Naseem Ansari’s reply to Mukhtar Masood Khaled Ahmed Naseem Ansari is a surgeon by profession who retired from the teaching faculty of Aligarh Muslim University in the 1980s. His class-fellow at Aligarh, Pakistani civil servant Mukhtar Masood, wrote his memoir Awaz-e-Dost in 1973 which became a bestseller. Naseem thought he should write his memoirs too, […]
Aaj ka Insaan Why is good literature becoming an extinct commodity in a country which has more poets per square kilometer than any other country in the world? For five years Ajmal Kamal has been trying to fill the gap by bringing the best of Pakistani as well as international literature to the readers of […]
Kali Barish (The Black Rain) is a metaphor as ominous as any other, implying a heavenly retribution no one under the sky will be able to escape from; when will perpetrate a society through and through, say the punishment will be overwhelming. But the irony, the giant’s reaction to the incident, is no less ominous […]
Press History seen by a journalist Kamal Habib MR. AJMAL KAMAL has made a very neat and elegant translation of Mr Zameer Niazi’s The Press in Chains. At least for once, the Pakistan leadership has not shown any attention for a book in which the author’s erudition, dedication to the cause of press freedom, and […]
Towards a violent Gujarat WEBSITE REVIEW The centre of an ancient city saw a medieval style carnage. Scenes of death, humiliation and destruction were enacted on children and men. Ten to twelve gas cylinders were burst the day the Hindus had arrived in the attack Sabrang and its website hosted the site on May 5, […]
WRITING poetry is not hard work any more. Sometimes I am inspired to write. At other times I just sit down and write. Sometimes whole poems are created around it. I even dream whole poems sometimes, though not as often as I used to. Once I remembered one line ‘hamaray hanson nay talab nahoen dekha’ […]
MASUJI IBUSES novel Black Rain, first published in 1965, eleven years after the event, is not the first creative work ever used to decimate a city and its inhabitants by the U.S. It recounts the reality of what happened in Hiroshima on the dark day of 6th August 1945 after days, weeks, months and years […]
بیکرنگ: آٹھ ادبی کتابوں کا سیٹ ہر چند کتابوں کی ہماری شعبہ میں زبردست زیادتی رہتی ہے مگر اس کا یہ مطلب بھی نہیں کہ کتابیں چھپ ہی نہیں رہیں۔ کتابیں چھپ رہی ہیں۔ اور اچھی بھی۔ برا ہو اس گرانی کا کہ جس نے کتاب کو اس قدر گراں کر دیا ہے کہ اب […]
The recent publication of “primordial” aimed at the “demystification of contemporary history” and brought out by a secular, modernist and humanist publishing house, is an attempt vis-a-vis a modernist and fundamentalist reading of history. The editor informs the readers that “reconstructing” past events means “distorting” or “rediscovering” them the last and ultimate revelation as interpreted […]
THE Shahanshah of Iran, the Shah of Shahs or the Aryamehr — the rising sun of the Aryan race — as he preferred to designate himself, had an irresistible urge to have his proud person portrayed in full Napoleonic grandeur. Painters, poets and sculptors were commissioned from all over the world to immortalize ‘Him’, along […]