For economy’s sake: Can India and Pakistan forgive and forget?
When geography and history become prisoners to politics, it’s destiny that becomes the real victim. A realisation is dawning on South Asian countries that by pandering to narrow political vision they have invited misery, backwardness and suffering for their own people. Their potentiality has become stilted at the altar of political bickering which stunts the economic growth of the region. How can these historical shortcomings be overcome? How can we rewrite a new history of economic integration? Representatives from all the South Asian countries gathered, in New Delhi recently, to mull over a new destiny for the region that shares ...
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‘How could you serve breakfast to a Hindu?’
Early one morning, a few days ago, I left my hometown Umerkot for Mirpurkhas with some friends. On the way we stopped for breakfast at a roadside cafe. What followed was an incident that left me shaken, although it involved no violence. While we were eating, a man with a long beard approached the café owner. We could clearly hear the conversation. He was telling the owner off for having served breakfast to us: “Tum Hinduon ko bhi nashta karwate ho?” (So, you serve breakfast to Hindus too?) The owner responded: “Kisi ke maathay pe likha hua nahi hota ki koi Hindu hai ya ...
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Sesame Street: Can puppets change Pakistan?
A BBC news report stated that USAID has made a grant of $20 million to Rafi Peer Theater group to create a local version of Sesame Street. The setting is a rural village and the protagonist a spirited little girl named Rani. This report should be in the Onion or get a rotten tomato. It quotes Imraan Peerzada, a writer for the new series: She (Rani) will represent what little girls have to go through in this gender-biased society…her journey would inevitably touch on Pakistan’s ongoing fight with militancy, but would not directly refer to religion. What’s next? Fluoride in our drinking water to make us more docile, compliant and less flammable in ...
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The power of illusion is the illusion of power
What is it that turns you on to the illusion of power, ask the lyrics of a song. It’s the belief in the illusion that turns us on, I believe. Sometimes our dreams can appear more real than reality itself and therein lies the pitfall. Illusions, when strong enough, can lead us into thinking that we are actually seeing what we think. It’s all in the head. But as Dumbledore told Harry Potter, “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” Political leaders, democrats and dictators, have been ...
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The cost of grades
By the end of my first semester in university, I became aware that my approach towards education is becoming what the university wants it to be – grades oriented and competitive, wanting to be better than the others, but not because learning is the aim. Without my realising it, the concept of education had changed in my mind. Now it was just a matter of mere numbers (marks) and letters (grades). Relative grading in educational institutions teaches students one simple rule: your grade depends on how others have done in your class. So if the rest of the class has done average, and you are a just a little above ...
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The Matrix versus Inception: Dreaming of reality
The Matrix versus Inception - our table stood divided at two all. The waitress was the deciding vote. Which would she choose? I handed her the tip, whispering Matrix, Matrix, Matrix, under my breath. “Inception. No doubt about it,” she answered. Considering the decade that has spanned between the films, you would be forgiven for thinking that the Matrix is a sci-fi film from a different generation to Inception and therefore incomparable, but you’d be wrong. Indeed when writer and director of the film Christopher Nolan was asked in a recent LA Times article whether or not Inception would be another second-life film akin to ...
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No wrong time for the right person
I do not understand why some people wait for the ‘ideal conditions’ to initiate their endeavors. People think that they cannot succeed in a society where achieving anything looks impossible. All I can say is that this is simply the approach of losers. I have not come across many successful people who have prospered in ideal conditions, for great successes have always occurred in adversity. I heard once that winners translate dreams into reality and losers translate reality into dreams. The best idea will not work until you work with it. When I heard these sentences for the first time, I ...
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Do American soldiers understand Iraq?
The article ‘Culture as a weapon system’ came in Middle East Report and its by Rochelle Davis, an assistant professor of anthropology at the Centre for Contemporary Arab Studies in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. It mentions a kind of pamphlet used by the US military for its soldiers in Iraq, ostensibly so that they can get acquainted with the culture of their area of deployment. A piece worth reading – for instance the following excerpt: Even as these materials set out to inform Americans about Iraqis, the vision of Iraqi culture that they presented ...
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A regular reality check-up
I can’t recall when I first heard the expression ‘ignorance is bliss’ but it never really sat well with me… until now when I wish I could seek refuge in it. As part of my job, I monitor and edit stories from Southern Punjab on a daily basis. I feel oddly possessive about the district pages or ‘Page 15’ of our Lahore paper because somehow over the past few months they have provided me with my daily dose of much needed ‘reality’. Despite living in Pakistan where one is seldom at a distance from the ‘reality’ of terrorism, corruption and ...
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