A wedding and many funerals
IT’S a challenging proposition at the best of times to trust Narendra Modi by what he promises to do for anyone. A problem surfaced early in his career when, as…
Transported to another era
THE structural foundation of the Roman Empire, history tells us, included the roads that were built. With this communication network, the expanding empire was able to connect newly conquered lands.…
Hyderabad nostalgia
“NEVER in my life,” said Mir Laik Ali, Hyderabad’s last prime minister, “had I ever seen Mr Jinnah emotional except on that day.” Pakistan was fighting for its survival in…
Storytelling as therapy
If you are unnerved by the national state of affairs and unable to figure out what the rulers and leaders of this country are doing, there is one place you…
Mughal-e-Azam vs Modi
Have you watched ‘Mughal-e-Azam’? This question, posed to any cinema enthusiast, would readily invoke a reference to that epic movie made by K Asif, himself a ‘moghul; in the annals…
Finding solace in literature
There is too much politics around; to get some respite it is perhaps better to continue our discussion about some of the sessions at the 5th Sindh Literature Festival (SLF).…
A town like Bhera
A silence that prevails in the quietness of abandoned mansions, with doors that still wait for loved ones to revert back, the nostalgia of times gone by that wander in…
The Mughal feminist
IT is the princesses and queens that get top billing. We know about the intelligence of the inimitable Nur Jehan, who assisted her husband in the management of a vast…
Emotional innumeracy
“To be is to be perceived,” the 18th century Irish philosopher Bishop Berkeley once famously remarked. To date, refuting him has been the favourite pastime of realists, materialists and similar…
Art and tolerance
Somewhere late in the 1500s, after he had been king for many years, Emperor Akbar asked one of the Jesuit priests then in the Mughal Empire for a copy of…
