Waiting for Taseer
It has now been over a week and there is no sign of Shahbaz Taseer returning home. The police, we are told, have discovered important clues such as a gun that was reportedly thrown out of a vehicle involved in the kidnapping and some SIMs of mobile phones that were found in Taseer’s abandoned vehicle. The police later also found another SIM card which was said to have been used by the kidnappers. However, not much has been reported in the news since then on the case, except a statement a couple of days after the abduction to the effect ...
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Salmaan Taseer: Ghetto prince of gutter poets
It was a hot April Fool’s day when I first heard the gruff voice of the Governor of Punjab on the phone. Naturally, I thought it was one of my friend’s playing a prank on me. To think that the Governor himself would pick up the phone and call me- what a heresy in a land dictated by status and protocol! As the conversation continued, my doubts about whether it was really the governor himself grew. When he asked if I was Scottish, I was stunned into silence. My preconceived notions of all government officials being idiots evaporated, and I ...
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Fighting for the white stripe
On August 11, 1947, the country’s first Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan unveiled the new Pakistani flag – an all-green Muslim League flag with a slight alteration. It included a white stripe that the then prime minister in his address went on to say provided minorities with rights that the Congress party in India was unwilling to give. Standing on the empty front lawn of the Governor House for the first time since the governor’s assassination, I was reminded of Governor Salmaan Taseer’s Christmas day address only a month earlier. The governor, who was dressed in his typical dark sports coat ...
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