It has turned out to be very fortunate that my siblings took our family’s elders to be vaccinated on Saturday. Apparently it was the first day and there was almost no one there. On Sunday thousands showed up and there was chaos. Today, I hear that the health minister has said that it is all […]
blog
Fury at the police (cont.)
Daily Mirror, 15 March 2021. Financial Times, 15 March 2021.
Angry women
Both the countries for whom I have passports and some sense of allegiance continue to show where a woman’s place is. Pakistan, of course, remains the most hurtful and the most deadly. The Aurat March with its frankly anodyne slogan of ‘mera jism meri marzi’ – my body, my choice – in Pakistan ‘please don’t […]
Long walk home
This afternoon we went to visit the carpenter who is making our doors. It was a very long journey there as our contractor and architect decided to drive and there was a great deal of traffic on the first sunny weekend afternoon after the lifting of lockdown. The carpenter seemed good – he showed us […]
Fury at the police
Morning Star, 13 March 2020.
Satisfying
A satisfying trip to the flat today, as the electrician, plumber, contractor and architect were all there and we came to some solid decisions. Our accidental interpreter, the labourer from Gujranwala was there as well, and in a cheerful mood, including a secret offer, made in Punjabi, to hook me up with a seller of […]
The inventor of the cassette tape
The inventor of the cassette tape has died, having outlived his invention by decades. How odd it must have been to invent something so important at the time, to have it entirely superseded by another of your inventions (he was also involved in developing the CD) and then blown away completely by electronic vibrations in […]
End of Buddhism
I read an interesting article today, an academic history about the fading away of Buddhism in South Asia. It was a bit of a surprise to me, as it was about how the claims that Buddhism was eradicated by the coming of Islam – whether by outright temple destruction or simply by conversion from an […]
Focus, focus
Work is growing critical and today, finally, I managed to spend a good bit of time and write several chapters. Still less than halfway, but I think I might be able to finish the first draft by the end of tomorrow. Aside from work, today the GF and I took a short break for coffee […]
Unburnt beans
Today I tried cooking the final third of the white beans I had bought late last week. The first two times I forgot the pot on the stove and they burnt, and needed a good bit of scrubbing with baking soda to get the black off. But this time it worked and they were very […]