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 ...

A human crisis, or one of the several human crises born on this unfortunate land, displacement of North Waziristan residents on account of military operation has taken a heavy toll on over all wellbeing of the residents. It has been decades since people of this and adjoining areas had sustainable peace. The law and order situation has been frail since the invasions and wars started off many years ago and generations have passed without an end to the misery. The latest in this story have been the internal displacements to enforce writ of the state, and in this particular case, writ of Pakistani state. Few years back it was Sawat and Buner where military operation had to be launched, this time it is North Waziristan, allegedly a safe heaven for terrorist for long time. The people are asked to vacate their houses and move to another safer place where camps are established to house them and provide them with necessary modalities of life. Being a far-flung area, education and health faci...

Pakistan is a parliamentary democracy where the sitting prime minister is taking a third term. His past two terms as prime minister failed to complete. Once he was over run by his political rivals and the other one was overthrown by the military. Punjab, the most-populated province, however, has been under his party's rule during 5 of last six political changeovers. He heads a faction of Muslim League named after him (Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz The major opposition party, the Pakistan people's Party (PPP), has largely softened towards PMLN owing to their mutual realization that fighting only leads military interventions and weakening of democracy. During last five years, PMLN played a friendly opposition to PPP regime which led to first ever democratic transition in the history of this country, a political party completing its term and handing over government to another political party. PPP being the 2nd largest party in the country has their leader of the opposition in the ...

Be it people of any given faith, habitants of Palestine are particularly unfortunate that their sufferings have come at a time of history when no body is interested to support their cause. For a globally connected social world, it is a very saddening sequel of a tragedy which is awfully one-sided and terribly terrible in its description. Confined in an open prison by a ruthless and run amoke military might, they have very limited options including breathing, which is at the mercy of their forceful occupant. Sometimes, they are allowed, other times they are suffocated. Lets not debate the dispute of whom the land actually belongs to. Lets not get ourselves lost in the history books to find out whether christians or muslims or jews are the rightful masters of the country. Lets not discuss its geographical aspects. Lets just consider that the people living on the Gaza strip are humans. They have been forced out of their homes and prisoned in what is referred to as the bigges...

Roger Federer and I have one thing in common, we both had a terrible year 2013. Although I can include PTI Chairman Imran Khan to this list as well for his performance in 2013 general elections in Pakistan yet I have questions about his “form” in 2012 when I compare him to Roger Federer or me. FEDERER qualifying for ATP World Tour Finals and getting back to form, looks like we both are going to have a better time next year.

In view of recent provocations of sentiments of muslims and its violent expression, I am sharing one of my older post that I wrote for ecriteaux when Facebook was involved in such a controversy. I really don't think a person of such low mental state and caliber doesn't deserve any attention save such impulsive reaction. Read and respond about this all.... Besides bringing people closer, helping initiate a dialogue between religions and civilizations and other contributions to world peace, internet has also become a source of spreading conspiracies and misleading stories about issues and non issues and committing crimes of all kinds. While it would be useless to criticize the minority of people who take advantage of this great human invention to spread hate and intolerance, the attitude of the great majority of people who render themselves hostages to such propaganda, however, deserves criticism. In another way it is the only side of the picture where we have better chan...

C urrent politicians vs judiciary crisis of Pakistan has attracted extensive coverage in the local media. The decisions of the superior judiciary also make headlines in some foreign outlets too owing to their far reaching consequences. What I want to discuss is the validity of the criticism the apex court is being hurled at for issuing show cause notice to the nascent prime minister. While the court has made its position clear by passing the verdict in Mr Gillani's case, that a failure to abide by its previous orders will be deemed as crime, it is totally baseless to expect them to take a different line on the very issue in a space of few weeks. How can they forgive the current PM for not doing something that they punished the ex-PM for. It seems as the politicians are themselves showing the red cape to the judges in order to fix the blame of their failure on other institutions. This is similar to the fact that a bill for legislation against terrorism lies forgotten...