Chowraha

When the man with the gun, overtook Jinnah avenue in Islamabad, parked his car near the important Blue area and air fired using his Kalashnikov while smoking and drinking energy drinks, all forms of media joined the breaking-news bandwagon. Everyone turned into crime experts, terrorism analysts, police advisers and law enforcement critics. Everyone was more intelligent than those managing the situation - as is always the case in Pakistan perhaps. Some found it tragic, whilst others found it entertaining, yet none could turn away from the story. Lessons learnt? Many actually, and I want to pen them down before more is learnt about these terrorisers and I'm proven wrong. A super bored nation We are a super bored nation - despite all the bombings, target killings, drone attacks, spy attacks, honour killings, etc we still find it entertaining to cling on to a family in Islamabad. We love drama and especially family drama. His name varied from Sikander to Kamran and Ramzan, he is said t

What happens when one brother supports PTI and the other JI. You have a highly politicised house that has learnt how to play its own politics within its boundaries. My blog post published in The Express Tribune  - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The following blog post has been republished with the permission of the author Fayez Asar and originally appeared as a Facebook note on the author's page - this post is an account of the 23rd March 2013 PTI rally in Lahore, Pakistan.  10 Magical Minutes at the PTI Jalsa I wanted to write about the entire Jalsa at the Minar-e-Pakistan on 23rd March 2013, but I’ll save that for another day.  Right now, I just want to write about the last 10 magical minutes of the Jalsa.  Just those last few minutes made my entire trip completely worth it. The weather was extremely pleasant throughout the day.  It was not too hot to begin with and the occasional light drizzle helped cool everyone down even further.  The mood was extremely festive as it always is at PTI Jalsas.  As expected, the crowd became much more focused once Imran Khan stepped onto the podium.  The crowd knew that this was a special day where he was going to officially kick off PTI’s election campaign by delivering a b

Pakistan is a state. But what kind of a state is it? Is it a nation state? Is it a country for Pakistanis? If it is then we need to understand who Pakistanis are. Are they a group of people who speak the same language? Or are they from the same race? The only commonality amongst all Pakistanis (or at least 95% of them) is Islam . This is why during the movement for independence of Pakistan the slogan on the tongue of Pakistanis was پاکستان کا مطلب کیا؟ لا الہ الا اللہ (What does Pakistan mean? There is no god but Allah). The slogan was the heart beat of every Muslim of subcontinent who supported a separate homeland. And this is why the leaders of Pakistan movement created a slogan مسلم ہو تو مسلم لیگ میں آو (Muslims should be Muslim Leaguers). These slogans were rationalized by Quaid e Azam in his speech at many occasions.  One such occasion was his address to Civil, Naval, Military and Air Force officers of the Pakistan government at Khalaqdina hall, Karachi on 1