If The Dead Could Talk

Can you hear the crackling of his bones?
Can you hear the sound of his bleak skull?
Can you hear the shriek of his departed soul?
Oh, no! How could you! You are a living one

Ode to my Peoples!

We will always have in common; a bourgeois Aunty, a ‘Vilayat’ palat, a hijabi conservative and a provocative nonconformist.

The White Rose

The wedding night came and went. My routine didn’t change. I couldn’t let the boys down. Would I stop loving cars, stop drinking; stop making clever business? No. I will never change.

Tree of Life

During those days the paint of the left wall was blistered. If you scratched it a bit, you could smell saline walls with odor of monsoon rain. The front veranda had a yellow paint and walls were filled with lizards.

That Peculiar Feeling Of Falling Out Of Love

Many will try to find imaginary faults in the partner; saner individuals will introspect into their own minds. It is scary and confusing, but the at the back of the mind they know it is happening.

In the Belly of Time

If you ever see a Tourbillon escapement, you will be impressed with the miniature complex cage, taking turns and defying gravity. Its almost as if the artist gave life to a mechanical miracle.

A Leaf From the Book of Life

Now when I look back I feel as if I was in awe of her like she was a deity descended form the heavens above who could only be seen and revered and observed but not spoken to.

Tale of Two Rebels

It was from Firdous market till the bridge. “Stop it�. I cried.. But at that moment I felt that there was a demon inside her.� It’s fun and stop whining�. She snubbed me with a grin on her face.

Odd Jobs

So what if you ever scrubbed a toilet in a rough time or worked at a gas station or shed every sheath of your pride at a job interview? Remember, days from now, it will merely be an interesting memory for you and only you to cherish.

Who Has Seen the Wind

Dadu Khan has always been sad about his name and has thought many times to change it. He still remembers the trauma and humiliation he had to suffer during his childhood days, when his school mates used to twist his name and call him Padu Khan

No Quarter For Half Wits Please

Humanitarian disasters are bad because they kill people. Extremism is a menace because it kills people. Again I ask, why is there so much fuss about how we die and not how we live?

Why Yes: Homeless Hoes!!!

I had initially wanted to write a piece on my experiences as a stripper, I decided to take a few steps back and write about the equally sordid odd jobs I did before my debut as Rosa.

Aliya and the 3 Brothers

Aliya (my then best friend) was the lucky biotch wooed and asked out by all three of these handsome brothers. Am I bitter? Why Yes!

That emptiness, that nothingness, what lies beneath?

as we sit in large glass window living rooms in gated communities and mimic what we see on TV

The Healing Heart

I could not wait to let the show
Get started and enthrall us more.
But fate had marked me for her bait:
My heart is shriveled in my chest.

My Failed Independence

It was raining. It was too cold, with every drop, I kept thinking. What was I doing here? Here in this damp city, which I secretly liked.

Self and Architecture

Open your doors, roll up your blinds. Let air, light and noise drop in. They mark life. After all, you do want your Taj Mahal to be something more than a cemetery!

Pen-Pals

I was a young, sheltered girl ready to see the world and live a crazy life of anonymity. I made my plans for college. Plans to shave my head and dye my hair electric blue.

No More Gods

The surgeons were no more “God� but they remain some of the most respected, courageous and wisest of doctors and persons from whom one can learn.

Growing Up

I was ready to be impressed with anybody who lived in such a majestic dwelling, but this man was impressive anyway. Tall, dark, old...

Man And The Sun

For these troubling times, a dialogue between the morning sun and a man on a mountain about what is the essence of a human being.

The Man in the Mirror

How naïve we are sitting in one part of the world watching someone like us getting hurt somewhere else and we don’t do anything about it thinking it is not going to happen to us.

Salt N Pepper

I asked him about his wife and children. He loved kids but didn't have any. His wife, he said, was a loving person. He'd often say, "I have gray hair but I'm not that old!"

Fathers and Daughters

When Abu liked to talk of the moon, sitting by the sea, he was quite the man. He would tell me complicated things about life, and how to live it as a running clock with no hands. To feel its essential present.

The Cry of Karachi

“this is a city that can cry, look even the walls have become tears, I don’t know any other sea that is so distant.� I told you, sometimes I can’t let go.

Last Will and Testament

I, Lord James Eva Williamson of the state of Rajasthan, hereby bequeath all my property to MR Thomas Alva Eddyson. Who had saved my life.

Your Sentence

Think that the system is dehumanising. Somewhere deep down you know that you are using dead metaphors, shortcuts to the death of your own thought. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

Lighting Up My Fire

I switch on the radio, and a good song from the eighties is playing. I start reminiscing about the olden days, the fake Ray Ban Wayfarers and the Sony Walkmans...

Bionic Woman

The corporate woman is such a powerful and inspiring symbol when you are studying. It’s a realization you get later that a married working woman is a warrior.

Diabetes: Wrestling with a Twenty-First Century Monster

“Half of world’s population at risk of diabetes by end of next decade.� This disorder is encroaching on the traditional confines of age, ethnicity, and geography—in particular AGE.

Paper Trail

To produce five sheets of 8 x 11 inch paper we use the equivalent energy of an 80 watt bulb operating for an hour; but at a cost far greater than that of electricity.

Logotherapy: Humanism In Psychiatry

The heart has reasons that reason does not know ... A reflection on Victor Frankl’s “The Unheard Cry for Meaning�

Sustained Pleasure, Instant Gratification

So what am I supposed to do? Keep working hard to fulfill my ambitions, or worry about the state of my mind to positively influence the next generation?

A Staircase Connecting Three Worlds

This is a world where hopes are pinned, dreams take form and life’s problems seem to somehow droop their heads like tired banners on an old banyan tree.

I Thought I Heard You Laughing

Unlike most people I know, I don't believe in love at first sight. But the world being as mad as it is, somehow manages to make you.

Delirium Diary

Somebody is at the door, ringing the bell so hard that it seems the walls of this room will collapse. The light of the florescent tube is reflecting from the ceiling...

Bean Bag

In the days gone,
when the hide was soft.
The brilliant leather gleamed,
and invited tender touch.

A Life Created

Responsibility for a miracle,
another life, another hope
another start, a new beginning
a fresh Phoenix has risen.

The Landlady

Why do we exercise our right to hate so much more often than the right to love, anyway?

Six Minutes

The changing world,
Continuation of destruction
Through volcanoes and winds

Attractive Distractions

light in it's many vibrant hues
can blind and mystify, it is
but a distraction for the dark
that lies within.

The Price of Loving Karl Marx

Spouses have to offer financial, economic and social sacrifices to maintain a marital relationship with creative personalities. Karl Marx was no exception.

Dreams of Dania

Kamran lives in the old part of Lahore, near Lahori Gate. Living there, he says, makes him feel in sync with the heartbeats of the City.

Superseded

A divorced woman, suspects misfortunes to rob her again in a new turn in her life; this time it didn’t end up tragic.

Young and Old

When I see her motionless, swollen hands with disfigured nails and twisted fingers, I remember that those same hands gently soothed me as a child when I had asthma attacks.

No longer Hydera-GOOD, its Hydera-BAD

The fly-over under construction at Panjagutta, supposed to relieve the city of its traffic woes in the most crowded stretch of the city, gave way.

My mother, me and my daughter

There comes a moment in everyone’s life when a door bell or a telephone call changes everything.

The Hegemony of the “Cause”

There is something inherently flawed about the notion of placing a cause, however just and noble, before human life.

Accepting Death

Ignoring death is like cremating reality

Guillotine

The metallic slice
The smooth cut
The last sigh.

Stopping the Clock

The young Julius Caesar talks about Alexander the Great who at his age had conquered half the world and what has he (Caesar) achieved. This made me wonder what I have to show for my thirty years of life?

The Power of Positive Thinking

After almost thirteen years working at a large multinational engineering firm, he had attended a workshop conducted by a consulting firm. He was so impressed (and probably so tired of the corporate treadmill) that he immediately began learning more, event

Adam Khor Ayash Gorillay

Is everyone these days tripping over themselves to conform to this stereotype of being hip?

Lines, Sections, Boxes and Circles

We, as human beings, have a tendency to plan out everything in life. A planner becomes an important part of our world and we start believing everything the planner tells us, every single day.

A Free Being

I moved out. For once, I felt that I had broken away from the system. A system which I loved but one that never gave me the breathing space I’d always craved for...

unexpected life

Looking Back, Thinking Ahead..

I remember my excitement knew no bounds when I would fantasize of a room for myself, things of my own, night shows, boyfriends, mental peace (what I believed then, I never got at home), freedom to do most things, in fact all things my own way

The Commercialization of Wildlife

Resort operators sold Corbett as a honeymoon package, a wildlife destination as a corporate destination where team building and conferences were more important then actually protecting the species

Another Life in Danger in Pakistan

I am writing these lines to draw your attention to the case of political activist Dr Safdar Sarki who has been arrested by security agencies in Karachi. Eyewitnesses have said that he was taken away blind-folded to an unknown location

Value of a Citizen

What sets apart London or Britishers for that matter is respect for citizens. In Pakistan, only the lives of politicians, feudals, army officers and visiting foreigners (from western Europe or USA) has any value

I Wonder...

Infinity to present then to infinity

Hum bhi kabhi Millionaire baney gay...

So isi rozgaar ki talaash mein hum bhutakna shuru hotay hain..

The Trial of a Nation

In their opinion, Dr. Khan couldn’t possibly, understand the technology during the sixteen days he spent at Almelo and even then he could only go in or out of the factory at prescribed hours.

Nobody’s World

Before death claimed him, he had finally become a nobody, a nobody who was owned by no one and who belonged nowhere. This feel of a nobody that he had seen on the face of that man on that footpath had given him his peace.

Dev, Harry and I

It’s always a rather sensitive topic for guys my age. Carried away by misplaced patriotism and a rather low opinion of our own ability to deal with homesickness, we’d made our career choices and stayed back home, while flightloads of eager fri

No Intelligent Design Nor accident

A crude estimate of the number of life sustaining planets is over a few hundred thousand in this universe. On some of them life must have started, we don’t know today how. But like all science we’ll find it tomorrow- attribute to God if you li

Away and Far Away...

What is life I ask the One
If life is love I have got one
If thou didn’t come and hold me well
What life is worth, I’d rather have none

The Truth About Beauty

The infinite enigma of beauty can turn out to be the falsest mirage, the mystery of love can turn into a cruel trap, religious and philosophical truths so beautiful when they are first encountered can become unbreakable chains around one’s neck and

Insight

All colours merged,
Lives absorbed
the white becomes whiter

Poems: There is No Way & After the Rain

And around me,
silently
life packs up
and leaves.

Unpoet

float and fall like flakes
one after another
in a suffocating embrace
to the ground
unloved and undead

Another day!

It’s a Monday morning. The time must be close to 7 AM, I am still in bed, conscious enough to know that my alarm clock will beep any minute.

The Last Leaf

Up in the tree
Touched by the breeze
What must it be
For the last of the leaves

Some Weekends

We all revert to our younger selves at homes. When my world was theirs and theirs was mine. I am still their world. Mine has changed but inside these walls, I try to stop time.

Half a Confession-I

My impulsive ride on the motorbike bare back to topless, daring the gods of winds and tarmac, shattered that idyll. I insisted on going to the graveyard, open the shroud to look at his face and despite protestation I kissed him on the lips one last time.

Innovative Life

This year, as an alternative to unrealistic and reproachful resolutions, consider following these 'Ten Steps to Emotional Health in 2005.'

Eternal Love

He had always felt her presence. She was there with him, in him, by him.. She was inside of him. She was him. And he was her. Collectively, they were a living yellow that which becomes, or is, with a natural unavoidable union of blue and green. It was wri

Sunset

There is a beginning
after the end!

Two Poems

I found myself drifting into darkness
To a world strangely unknown

Soul Dance

Back in the day.... music was my life ... it was magic for me.. my body just moved no matter what it was ... i was free in this world

Cold Metal

Dad had a serious arterial blockage in his heart four years ago. A triple bypass was the only thing that could save him.

The Three Queens

My mother was her mother’s slave. And her mother was queen. Who was my father? I do not know. It was not important... As worshippers of the old religion, of our mother goddess, we understand that women are the subtle rivers that carry the world forw

Mercy Killing

When the pain becomes intractable and death becomes inevitable, the urge to overcome the agony by an abrupt end of life, surfaces.

The Collage of Modern Life

The messed up conundrum: Stick to the scale. Even rock music is for sale. There is an E and an F and fiddling around B, and then back to E. Is it the perfect formula for ecstasy?

Chiragh e Sehri

What is written on paper can be altered. What is written in fate only gods can change.

Coins

Why am I alive and not dead? I let my body fall freely, the eyes fixed to the sky. A big splash. And all my questions answered.

Shashank

An eulogy

Reality?

Hot, yet sticky.
Spicy, yet sour.

Boston

The joy at having the customs official at Logan look at my passport and my visa and say, 'You’re going to Wellesley? That’s fantastic. I wish I could have gone to Wellesley.'

Of Enmity, Freedom, And Other Things

It is a sad fact that many of our educational institutions are being abused for purposes that are not only unacademic but are also generating enmity and paranoia among people.

My Bars of Chocolate

Girls are like bars of chocolate. They are sweet and too much consumption of either can cause heart trouble. Then there is bitter chocolate, which like girls can leave a bitter taste in your mouth.

I’m With Stupid

thought to myself, as I searched for the right kind of chocolate fudge cake, that I was now living in an ascendant empire, the most powerful country on earth and perhaps in all of human history. An empire!

Fat-Free!

But what about food you ask?

My Beautiful Rizwan

Such was the overpowering presence in my life, of Rizwan - my husband, my friend, my soulmate, my shaheed.

Dear Dana

The last time I saw you was at the Espresso Royale Café.

In Search of Peace and Flowers

personal perspective on the January rally

Delhi University Politics

The civic lesson constituted our being made to lie down face down and rub our noses on the ground

The Shah of Chicago: A Novel

Will you purchase more narcotics?

Anything But Vacant

I would like some thighs, cut the fat, I want it lean

What a Day !

I lay my first steps into the ’educated world’...

Of Boylove and Boylovers

We (even in the oh-so-liberal West) live in a more conformist society that we are led to believe

Discovering Ali Hasan

Once upon a time, falling in love was not that complicated.

The Quranic Concept of Love

A Quranic perspective on love, choosing one’s life partner, and intimate relations amongst the sexes.