The devil of miscommunication
You’re talking to your best friend and despite the fact that he’s taking out the time to be with you, he’s constantly alert when that familiar red light blinks on his smartphone. You get annoyed and refuse to go on and an altercation ensues. The time you expected to spend catching up and having fun invariably becomes about how he’s always reaching for his phone. Sounds familiar? It really has become the story of our lives. We have stopped living in the moment and are constantly glued to the mini-screens on our phones. After losing out on three very close relationships, I ...
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Why The Hunger Games is the anti-Twilight
Movies don’t tell you what to think, they tell you how to think. If you saw Twilight then you know that the movie never said she needs to pick Edward; it said she needs to pick someone. This 16-year-old girl needs to decide right now, among the limited number of people she knows, which boy she is in real-true-forever-love with. If you are a Twilight fan, you are probably either Team Edward or Team Jacob – that’s a given. And if you are, you feel the other team is wrong. The point isn’t whether Bella would be happier with Jacob or ...
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I’m a Pakistani marrying a gora
The past 10 days have been very eventful for me – no, scratch that- they have been momentous; I received some excellent news about my future, went on a wonderful business trip to the sunny state of California, and yesterday my gora (foreigner) best friend asked me to marry him. I said yes, in case you were wondering. Yes, I am the other half of an interracial couple. The funny thing about being in an interracial relationship is that in a world where everyone is always talking about race, that’s the last thing on my mind when I’m with C. To me, he isn’t ...
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Girls can throw acid too
Earlier this week, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy returned to Pakistan after winning an Oscar award for making “Saving Face”, a documentary about women who are victims of acid attacks. Yesterday, a news report in the media about another acid attack caught everybody’s attention. This time, however, one thing was different; the girl wasn’t attacked, she was the attacker. Nabeela, an 18-year-old girl, in Faisalabad attacked her boyfriend Asif with acid after he allegedly decided to end a two year commitment. As far as I am aware, this is one of the first cases heard of where a woman has used acid as a weapon. While I admit my first ...
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Left to die in an old age home
In her article for The Express Tribune, reporter Rabia Ali wrote: How an elderly Mehmooda Begum was left at an old home is heart breaking. Tired of eating porridge which was served to her every day, she decided to cook food for herself one day. The daal she made got her a black eye and a forceful admission to the old people’s center by her son. As Mehmooda recalls her story, miles away from her family at the largest old home of the city, her lips quiver and her kohl-lined eyes fill up with tears. Her youngest son, and his wife, ...
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Why women need to complain more
I can’t tell you how much I relied on my girlfriends for my sanity in my 20s. During our student days at the University of Virginia (UVA), we were each other’s roommates, psychiatrists, parents, and siblings. Far away from my family in Bangladesh, my friends and I became each other’s families. But something happens to our female friendships when we leave our 20s and enter our 30s. As we get older and get married, have babies, work, work more, and did I mention, work more, we also begin to talk less. Why is it that when women need their girlfriends the ...
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My quest to find Mr Right online
For the last couple of years my mother has been asking me the same questions: “Have you met someone?” “When will you start looking?” “Are you getting older each day or younger? (Umer ja rahe hai k aa rahe hai?)” The worst is when she tells me that if I don’t find someone for myself, she will do it for me. An image of Mr Kohli from Bride and Prejudice pops into my head after this declaration (shudder). You might think that I am talking about the biggest issue in Pakistan. But no, this is not about Memogate or about Zardari. This issue is ...
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A Pakistani love story
In this short film, Maheen Zia explores the dynamics of the business of love in Pakistan. The viewer is an eavesdropper on a casual conversation between an off-screen man and woman, who are engrossed in each others’s company. Through this very short clip, one gets insight in to the mentality of a typical Pakistani man. Although the video does not betray the faces of the man and woman in question, it adequately depicts their relationship though the short conversation shown. You can see more of Maheen Zia’s videos here. Do you have a video that you want to share with The Express Tribune readers? Submit your ...
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Alpha male, Beta female: Which one are you?
In the animal kingdom, it’s the aggressive Alpha male of the pack that entices females in heat for procreation purposes. In other words, the rest of the males just don’t get any. Among humans, however, things have become a little more complex since the Neanderthal era, despite romantic fiction convincing readers that Alpha heroes reflect women’s ideals. In recent mass-market fiction, even Alpha heroes are required to develop modern-day Beta characteristics, like heightened sensitivity and emotions, thanks to the influence of the female heroine in the novel who ‘tames’ her man. But it isn’t always the case in the real ...
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Why I think women are stupid
Women, no matter how smart and intelligent they are professionally, are horrendously stupid and myopic where men are concerned. They can be very assertive with everyone, but place them opposite their lover and they start stuttering (it’s happened more than once with me). They are bosses at work, running their own business or office and yet will let a loser run their lives for them. Why? Why do they make monkeys of themselves repeatedly in their intimate relationships with men? The sheer stupidity displayed by otherwise sensible women in the presence of a man whom they love is baffling. Is it the way we are ...
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