Owais Mughal On my last visit to Pakistan I got a sore throat. My family offered to take me to a doctor in Block B of North Nazimabad who was both ‘acha aur sasta’ (good and cheap). He was ‘acha’ because he had an authentic MBBS degree and ‘sasta’ because he charged a flat fee […]

Raza Rumi Who says Pakistani literature was a relic of the past? If anything, Pakistani authors have a global audience today, and our writers are now the greatest harbingers of Pakistan’s complexity and nuance in a way that the embedded media can scarcely fathom. The first literary festival took off in our cosmopolitan melting pot, […]

Adil Najam In both Faisalabad and Dera Ismail Khan, religious zealots turned Eid Milad-un-Nabi celebrations violent leaving at least seven dead and more than thirty injured. The irony, and sheer lunacy, of this criminal violence is that there are those amongst us who are so convinced that they and they alone are the “best” Muslims […]