I am feeling really cast down about Brexit, really genuinely sad. Not that I have much affection for the country, but the dream of integration, open borders, cooperation, is one that I can care for. The other country which I care far more for, Pakistan, stabs me in the heart so often that I can […]
Armadillo in the sky
Last night, as I was finishing up some billing and drinking tea in the porch, there was a crash in the undergrowth just in front of me. An armadillo appeared to have plummetted from the sky. It collected itself and bustled away, leaving me wondering if it was what had been scrambling on the roof […]
We can’t breathe
Today is the global climate protest. Very proud indeed that 29 cities in Pakistan are taking part, so there are many quite small (by local standards) and insignificant towns involved. Admittedly, the protests are small and many, many people are uninterested, but perhaps it’s a start. A relative is deeply involved in the arrangements, of […]
The most beautiful there is
Urdu poetry is the most beautiful there is for me; strange, given that I am much more at home in English, read much more in English, yet Urdu goes to the heart like nothing else. I remember the pang of pride I felt at my Ivy League university when I was introduced to an extremely […]
Lost places
A profoundly sad article about the mandirs of Lahore. When travelling through Punjab I often look around and try to imagine, on the sides of the roads and in the fields the sites that are now gone. My grandfather, who grew up in Chakwal, used to tell of the Hindu pilgrim caravans going off, laughing […]
Voices not heard
I read this article a couple of days ago and it has stuck in my memory. It’s an account of growing up in a lower class family in Garhi Shahu; he must have been only a few years younger than me so there are points at which our worlds touched and others that are so […]
How long remembered?
Partition was ever present in my childhood. Is it still so? An article in Dawn republished some of the great poetry of the time: Faiz: ye daagh daagh ujala ye shab-gazida sahar vo intizar tha jis ka ye vo sahar to nahin Shiv Kumar Batalvi: Mainu te yaad hai ajj vi, te tenu yaad hove […]
Silly mid
I am reading a really entertaining book. It’s called Chinaman, is by Shehan Karunatilaka, and is a sort of cricket novel. I say sort of, because it’s also about Sri Lanka and is full of people and place. It’s also really funny, quite similar to one of my favourite Pakistani novels, A case of exploding […]
Two gods
A verse by the Punjab poet Ustad Daman, written in honour of General Zia and quoted in a very good article about him in Dawn: mery mulk de do khuda la elah te martial la ik rehnda a arshan utthay duja rehnda farshan uttay Even if you don’t know Punjabi, if you know the first […]
What could have been
An unexpected successful, if short, excursion this evening. I went out to get dinner and had thought I would go to Llano park for the delicious elotes from the cart one has to queue for 20 minutes for. At the last minute, as I walked towards Porfirio Diaz, I changed my mind and decided to […]