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As elections approach in Pakistan, well at least talk of elections becasue in Pakistan, elections are an elusive phenomenon, I thought of posting something I wrote in 2019 but never got around to posting it. It is however, as relevant today as it was then and will be relevant for a long time to come as I dont see anything changing in Pakistan:  As I read different views of people, on various talk shows, in newspaper articles, social media, trying to pin down, some in good faith, where the problem lies with our society, the diagnosis I have picked up is religious intolerance, government apathy, rise of religious fundamentalism, some have even talked about illiteracy. That pretty much covers the spectrum of the debates in the wake of Mishal Khan or any incident since or before it. Any one of this diagnosis can be fixed in short term through force or radical change. It is something which can be covered marvelously by 24 hours news channels and we can have a fantastic coverage of ...

Since I got pregnant with my son, I have not watched a movie in a cinema theater. During pregnancy I did not want to expose the fetus to loud sound and after he was born there is not enough time, given how limited leisure time one gets with baby, home and work. Plus one of us has to babysit and watching a movie alone in a theater is really not too much fun.   This, however, does not mean that I do not watch movies. I watch an occasional Hollywood or Bollywood movie on Netflix or Amazon Prime Video. In recent months, finding a Bollywood movie on these platforms has been a little difficult. On 10 th January 2019, ‘young Bollywood actors,’ (as conscientious-less media declared, although I have more appropriate labels for them, and what qualifies as ‘young’?), met Prime Minister elect, Narender Modi in Delhi. The selfie that did the rounds afterwards was a fantastic record of who all was at that meeting. I am grateful to worldwide web that in seconds it reached far and wide and s...