The third pillar
ONE would need more than 10 fingers to count the number of lawyers who have governed Pakistan since its inception. Our founder was a lawyer; our first prime minister a…
A tale of literary events
Hardly a month passed since the World Cultural Festival enthralled the denizens of Karachi when the Arts Council offered another fairly successful ‘Aalmi Urdu Conference’ coupled with ‘Jashn-e-Karachi’ from December…
The mighty caste system: Part – II
Roy believes the statistics Singh cited may be flawed, but are unlikely to be drastically flawed. She notes, “They are a quarter of a century old now. Some new census-based…
Food, with thought
IT is not a novel idea: which interesting personality would you want to share a meal with? From 2012, The New York Times has run a weekly column ‘By the…
Fiscal pollution
IN some ways, modern Islamabad is akin to 15th-century Ferghana in Central Asia. The novelist Lytton Strachey wrote of the first Mughal emperor Babar, who was born there in an…
Conrad, empire and exile
Joseph Conrad was an exceptionally talented writer who emerged as a novelist and storyteller in the late 19th century. Born in Poland and fluent in French by the age of…
The good old days
Nostalgia finds its origins in the Greek words ‘nostos’ (return) and ‘algos’ (pain). It is the longing for bygone days. Coined by Swiss physician Johannes Hofer in 1688, the word…
A journey through fiction
Historical novels can be a good source for understanding our past depending on who has written them and how. In modern world literature, there is a fine example of Hilary…
The lone ranger
IT took our solitary Olympic gold medallist Arshad Nadeem to remind us of the old adage: Success has many fathers but Failure is an orphan. No matter how many awards,…
The mighty pen
Political dissent implies disagreement, criticism or protest against coercive decisions, unjust laws or imposed policies. It holds enormous power in times of occupation and oppression. By taking risks to criticize…
