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A crime against nation THERE is a stigma attached to nationalism which ‘nationalists’ around the world have not been able to shake off. This stigma exists due to a deliberate confusion created by the anti-nationalist forces and vested....		Provinces have genuine complaints PROFESSOR Ghafoor Ahmed, of the Muttahidda Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), believes that Punjab is as much a victim of lopsided development as are the other three provinces. This mass-scale lopsided...
Extremism is the problem MAKHDOOM Amin Fahim, of Pakistan People’s Party, believes that following the 1973 Constitution in letter and in spirit is the best way to deal with the feelings of alienation in the three smaller provinces....		Mother and sons IN the life of each one of us there always comes a time when we no more feel young, we no more feel old. We sink our head in our mother’s lap, and give a damn to what opinion the world would form about us. My ailing mother ran her fingers through my hair...
Quinine: boon or bane? THERE is no denying the fact that medicine has made progress over the decades, but way back in the 1940s, Quinine, an alkaloid of Cinchona, was the main treatment for malaria. And for years, it remained so. Now synthetic and less toxic drugs, such as Chloroquine and Proguanil, have replaced it almost entirely....		Decoding a private language READING an article some days ago about the special vocabulary that develops between close couples, I was quite taken aback to discover that this practice was not as I had thought...
The White Desert IF you have never travelled along with the desert and never smelt its wild flowers, dazzled by its colours and captured by its hospitability, then your journey is fragmentary. When, I traverse the White Desert...		To Mars and back again THE race is on. And man is going to Mars. On January 14, US President George Bush took a break from his war on terror and made an announcement that could...
Silencing the rickety noise-makers THE recent campaign against auto-rickshaws for not enforcing anti-noise and air-pollution laws has received a welcome response from the public. However, at the same time it has triggered protests by the...		The land of the Pharaohs AS I stepped into Karachi airport on that warm October morning, the scene at the departure lounge’s custom area reminded me of the used-clothes market. I was on my way to Cairo, land of the Pharaoh...
Preventing the second attack HEART attack (Acute Myocardial Infarction) has become a common disease in our society. It also remains the number one killer of mankind worldwide. The significance of the heart diseases is the sudden...		Scalped forests of Sindh SINCE before independence, the province of Sindh had many forests. The provincial forest department possessed about 1.2 million acres of land. However, all of this has been fast disappearing since. The...
The inaudible music A HONEYMOONING couple in an English countryside visits an old abandoned castle and its buildings. While entering its chapel, its rusted door opens with a shrilling sound which does not frighten them, but a spooky feeling goes down their spines....		The Pakistan press BEFORE Partition, the present Pakistan areas had some 556 dailies, weeklies and periodicals, with East Pakistan possessing only a fraction of them. Since most of these were owned by non-Muslims, their migration to India, specially from West Pakistan...
An annual of Urdu studies WHILE going through the latest issue of The Annual of Urdu Studies, I was reminded of a couplet from Maulana HaliProf Mohammad Umar Memon, the editor of this journal, can well share this assertion Maulana Hali had made in his own time. In fact, this journal...		Hot Seat WHEN the courts need Islamic interpretation of certain difficult law points, they call Syed Afzal Haider, a member of the Council of Islamic Ideology and the Pakistan Law and Justice Commission,...
Do something about fitness FOR the national team it was once again a case of being so near yet so far in Malaysia. The team’s performance in the first four matches of the Azlan Shah Cup had given rise to hopes that it will be able to defend its title and that would have meant coming out...		Get back to the drawing board WITH not much time left for the home series against India, the scales appear to be tipped in favour of the visitors than the hosts. Many would find this opinion a bit harsh and a bit early. But it is neither harsh nor early. Even a cursory glance over the performance...
Where are the professionals? IF you think there will come a time in Pakistan when a selected team will satisfy everyone, you might as well believe that your plumber will do a good job on a painless extraction of your tooth without anaesthesia! Unfortunately, in Pakistan, a position as important as that of a selector, has been given little importance over the years...		The Hemingway curse NOW it is necessary to get to the grindstone again. I would like to live long enough to write three more novels and 25 more stories. I know some pretty good ones,” wrote the reporter Hemingway in 1938. And indeed he did write and bagged the Nobel Prize for Literature 16 years later....
Their father’s daughters IT is very difficult in this world to be acknowledged and to create an identity on your own. It is even more difficult to achieve goals and objectives if you are an offspring of a famous personality. It requires persistent efforts to come up to the mark, as your first introduction always remains as the offspring of an illustrious parent...		Camel art WITH reference to article Camel art (December 14), this type of art is the cultural heritage of our civilization. Hence, steps should be taken at government level to develop this art...
MOSAIC: Monkey business ahead THE Year of the Monkey, Chinese soothsayers predict, will bring a stock market boom, a freer yuan currency — and a hefty dose of political chaos....		Newsmaker HE is a little guy who loves getting into fist-fights and when the odds turn high against him, he just opens his can of spinach, gains supernatural strength and thrashes the bad guys. He is Popeye the Sailor Man, one of the world’s most popular characters, who has just turned 75....