.”

Although I had a wide range of stories to choose from – fairy tales to Alif Laila, I decided to tell them a positive story from my homeland, a land they have not yet seen but are keen to know about.

When I was a child, I thought there were plenty of positive stories. Now I am not so sure. Are you?

On Eid day, the mother said to her son: “Wake up, beta, it’s time for Eid prayers.”

“Didn’t she go with him to the mosque?” asked my son Ramiz.

“No, she had to clean up their little hut and prepare something for Eid,” I lied.

I did not tell him that in my country mosques are for men only.

The Partition of Laughter

Movie Review: Ek Tha Tiger

Once upon a time, a “Tiger” nearly got loose. He got nabbed by the government and was shipped back. End of story.
In Ek Tha Tiger, the new Salman Khan movie, still rollicking from renewed fandom set afire by Wanted we see a man on a mission: an Indian intelligence agent, gone rouge by love —an organic chemical reaction with emotional results that shows little of itself in producer Yash Raj’s mega-blockbuster that spins across multiple international locations without relevance; but then again who counts frequent flier miles when one’s smitten. Right?!