Adil Najam

Let me confess that the real reason for the post is this photograph above. It shows the leaders of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) leaders in an informal moment of exchange at the 2010 SAARC Summit (L to R): Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Mohamed Nasheed of Maldives, Manmohan Singh of India, Madhav Kumar Nepal of Nepal, Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani of Pakistan, Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh and Jigme Yoser Thinley of Bhutan.

I just love the picture: the colors, the composition, the symbolism. Maybe it will turn out that all of the above are exaggerated. So be it. Sometimes you want to hope.

Owais Mughal

For the longest time there has been a tradition in our family – that is to go slightly extravagant for Friday lunch. The extra perk is that on Fridays we get to eat tandoori rotis instead of regular chapaatis.

It used to be my weekly routine that after Friday prayers I would go to the local tandoor and bring home garam-a-garam (hot) tandoori rotis. Many a times the appertizing smell of these rotis was so great that I used to start eating them while walking in the street. Therefore it was pretty usual that one roti would be half missing by the time I reached home. This tandoor was one of the countless ones that are found all across Pakistan and which bake one of the tastiest rotis in the World. These tandoors don’t always have a name and they are found where the streets have no name but in street language they are universally called Cafe’ DePhoos.

On my recent trip to Pakistan, I tried to re-live this age old tradition. I walked the same steps to the local tandoor. It is not a Cafe’ DePhoos anymore but has now got a name of its own called Habib Roti House. I also brought a camera with me and took the following photos on this trip. I’ll take you through this short journey in the streets where I grew up. tou phir let us chaliye!

Adil Najam

Much has been happening on the India-Pakistan scene. Much of it is good. But, given that this is India and Pakistan, ominous clouds of distrust are never very far away.

With the SAARC Summit gathering steam in Thimphu, Bhutan, there is much talk of a serious meeting and possibly some joint communique from Prime Ministers Yousuf Raza Gillani and Manmohan Singh. But with typical South Asian theatrics, doubts still linger on whether such a meeting will be held and whether something will come of it. A recently more confident Pakistani Foreign Minister is calling on India to move on from 26/11 to start forging better relations with Pakistan. And Indian opinion, jilted by the news of an Indian diplomat who was reportedly “spying” for Pakistan, is also in danger of being turned away from whatever good vibes have been created by the recent warming in the relations between the two neighbors and civil society initiatives such as Amn Ki Aasha, or glitterati gossip of the Shoaib Malik-Sania Mirza wedding, etc.