Yesterday was Friday and after lunch the Gentleman Friend and I went to Westminster. On the way out of the house I glanced at the news to see his press conference with Teresa May had begun and he claimed that the awful interview he’d given the previous night (of which audio recording was online), was […]
House on Jalan Pimping
I have just woken up in a house on Jalan Pimping which, despite its name, is a quiet, wealthy street in Ampang, with largish houses set along the lines of one of KL’s many low hills. It is the home of a friend and we are staying here after having moved out from our KLCC […]
Election night
I went to sleep around midnight. There was still traffic on the roads, and when I looked out of the window towards one of the city’s main roads, I saw motorcycles and cars zooming past with party flags fluttering. I watched for a few minutes and counted dozens flying the red, blue and white Pakatan […]
Return to childhood
I watched the first episode of Dhoop kinare, an Urdu TV drama from the 1980s. I have never really watched much in the way of Urdu television. I always knew it was supposed to be very good and quite highbrow, but I was not a TV watcher ever. Now, as the GF has stopped watching […]
In Terengganu
Arrived after a slightly troublesome journey, with delayed flights, no food, a difficult email for the GF and my realising that I’d forgotten my contacts, without which I can’t snorkel or dive – my eyes are at -8 and I might as well be blind wearing goggles. Most of this was eventually resolved – no […]
New fan
We have a new fan in the living room and it has made me realise how inferior (though pleasingly colonial in appearance) the previous one was. This is silent and even at medium speed gives a nice gentle breeze across the largish living room. When in England I do miss fans, having grown up with […]
Bumdhamaka
We have booked our return to London, on 28 May, a day that will live for me always. It is what I privately call bum dhamaka day, on which twenty years ago when the mountain turned white in Chaghai, when Pakistan tested the bomb some days after India’s test. It felt like such a betrayal. […]
Blight on the world
All Pakistanis, I among them, are in a state of near-apoplexy at the Australian cricket team’s admission of ball tampering and the way it has been presented as a heroic admission of a personal lapse, with a single – a single! – match suspension for the captain who got his most junior player to do […]
Behind every successful woman
I have been enraged by Aitzaz Ahsan’s article on Asma Jehangir, or more specifically on her husband and in-laws. Behind every successful woman there is indeed a man to whom all the credit really belongs. It’s an exemplar of the clueless establishment uncle displaying his liberalism whilst scratching backs and maintaining the status quo which […]