Jamsheed Marker – and the Parsi gentlemen of Karachi
There is an air that surrounds the Indian subcontinent’s Parsi community. It is the sort of local fascination that the rest of the world could never understand. The Parsis of Bombay and…
Media Watch: A million mutinies now
The punditry’s ideas, frozen in time… You might have seen it. It was footage made from a cell-phone camera. Given the rapid improvements in phone cameras, the footage isn’t even grainy…
Criminal filmmaking
When we – repeatedly, painstakingly, relentlessly, on a loop – talk about the revival of Pakistani cinema, the only thing that Wajood appears to have revived is Javed’s Sheikh movie-making count. What…
The rebirth of Chauburji
Let me take you to a monument which was until very recently breathing its last. Only a few months ago, the very existence of this monument was being hotly debated, and there…
Mushtaq Ahmed Yousafi – The laughing Titan of Urdu literature
There’s a certain stoicness when one imagines a banker. A stiffness in the neck, a haste in the step, and a burden on the shoulders. In the 20th century, and even today…
7 Din Bollywood In
In the lead up to Eid, the Ministry of Information, Broadcasting, National History and Literary Heritage prohibited the screening of Indian films for a week. While a laissez-faire approach towards the film…
Sheeda rhymes with “banjar”
Sheikh Rasheed, of course, isn’t known for minding his language. The self-described “downtown man” claims to have his hand on the pulse of the people, which would be true, if “the people”…
Media Watch: Duelling Chaudhrys
Neither went to finishing school. When we hear of a guests’ list of a television talk show that has both the League’s Talal Chaudhry and the PTI’s Fawad Chaudhry, we should know…
Ode to the Amaltas
It’s six in the afternoon and the hot, dry, summer breeze whistles dolefully through the trees and the shrubbery at Bagh-i-Jinnah (Lawrence Gardens), keeping the stagnant air at bay. The tennis and…
Media Watch: Not taking this lying down
A thunderous speech. Recently elected All Pakistan Newspapers Society (APNS) President Hameed Haroon made an impassioned plea for press freedom at the annual APNS awards function, attended by both former prime minister…
Media Watch: When you mistake the BBC for ARY
It was one horrible interview. When Zeinab Badawi was grilling Imran Khan on the BBC’s Hardtalk, the latter’s responses oscillated from the stupid to the downright irrelevant. This stupid end of the…
Spain’s Basques form 202-km human chain to call for independence vote
MADRID: Tens of thousands of people from Spain’s Basque Country joined hands to form a human chain running some 202 kilometers (125 miles) on Sunday to call for the right to hold…
Why not, Junoon?
Probably the only thing wrong with Call reprising Jilawatan, and EP performing Hamesha in back to back episodes of last year’s Pepsi Battle of the Bands was the fact that the two…
Media Watch: New lows
That the news media is being suppressed wouldn’t spring any surprises. That is how things have been in this neck of the woods. That some senior journalists are now deeming it to…
Media Watch: Apparently, some sort of book is coming out
Hamza Ali Abbasi, avid supporter of the PTI and part-time scowler on television dramas, seems to have embarked on an unintentional promotional tour for the upcoming book written by Reham Khan, estranged…
Precisely on time
Book review: ‘From Kargil to the coup: Events that shook Pakistan.’ The question is not just Kargil, but why Pakistan repeatedly allows this to happen. India’s response in the aftermath of the…
Our favourite sports movies
We asked our sports team* to talk about their favourite sports movies. This is what they said. Moneyball There is something inherently uplifting about underdog sports tales – you root for the…