Self Talk

We have to bear with Malala whether we like it or not. There are lapses in her story, so are controversies associated with the prize. But the fact is that neither the controversy associated with politicization of noble peace prize can undermine Malala’s heroic deeds nor can the lapses in Malala’s story destroy the prize nor her own internationalized charm. What circumstances actually convinced the jury to choose her, as the rightful recipient needs a deeper insight. She has got it, and no one else from Pakistan did it this time. Long live Abdus Sattar Edhi and his untiring love for humanity, Imran Khan’s service to cancer patients, Mukhtaran Mai for voicing against Mubashir Luqman or Junaid Jamshed for his line of kurtas , but so did Mahatma Gandhi. The list of omissions is quite long and the selection process itself is potentially not free of biases and errors. So, move on Pakistanis, or live with it, she is the one. Her father choose to publish her diary by the pen name of ...

In the age of twitter and facebook, witnessing a regime change in Egypt looked quite awesome. In fact I was quite lost into its final hours, stuck to live transmissions of BBC and Aljazeera, following people tweeting live from Tahrir Square and reading Cyril Almeida’s nice analysis in Dawn on regular basis. The history unfolded before my wide open eyes. It was unbelievable. Although I expected bloodshed many times in the last week, I kept my hopes high and wished the people a win.  More so because it was a led by Egyptian youth, using the social network forums to organize protest against the sitting president. Although Hosni Mubarak had been a favorite of Europe and US, he could no longer keep his hold on the government and had to surrender to the will of masses. Internet has started bringing meanings to people’s lives and now we can expect almost anything happening anywhere in the world. So is the potential of this technology. For a true democracy in Egypt, there is a long way to...