Match Point

How did we think we would be safe visiting a Sufi shrine on July 2? What was I thinking? My family could have been killed. I would never have forgiven myself. One of our elder family friends seated on the sofa interrupts my contemplation: "Well sometimes such attacks should take place. How else will these ignorant people learn that what they are practicing is shirk?”

As a content producer for a current affairs program, these clauses are an ambiguous and scary proposition. The vaguer the law, the more prone it is to abuse. In fact, it’s even possible that if I talked about my puppy Buffy, who was kidnapped a while ago, I could face prison since I depressed readers and 'hurt national sentiment!'

I am a firm believer in the dictum ‘personal is political’ (don’t know who said it and I can’t be bothered to Google it and include the reference here) and even a piece which on the face of it may seem frivolous and magazine-ish, it can still say a lot

Pakistan as a country faces an identity crisis. We range from Honda hi lainsa to Blackberry hi lainsa and do not know what to make of one another or how to coexist in a meaningful way. Thus all we do is just heap blame upon one another and not take action on things that really matter.

Dubai and New Delhi have realized that building flyovers and underpasses or expanding roads is not the solution to traffic congestion and have reverted to establishing new or refurbishing old public transport systems. Here, in Karachi we take pride in building these corridors one after another which cater to only car owners or the elite.

This month's National Geographic feature on Pakistan has gone through every single possible cliche in the book. We are supposed to be surprised by how friendly people in Pakistan actually are, how much they know about our way of life and in how much danger these relatively friendly, sort of liberal people are from some boogeyman (in this case the Taliban).

It was really late in life when I started reading and appreciating poetry beyond text books. Like a typical teenager I started off by reading Wasi Shah – kash main tere haseen haath ka kangan hota – fame. There was no looking back and I began delving deep into the ocean of poetry and realized how much I had missed.

Conversation was flowing and no one held back - drone strikes, US policy in the region and why we weren't visiting Agra to see the Taj Mahal, Woodrow Wilson's leanings (left or right) and the great partition debate. Lively is an under statement in this group. And it seems we ARE visiting Mumbai!

A new trend some companies have adopted is fooling candidates about the openings they have. Human Resources will advertise one opening so that applicants will send in their CVs but when it is time for the final interview they will rope them in for another.