On redeeming vices
And the horrors of unalloyed virtue ‘He hadn’t a single redeeming vice,’ was how the great Oscar Wilde famously referred to a particularly virtuous individual, presumably a regular pain-in-the-neck for all and…
Public attitudes towards cricket
Which one describes you best? The Champions Trophy is in progress, and as usual the public attitudes towards the mega-event run the gamut from indifference to intense passion. When it comes to…
Advice for young writers
A primer to prose writing It’s all right if writing causes you some degree of grief. Languages are notorious for troubling two categories of people: the natives and the non-natives. Writing is…
Marital bliss for men
Recalling a memorable conversation ‘Most men make marriage difficult by refusing to come to terms with their loss of freedom,’ remarked Uncle Zaki-ul-Hiss, my friend’s father. By what first appeared to be…
Four batsmen and a fast-bowler
A tribute With all the recent media focus on Misbah-ul-Haq and Younis Khan there have been some cricketers who, despite having shared the dressing room with the aforementioned, have been starved…
Western philosophy for dummies
A primer for easterners Western philosophy is as rewarding as it is exacting, for after studying it one can answer most of the fundamental questions that have challenged the combined intellect of…
The greatest threat to religion
A word on religious zealots Religion has been here since the very beginning, and it is safe to say that it’s not going anywhere any time soon. The greatest threat to religion…
A guide for budding cricketers
How to look the part and impress selectors and others If you are a young Pakistani the chances are that you play cricket at some level or the other. Also, presumably you…
Free-will and predestination
Revisiting the age-old debate As perennial debates go, this one has to be right there at the top of the list. And it’s not merely an academic discussion either, for the whole…
The American Wannabe Disorder [AWD]
Symptoms, prognosis, treatment I have been meaning to write on this important topic ever since I wrote on the Arab Wannabe Syndrome (AWS) all those months ago. However, as it happened one…
The pathology of stupidity: a well meaning rant
Or, a brief history of birthday celebrations It all started some millennia ago in a cave in Western Africa. Cave-woman Abebi was proud of her cave-man son Bobo. Bobo himself was of…
On seeing the glass filled to the brim
Main kaafir to naheen, etc It’s not that I don’t want to see the glass half-full or more. I most definitely do. And believe me, I try real hard. In fact, in…
Just another week in Pakistan
Pretty much par for the course If craziness happens to be your thing from the very start, or alternatively you started deriving, somewhere along the way, a morbid sort of pleasure from…
Caution: ‘Sensitive nation’ ahead
Le saans bhi aahista, etc People old enough to remember the ‘golden’ period of Urdu cinema would recall that most films of that era featured one malika-e-jazbaat or another. For the benefit…
Not the greatest of ideas
Not exactly new either Intentions are the most misleading and over-rated things imaginable, for human beings are endowed with an amazing capacity to consciously or unconsciously convince themselves of their altruistic motives…
How to defeat terrorism
We’ve been doing it all wrong In what can only be described as a flash of brilliance, PML-N lawmaker Parveen Masood Bhatti may have put her finger on the root-cause of our…
Karachi for dummies
A short intro Karachi (originally Kolachi, pronounced ‘Kirachi’ by many locals) is a former capital of Pakistan. Nobody knows the current population of Karachi, which could be anything from 15 to 25…