The Ajrak Corridor
In days of yore, the Indian subcontinent was the citadel of trade, culture, innovation, and spiritual way of life. The area that today is demarcated as Rajasthan and Gujarat on…
Unequal music
SINCE 2016, Hamid Rahmanian has presented Shadows of Fire: A Persian Epic to packed houses worldwide. Based on Ferdowsi’s 10th-century epic Shahnameh, this cinematic shadow play has been termed “fantastic”…
Kapoors of Bollywood meet Modi
“EVERYONE acts every day of their lives,” said Marlon Brando. Think about it. The air hostess acts with her plastic smile. The politician acts with his double-faced lies. The shopkeeper.…
Writing on the wall
The word ‘history’ is primarily associated with past connotations. However, in marked contrast, history is a constantly evolving phenomenon and stays as relevant in the present-day world as it was…
The ‘aubash’ hand in India’s pain
‘AUBASH’ is a Persian word whose meaning, if grasped correctly, could help explain the runaway success of Hindutva as an Indian phenomenon. Japanese scholar Hiroshi Kan Kagaya’s insightful work on the…
No perfect storm
THINK of a product(ion) — a book or poem, a movie or song, a painting or sculpture — as a ‘text’: something tangible that can be unpicked, researched and, as…
Political culture
THERE have been many political movements in Pakistan; some of them have also been between two opposing ideologies, such as the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy and the Pakistan…
As opium is to heroin addicts
ROMILA Thapar delivered yet another magisterial lecture on history last week. Titled ‘Our history. Their history. Whose history?’, the 91-year-old professor wove the theme around a quote from Eric Hobsbawn…
Cry ‘havoc’
WHO would disagree that armed conflict is an awful consequence of disagreement between men, their hubris, or“vaulting ambition”. Awful, but sometimes necessary. Consider the war of independence suffered by our…
Devastated by disaster
By the end of the day on Monday, the government of Turkiye had declared seven days of mourning. At that time, people were still being pulled from the rubble of…
