After the night’s unrest a quieter day passed though I still worried all day, since the Gentleman Friend’s way of expressing illness is different enough from my own that it is difficult for me to assess how ill he is, and whether something needs to be done. I made daal and rice for dinner – […]
Two busy days
I had two busy days, having taken rather more than one could complete in a normal working day, so I was drowned in words. The best thing that has come out of the past days is probably that I am now fully clear on differences between youth, youths, etc. Basically, here’s the deal: youth singular, […]
Glimmer of possibility
Imran has addressed the nation. It’s a good speech. Miles away from Trump’s inauguration address, say. Imran is a notoriously khapti individual, who bashes his head against walls until he gets what he’s set his heart on, so maybe there’s a glimmer of hope, or at least the possibility of hope, that this may be […]
Another thing
That occurs to me is perhaps we are seeing a return towrds national parties instead of regional ones. The last election had a stark split between the provinces: PTI in KP, PML(N) in Punjab, PPP and MQM in Sindh and ostensibly PML(N) in Balochistan but in reality a mix of local powers and parties. This […]
Distant manzil
It is the day after and Imran Khan is on his way towards becoming prime minister. We Pakistanis are really ahead of the game; we’ve had our proto-Trump for about ten years. Fortunately Imran will be more constrained than Trump, and certainly have less power to cause damage. With any luck, they’ll run Pakistan as […]
Congregation of pain
Today is the day. Dozens dead already in bomb blasts and shoot outs and car accidents; imagine if there had been a death toll to a US election! In some ways the best outcome would be a PTI government – to paraphrase Asma Jehangir quoted on How to Pakistan, so the bastards learn what it […]
Four votes
I met a longstanding client for lunch at the British Library. I’ve worked with him for years now, but this is the first time we met. He studies Ethiopia and was lamenting that he had to redo bits of his recently-completed monograph after the political changes in the country, with Abiy taking power. Fortunately none […]
Desi boy problems
A Pakistani man of my acquaintance has covered himself in inglory by passing a #MeToo protest on his way into a premiere and shouting out ‘I support harassment of women!’ It’s an example of where everyone knows he didn’t really mean it being an educated upper-class urban Pakistani man, educated at public school and abroad […]
Writing Asian (not Asian-American)
I read an interesting interview with Filipina Isabel Yap. To begin with the standard American voice dominated a great deal of discourse. This is followed by diverse voices, but they remain in an American context: the concerns of Asian-Americans (or South Asian Americans, since in America ‘Asian’ refers to people with epicanthic folds), which feels […]