Indian actress, Swara Bhaskar, called Pakistan a “failing state” on an Indian talk show while promoting her film that was banned in Pakistan for nudity and obscenity. States cannot fail for banning films merely, they fail for something much more insidious – the policing of...
When most working women in Pakistan return home from a long often-humiliating workday, the first thing they do is make tea. They serve it eagerly. Just the right color and texture, otherwise it could be splattered across a wall by an angry father, brother or...
Someone asked feminist icon, Gloria Steinem, what she would say to the concerns that the #MeToo is worrying men that women have too much power that they are now abusing. The #MeToo campaign was launched to call out sexual misconduct in the US. Her response...
There was a newspaper cartoon that depicted a woman in a burkah in the driver's seat, except that the car she was in was remote-operated. The remote control was firmly in a snarky man’s hands. Muslim majority countries run by men, fueled by a toxic...
Justice Nasira Javaid is now retired as an icon of women rebels. She had a mother who was a legendary philanthropist and a force in the Pakistan independence movement. It was going to be unlikely that a woman with a women role model like her...
The 'One size fits all' model doesn’t always lead to happiness, success, economic progress or even environmental sustainability. Yet it is proposed, enforced and demanded over and over. Lately, this has been a focus on the defense of the good old values and our culture....
I returned from a polling station in the G8 sector of Islamabad. It seems as though Imran Khan is set to become the prime minister of Pakistan. This line sounds like an alarm bell; a shrieking of a car right before a bang; nails on...
1976 film actress Shubnum Ghosh’s house was broken and entered into and a “dacoity” took place. This is a euphemism for rape. In that pre #metoo era this popular Bangladeshi film actress who made Lahore her home and Lollywood her profession lived on in Lahore....
What would it take for a modern Sufi to lose his optimism? A lot, it seems. Raza Rumi has published yet another book called, Being Pakistani, and it has three things that will come in handy this post-election season: the effortlessness and readability with which...
Review of Red Birds Author: Mohammad Hanif Publisher: Bloomsbury, 2018 Red Birds is about the destruction that inevitably follows love. Many say this Mohammad Hanif novel is an anatomy of the wars men wage and the carcasses of pain women and their children must sweep up, each with...
