Forgive n Forget

It is hard to move on in any relationship if we continue to hold on to old grudges. It is best to let it all go and travel light.

When Will You Return?

In the beginning of our marriage I considered it a routine question of a typical wife and did not give it much importance. But gradually that question became my emotional problem.

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.

The End Of An Affair

It seemed like the most beautiful day of Nazia’s life. The man who had stolen her heart had finally asked her to marry him. She felt euphoric; it was a miracle she did not burst into a bollywood song routine at her office.

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.

Rolling Back By 42 Years

He was standing near the policed barrier that is zero point for reaching Ram Janam Bhoomi Garbh Sthal- the idyllic piece of land where Lord Ram was born.

Prosthesis

Theirs was a usual relationship. At least they both thought that they were usual. They had a small dream, the dream all lover’s dream when they are in love.

Denial of Right of Self-Determination to Kashmirs

July 13th is commemorated as the day courageous Kashmiris laid their lives in a struggle against despotic and barbarous rule of Maharaja in 1931.

When You Love More Than One

Since human sexuality is intimately connected with social morality, such relationships are judged on moral grounds rather than understood on psychological basis.

Obama’s Courtship of the Muslim World

President Obama inherited a Muslim world in which America became the most heinous bogey. Quite understandably then his one of the most urgent tasks was to repair the relationship between the U.S. and the Muslim world.

In Pursuit of a Pakistani Deng Xiaopeng

Pakistan must learn from China. We must focus on developing a holistic trade policy with China. Chinese investment in Pakistan is critical.

The Prevailing Sensibilities

I produced Talking Faith out of my complete conviction of demonstrating that the religious barriers can never hamper the natural ways of human living.

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!

The Stranger

Once she made sure her bedroom door was shut and securely locked, she went about her recently cultivated routine of applying lotion to, and spraying foundation onto, her legs...

A PVC Pipe Relationship

This sphere is not built to take loads. It is not meant to be subjected to pressures. It is built with just as much contribution from each partner so as to contain them within.

A Marriage Market, Full Of Lemons

As I sat there, listening to stories of failed love, broken marriages, cheating partners and those insisting that they did not have time to mingle, I could not help but think about George Akerlof.

Speechless

I am thinking of him tonight and the universe seems to mourn the death of our love. I don’t talk to him anymore. There is nothing left to say.

Happy Effing VD to you too!

So here I am. Out of town on a work conference with my boss. In yet another comfy bed. The large windows on my hotel room paint a pretty picture of downtown Seattle. Bright, enticing.

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.

He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not...

What are we doing? Here we are spending most of our time together. Endless hours spent talking about everything under the sun, and yet you insist on having no strings attached.

Torture me, hurt me, yes...yes...YES!!!

He sits perched on the edge of the bed in another seedy hotel, dragging on an endless string of cancer sticks, from my corner under the sheets I gaze despondently.

Sexless and Loveless Marriages

Many people are surprised how the same routine life that provides stability and security starts to kill creativity, spontaneity and love. When monogamy turns in monotony.

Yes we can, Obama!

We are not demanding of Obama to perform a miracle, but seems, and people across the world would agree, that Obama will leave a better world when he leaves the White House than what he confronts today.

Live In

“The world outside the campus is very cruel. There are people who pass sarcastic remarks or start giving patronizing advice regarding my job, career, potential marriage� she told as they sat together

They Will Seal The Case Sheets!

How are doctors affected when their treatment plans go wrong? What is the difference between complications, difference of opinion and negligence?

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.

Life Long Commitment vs. Singledom

Marriage, I think, is highly overrated. Marriage being the perfect happily ever after and the solution to life’s problems is ‘just a myth we’ve been fed since childhood’

Race to the Finish

60 years ago, when Jackie Robinson, first Black Man to play in US Major League Baseball, walked onto the field, he was taunted, ridiculed, and booed, but despite all adversity, he delivered.

The Psychology of Mothering

It is interesting that as our culture is changing and many women are reluctant to take on motherly duties, more men are becoming motherly and nurturing.

Lost That Loving Feeling

Is love bound to end? Is very relationship doomed to
die a natural death at the hands of time?

Sunset at Uluwatu

Anjali and I had spent the afternoon in Tanjong Benoa. A small touristy cove off the Southern End of Bali, it had been a typical beach bumming day banana boating, snorkeling...

Indian Supreme Court says- ‘Live in is marriage’

A momentous turn that will create upheavals in Indian society from bottom to top.

Psychology of Men's Honour and Women's Sexuality

When Eastern women become financially and emotionally independent their husbands start losing control and become abusive and violent

The Landlady

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

And Now, The Charter of Demands—The Comedy Continues!

Turkish President Abdullah Gul was not very impressed after meeting the cream of the Pakistani political elite.

The Other Woman

She was a friend who just happened to be a woman...or, was she?

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.

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.

No Choice But This

A Three Act Play ... what does a father do for a son paralysed neck down...

We are family

White

A lone tear escapes her eye. And burns a trail down my cheek.

My Life Story

When I close my eyes in solitude and think about the goings-on in my life during the past 17 years, I realize that a big part of my life is gone, withered away, wasted...

Images

It is almost 8 evening in Mississauga.I am walking outside. There is an urge to get out the house and walk on the pavements.

The Choice of Leading a Gay Life

‘forcing them to marry hoping he or she will change’ – such a approach invites anger, irritation, tensions and worse absolute breakdown of relations.

Allama Iqbal and His Women

When we study the psychological aspect of Iqbal’s life, we find out that despite having a sensitive heart and a brilliant mind, he had to struggle against many romantic contradictions through out his life.

Splinter

They were the couple, everyone said so, back in those days. The lightness of him, the gold hair and blue eyes around her dusky skin, like the demarcation of borders of countries in an atlas, setting her aglow.

Globalization and Human Relationship

Globalization has stressed all relationships. It is imperative to understand this phenomenon and to take steps to adjust to the changing environment.

A Teacup in My Hand

Sonya sat at the kitchen table, early Monday morning, with a cup of hot tea. She had some time to herself before setting off to battle her job, and the tensions that went with the package.

Electric Illusion

Everyday we are taking another step to form what is so called “emotional attachment” with the machine which humans created. Instead of forming bonds between humans, we are forming this relationship with a machine to create our own perfect worl

The Fall

I used to have such a round full face as a child. Plump red cheeks, the sort of face that aunties kiss and uncles pinch. So why is it that in every picture I see of myself I am frowning deeply, so very serious?

Out of the Woods Yet

One evening, as I was packing for the day, my eyes set on an intriguing post in the electronic bulletin board, “Wet weekends at Hermann’s Palace”. The post carried the address and a map as well...

When Romantic Love Does Not Mature

Since intimate relationships bring out the best and worst in all of us it is important to know what hurdles people have to cross to initiate and maintain healthy and mature romantic relationships

Cyber Love

Online shopping is attractive because a lot of products of different brands, packages and prices are easily obtainable. The same is true of Internet dating. A wide variety of individuals are available

Unfaithfully Yours

Are we going to be ostriches or we are ready to face the reality, the truth of extra-marital affairs?

Glossing Over Bad Patches of History

Japan is desperately trying to hide its past so that the nation is saved of the shame of its leaders’ dreadful deeds in the past.

What Drives Men and Women of Indian Subcontinent to Infidelity?

It seems that there is a conspiracy of adulterers particularly in the midst of the Islamic communities of the Indian subcontinent.

Muslims Not Married in America

How hard is it to find a good man? Or a good woman for marriage?

Blood and Virtue

He’d missed the death rattle, that last tortured breath squeezed from straining lungs as they gave in despairingly to the inevitable, lost as he’d been in his own thoughts

Punch Drunk Love

He lay on the drawing room carpet; face down, totally drunk and vomiting. My eyes welled up and I could not stop my sobs.

Maelstrom

One didn’t hate a slug, after all, for being a slug. One hates a slug only when it touches upon something hidden deep within ourselves.

A Fobby Love Story

My love vocabulary increased tenfold here, with words like relationship (it was always love, what the hell is a relationship?), breakups (no breakups in pakistan, either you marry the girl or her parents marry her to someone else), ex ...

Half a Confession II

Body sponges, change of sheets, the general bull shit and I cannot help but smile -- what everyone prays for and dreams about -- I had taken for granted -- the leisurely life style where people around me would do my bidding without me having to lift a fin

Daughtering

I am afraid I will say things like I hate you and you killed my father to my mother if I see her again…

SoulMate

There’s something about finding a soulmate. You just know what the other person is. You never have to explain yourself or even tell another about you. You just know.

Premala ka Pyar

She waited with patient resoluteness for the rising sun as he slept with his fingers entwined deeply in her hair…

The Baby...

Sometimes he was unable to hide his impatience with her when he came home from his job at the pharmacy and saw her sitting in the same hunched over position as he had left her that morning.

The Gun

A life which, after his retirement kept him on edge, surprised in a world that had changed so drastically since he had entered the service so many years ago. His wife was the biggest surprise.

What Dreams Are Made Up Of

I will disappear from your sight, but I’ll always be sneaking glances at you whenever I can. I will never call you but your voice will be playing in my head everyday. I will never write to you but will imagine what you are doing at every minute of

The Corrupted Daughter

What makes us corrupt? I sometimes wonder whether it is related to the awareness of having nothing or all. She was searching for someone within herself, someone who was there, yet missing or hiding.

Our Mother

And together we stand as one before our mother. Our mother, who at times didn’t give enough and at other times gave too much, until she ran out of herself.

Memory and other Poems

My mother says
if women did not forget,
they would have just that one child.

I am the result of her forgetfulness.

Amma and the Clock

Tick tick tick…tick..tick….tick………..tick ………….tick , there it was, the clock was dying on me again. I was watching it die, and although it was lifeless, the dull, chocking ticks made the death look so

Shashank

An eulogy

Indifference and Difference

Has Shampa started liking him? She hasn’t told him though. Could she be in love with him? The difference between their ages is hard to ignore...

Kahan Se Aap Zamaney Ke Bad Aye Hain

When I first saw her she was about fifteen. I was in Senior Cambridge. We lived in a Catholic hostel where it was compulsory to attend the morning Mass at dawn, six days a week...

To Love or to Like?

Cross gender and cross generation friendship is an under explored subject in literature and in movies. Yes, we have Sugar Daddies and Mammas and Trophy Wives and Girl Friends. But that is exploitative and not the norm.

So Far Away From Me!

in today’s world where people get their would-be spouse to sign an affidavit of compensation lest they cheat on them, chastity is indeed expensive!

Foreign Qualified

ilm hassil karo chahay is kai liyae tumhain cheen bhi kyoon na jana parai

The Beast and I

When I talk someone else, it is his cynical, mocking voice I hear in my ears. When I look into another person’s eyes, I peer instead into the center of his soul, glimpsing uncharted, thrilling vistas and promises that excite and repel me.

Miscued Doldrums; The Saga Revisited, The Feud Recreated

The age-old anti-Pak syndrome grips dejected Indian musicians...

Parveen

Between the muffled sensation of her oblique breast

The Case For and Against The Satanic Verses

Evaluating Diatribe and Dialectic as Art

Perfect Women. Imperfect Men

women should also be able to fulfill their responsibilities towards their homes

All The Way To Maine

How some Pakistani and Indian kids found out that the enemy has a face.

Worldwide India-Pakistan peace movement begins?

It is time for Indians and Pakistanis worldwide to re-humanize their enemies

From The Table

You can’t dance around or over me, cannot provoke me, arouse me or hear the scream of my soul.

White Charade

Based on true events, circa early ‘90s, Karachi, when The White Charade became a symbol of terror

Degrees of Horror

Someone in Kutch is just a few degrees removed from me

The Bombing

A temporary replica of Ka’aba was recreated for the occasion.

Of Boylove and Boylovers

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

Deprivation

This is my story. Leave me and you die

On Being an Ex-Expatriate

What’s it like to come back to Pakistan? An ex-expatriate speaks.

Calligraphy of Coils

A conversation with Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali

The Good, the Bad and the Anxiety

Can’t we make choices about how to lead our lives without someone out there thinking that we are breaking a religious or cultural law? Who decides what these laws are anyway?

Love Means Never Having to Say You Are An Infidel!

Can you be a Muslim and marry a Jew? A closer look at inter-religious marriages.