Mast Qalandar
Geo News is back on cable TV in Pakistan! It was banned along with two other popular TV channels on November 3 last year when Emergency was imposed in the country.
We don’t know on what conditions the channel has been allowed to operate again. We also don’t know how much dent the 77-day ban [...]

Mast Qalandar
Of all the folk tales of Punjab, Waris Shah’s Heer is the most widely read, recited (actually, sung), commented upon and quoted love story. People have even done Ph.Ds on it. It is a very long poem, written in the Punjabi baint meter, comprising of 630 odd stanzas of 6 to 12 or more [...]

Mast Qalandar
Proliferation of private TV channels in Pakistan has, among other things, brought the politicians to our living rooms. We often see them and hear them in talk shows. And we judge them, not only on what they have to say but how they say it — and also on how they look. The following [...]

Mast Qalandar
This post was inspired by my recent trip to Istanbul — my first ever to Turkey. Turkey is probably the only country left where Pakistanis are still received warmly. Pakistanis know Turkey not only as another Muslim country but a country that was home of the caliphate (Khilafat-e-Osmania) for several centuries. They also know [...]

Mast Qalandar

We recently had a post on Ghalib by Adnan Ahmad. I believe we can never have enough of Ghalib.
Adnan’s post was mostly about Ghalib, the poet. This one is about Ghalib, the person.
When we think of Ghalib as a person, invariably the picture that comes to mind is that of an old man, rather [...]

Mast Qalandar (MQ)

This post is about the “posters”, that is, the people who regularly post comments on ATP. In other words, my mental sketches of the persons I come across on the ATP discussion board.
One of the things I do early in the morning, after checking my e-mail and the news updates, is look up [...]

Mast Qalandar
This story was meant to be a part of the post on Panja Sahib that appeared on these very pages early this year. But I had left it out lest I make the post too lengthy. The post on Panja Sahib stayed on the Discussions Board for a day or two and then disappeared, [...]