top of page

Recent Columns.

30 Jun 2023

Canceling Equity

The reason for the mass resignation: harassment and a toxic work environment they say was created by two newly elected Republican members of the county council.

2 Jun 2023

An Indiana Inquisition

Todd Rokita, Indiana's ultra-conservative attorney general, had filed the complaint in 2022—quite obviously to punish Bernard, who had performed the procedure...

24 May 2023

Too many people...

A FEW weeks ago, India reached the dubious milestone of becoming the most populous country in the world. According to the UN estimates, India’s population reached 1.4 billion in late April, overtaking China’s figures which used to be the highest in the world.

19 May 2023

Trump the Defamer

Trump the Defamer ... The day after a Manhattan jury held Donald J. Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll nearly three decades...

1 May 2023

Pills, Politics, and Pence

The renewed abortion pill fight now seems to be Pence's ticket to showing himself as a man of conviction. Pence has been struggling for relevance as other...

10 Mar 2023

Women’s Equality—When?

Collusion, silent or otherwise, in inequity requires moral accountability. So it must be with the resistant men who deny women their due and the men who talk...

1 Mar 2023

Desperate to reach foreign shores

It is a depressing truth that while the rich party on in Pakistan, the poor are bereft of hope.

24 Feb 2023

More American Carnage

Every week the list of dead women gets longer. A pattern of “ego killings” emerges.

14 Feb 2023

Deeper in Debt

Austerity Blues ... The IMF has wanted Pakistan to restructure the debt, but China is reluctant to do so. China could bail Pakistan out by suspending or, better...

20 Jan 2023

Traveling While White

The white woman traveler (newly reinvented as a morally noble believer in the kindness of strangers and the healing balm of world travel) is happily reviving a...

18 Jan 2023

Brain games

The exodus is not a bad thing. Pakistan's beleaguered and shrinking economy is not producing jobs at a rate that can employ...

3 Jan 2023

The Crows of Karachi

To depict a loveless and macabre world—a world of the scarecrow acting as the Lord of blood-thirsty crows, of the harridan decked out as a beauty queen...

25 Aug 2023

Lock him up

In Pakistan, political prosecution is an everyday tactic.
HE IS BEING WATCHED, even when he uses the toilet. Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan is currently being held in a small dark room in...

23 Aug 2023

A split world

Aid makes countries like Pakistan dependent for as long as Western countries make it impossible for them to compete fairly in the global market.

16 Aug 2023

Stepping over a dying man

The work of Sherpa guides who often go up ahead of the climbers has historically been erased even from the records of mountain climbing.

28 Jul 2023

Passports and Power

The passports that have brought more opportunity for their kids and grandkids have defeated their own dreams of returning to a happy home. They cannot...

26 Jul 2023

The fires in Europe

The rescue missions being undertaken for wealthy tourists show what can be done when there is true intention for life to be saved.

19 Jul 2023

Moon and power

Indian and South Asian engineers' qualifications stand equal to their Western counterparts in complex missions.

16 Jul 2023

In a war-torn and forgotten country, there is little anyone can do for Afghan women

A new generation of Afghan women, who have spent their lives under US occupation and now under Taliban oppression, is starved of hope for a better future.

14 Jul 2023

The Dutiful Wife

Written in lipstick on his back are the words “1 fat Englishman. I fuck anything.” The words are the handiwork of his then wife Hilly, who had learned that her...

More Columns.

13 January 2021

'Safe haven' for white terrorists? | DAWN

THEY didn’t understand terrorism until it was too late. Ever since 9/11, and arguably even in the years prior to that, Americans believed that terrorism was a Muslim problem. Such was this belief that in the post-9/11 years the Department of Homeland Security was created to protect the US from Islamist militancy. And as everyone in South Asia and the Middle East experienced, that was hardly all of it.

8 January 2021

Chaos and Carnage | The Baffler

Twelve more days of Trump is twelve too many

6 January 2021

Citizen journalist | DAWN

Zhang Zhan became one of a few people who made videos of what was happening inside Wuhan for all the world to see.

30 December 2020

The Mughal feminist | DAWN

Some would argue that calling women of the past ‘feminists’ is reading the present into the past...

23 December 2020

Il prezzo umano del lusso di Dubai

This is the story of a once rich and profitable emirate that today is just a desert playground for former dictators, vagrants and princes

23 December 2020

The questions never asked | DAWN

A close look reveals an erasure of the dirty origins of the great fortunes of men like Mr Darcy and Mr Bingley.

18 December 2020

Conflict of Pinterest | The Baffler

Women-friendly on the outside, toxic on the inside

13 December 2020

Rich vaccine, poor vaccine | DAWN

IT is finally vaccine time — at least in some places. A little over a week ago, the first person was vaccinated against Covid-19 in the United Kingdom. This week, the United States began to vaccinate its own front-line healthcare workers. A great deal of drama surrounded the rollout...

11 December 2020

Performing Modernity

You don't have to look too far to find the dark side of Dubai

9 March 2024

Path to addiction

Young people, advertisers know, will only be attracted to products that are seen as cool.

4 December 2020

Reality Bites | Rafia Zakaria

Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughe, and the pursuit of literary fame

2 December 2020

Afghan govt, Taliban announce breakthrough deal to pursue peace talks

Afghan government and Taliban representatives said on Wednesday they had reached a preliminary deal to press on with peace talks, their first written agreement in 19 years of war and welcomed by the United Nations and Washington.

bottom of page