2011: The Turbulent Flight
By Jehan Naseem At the end of every year or the beginning of a new one, a very dear friend of mine and I repeat the same words, “God-willing, this will be our year,” to give each other a gentle yet positive push looking forward to the New Year ahead. For some 2011 was a great year, as opposed to the preceding years which seemed far more devastating. However, for others it had its ups and downs. Last year, I had witnessed many jumps and dips for my loved ones and myself. It had extreme turbulences which seemed more life changing without any boundaries. From the many lessons that I had to learn last year, the most important one for me was that to learn to deal with the root of a particular … Read entire article »
Filed under: musings, Uncategorized
Meet Nadir Khan, the Cobbler from Bajaur
by Aasem Bakhshi Nadir Khan, the cobbler from Bajaur who sits at the corner of my street, carries the kind of iconic baggage usually associated with cobblers from Sufi folklore and mystic literature. His character inspires me, his sensibilities vex me and his paradoxes keep me engaged with mine. Being well aware of each second he lives, Nadir Khan spends a quarter of the year with his family in village, another quarter busy earning on a footpath in this metropolis, and another in the way of Allah, as he finds it to be. My self proclaimed wisdom and religious pragmatism is forced to zilch in front of his embodied response to time. … Read entire article »
A Soldier's Soliloquy: Can a Person Refuse to Fight?
by Aasem Bakhshi …if called upon by the government to do so. Thomas Hobbes would concede this right with some limitations and John Locke would probably deny. And even though Lockean tradition is superior in terms of social contract theory, I tend to take refuge behind Hobbes, considering the Leviathan I am subjected to in my part of the world. But I am still not sure how to tackle this question, which albeit still at some distance, is moving towards me while staring ceaselessly on my face. While the angst is becoming unbearable and the masochist within me is yet again alive after so many years, I ramble inveterately in search of judgment. … Read entire article »
Filed under: musings, Philosophy, Religion, war
What Constitutes a Stable Society?
By Adnan Syed Pakistan is passing through a vicious negative feedback loop that is beginning to gather momentum. The vicious circle is a result of country’s inability to provide for the basic individual rights of its citizens. Combine that with a burgeoning population, and the rampant nationalist tensions within the society that have been suppressed in the name of religious identity, Pakistan is staring at a nightmarish scenario in the coming decade. Pakistan needs to realize that the existential threat is coming from the failure of its society and not due to the external influences that consume majority of the resources of our nation. Unless we start spending on providing for the four basic rights to our citizens, the chaos will just feed on itself in the years to come. This is … Read entire article »
Filed under: Democracy, human rights, Identity, India, Islamabad, Islamism, musings, Pak Tea House, Pakistan, Religion, Rights, violence
A Vicious Circle
By Adnan Syed Pakistan is passing through a vicious negative feedback loop that is beginning to gather momentum. The vicious circle is a result of country’s inability to provide for the basic individual rights of its citizens. Combine that with a burgeoning population, and the rampant nationalist tensions within the society that have been suppressed in the name of religious identity, Pakistan is staring at a nightmarish scenario in the coming decade. Pakistan needs to realize that the existential threat is coming from the failure of its society and not due to the external influences that consume majority of the resources of our nation. Unless we start spending on providing for the four basic rights to our citizens, the chaos will just feed on itself in the years to come. … Read entire article »
Filed under: Citizens, Constitution, human rights, Identity, Islam, Islamabad, musings, Pak Tea House, Pakistan, Rights, state
Civilizations (Mirrors of Our Existence)
From years of our travel We look back Upon these civilizations, From years of adventure We look back Upon these civilizations From days of our inheritance The lands and its cultures The old forms of languages The mystery of Universe The old journey taken By humans and nature together As they traverse From place one to another, In harmony and disarray As we born and die From on to another, As we love and hate The old circumstances And situation, intertwined Through languages and its art, The trails, lost and visible As we look back Upon these civilizations The … Read entire article »
Filed under: ancient civilisations, Architecture, Arts and Crafts, culture, Dance, drama, dynasties, Heritage, History, Identity, Languages, Law, Literature, movements, Music, musings, Nature, Philosophy, Physics, poetry, Politics, psychology
On the Task of Writing Meaningful Words
By Zia Ahmad Writer’s block is fiction, doesn’t happen, an excuse for pure dumb laziness and a supremely narcissistic and vain labored way to remind oneself of his/her pretentious talented bearings. Just as anyone can sing, cook and laugh, writing is a vocation any one can take up. Nothing to it, easiest thing in the world. … Read entire article »
Filed under: Humor, journalism, musings, New Writers, Uncategorized, Writers
Another Interview
By Zia Ahmad Making eye contact with words ending with a Y does not make you chinky. Making eye contact with a prospective employer in this pure land of ours doesn’t do you any favors. At best it only makes the tongue of your mind go flat for some brief period of time. … Read entire article »
Filed under: Fiction, men, musings, Uncategorized, urban
A Postmodern Wedding
By Zia Ahmad “Hope is a dangerous word” – just like any other pearl of wisdom that I am only too eager to pass on to the next available ear, this too has been derived from the ever-wise and reflective dream factory that is Hollywood. Do we ever pause to consider how drastically films have affected our humdrum lives, and how in moments of joy and sorrow some of us look up to movies as templates that our real-life actions and words should subscribe by? No other art form in human history has provided us with as many pertinent points of comparison in our lives as films (or for that matter TV shows) have. … Read entire article »
Travels to Pakistan – A Jeddah-based journalist's account
Pak Tea House is grateful for this contribution from Tariq Al-Maeena a journalist based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia - his account of travels in Pakistan is engaging. We are publishing the first three parts on his impressions of Islamabad, political intrigues of the Capital and his sojourn to Murree. The interesting bits are his comparisons with Saudi Arabia where Pakistan is viewed as a poor country. The remaining parts will be published later. (Raza Rumi) Pakistan Re-Visited – (1) Islamabad When the … Read entire article »
On Amrita Pritam
My article on Amrita Pritam has been re-published by Apnaorg (Academy of the Punjab in North America). I am sharing an excerpt and a translation of her poem here: Her remarkable affinity with the depths of the Punjabi language adds to her iconoclastic status in India, Pakistan and wherever Punjabi is spoken and appreciated. Yet her audience has been global as well: her work was translated into dozens of world languages. One … Read entire article »
Islam's Silent Moderates: Subverting the discourse of exclusion 5
by Shaheryar Ali Of the three great systems of exclusion governing discourse – prohibited words, the division of madness and the will to truth …” Foucault “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”, Noam Chomsky The most important system of control of discourse working in the moslem societies is “prohibition”. An imagined ‘Islam’ has emerged as the single most important tool for censorship in Islamic world. … Read entire article »
Filed under: Islam, movements, musings, Religion, Rights, Women
A Damascene Conversion: Subverting the discourse of exclusion 2
Discourse” is nothing but all “written and verbal communication”. In line of Gramsci and later Foucault we have to understand “discourse” as “institutionalized” way of thinking, or in words of Judith Butler “limits of acceptable” speech. Its these limits which subverted in order to reach a true libertarian discourse. The discourse is controlled by means of “exclusion”, no other opinion simply exists. Foucault writes: “Of the three great systems of exclusion governing discourse — prohibited words, the division of madness and the will to truth ———” “——One can straight away distinguish some of the methodological demands they imply. A principle of reversal, first of all…. Next, then, the principle of discontinuity ….” I am planning to do all this , i am trying to bring forward the “prohibited voices”, those which have been … Read entire article »
Filed under: Islam, Islamism, musings, Religion, Rights, Society
Mullahs and Heretics
by Tariq Ali found here I never believed in God, not even between the ages of six and ten, when I was an agnostic. This unbelief was instinctive. I was sure there was nothing else out there but space. It could have been my lack of imagination. In the jasmine-scented summer nights, long before mosques were allowed to use loudspeakers, it was enough to savour the silence, look up at the exquisitely lit sky, count the shooting stars and fall asleep. The early morning call of the muezzin was a pleasant alarm-clock. There were many advantages in being an unbeliever. Threatened with divine sanctions by family retainers, cousins or elderly relatives – ‘If you do that Allah will be angry’ or ‘If you don’t do this Allah will punish you’ – I … Read entire article »
Justice in Pakistan – some disturbing reflections
Posted by Raza Rumi An anonymous contributor at the Friday Times talks about how the murder of a family member raised painful questions about Pakistani society When an incident occurs which should never have taken place – an anomaly, a tragedy – the first question that springs to mind is, who is to blame? It has been two years since my uncle’s body was found, decaying in his own blood, two years since he was murdered in his house, in his own sanctuary. I have had enough time to distance myself from the tragedy and view the events in a more rational way. But is there anyway to rationalise the murder of an innocent man, whose only crime was that he could not afford to live anywhere but in a small … Read entire article »
Filed under: Karachi, musings, public policy, Society, state
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