People often think that female celebs don’t get along or support each other. Well, it ain’t true. It is believed that it was actress and producer Hareem Farooq who introduced none other than Hania Aamir to the world of showbiz. The former reiterated this at a programme while plugging her film Mango Jutt. She said she was the one who launched Hania A in Janaan, adding that Hania A was always meant to fly and she only caught her early. Interesting. It seems Hareem F’s a good catcher. But why stop only at a single catch?

Marital Matters

Actor Muneeb Butt has a piece of advice for married couples, to which they should pay heed. He was on a TV show where he reasoned that people should keep their marital problems private — within the confines of the four walls of their homes. He argued that, once you talk about your marital issues on social media, others will have opinions on your private life and that social media is not the right kind of platform to air grievances. We totally agree with Muneeb B (as long as we’re not talking about domestic violence). In fact, not just married pairs, even singles shouldn’t talk about their… no, that’s stretching it a bit too much, perhaps.

Tiger Attacked

On October 18, Indian actor Tiger Shroff (son of Jackie Shroff) was leaving a football club in the posh Juhu area of Mumbai in his car when two gunmen opened fire at the front passenger seat of the vehicle at a close range. Luckily, the bullets did not hit Tiger S, but his driver and a bystander received injuries. Reportedly, members of the infamous Lawrence Bishnoi gang, which is after Bollywood stars such as Salman Khan, attacked the actor. After the incident, the Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Eknath Shinde, met with Tiger S and assured him of his government’s full support in giving him protection and “not sparing anyone who is trying to threaten our film industry.” While we heave a sigh of relief that Tiger S came out of the whole situation unscathed, we fear that the aforementioned gang is getting difficult to handle for India’s authorities.

The Joke’s on Jerry

On October 9, American comedian Jerry Seinfeld was doing a show in Chicago. During the gig, a man interrupted the avowed Zionist and shouted, “Seinfeld, you will see, Palestine will be free… I’ve had enough of genocide.” Listening to this, Jerry S first broke into a dance and then replied, “I’m a racist. It’s a genocide, I’m into it. I’m gonna find out how much your ticket was and I’m sending it to Israel. No, I won’t, I’m keeping it.” Whether you keep the money or send it to Israel, Jerry S, you couldn’t have damned yourself better.

Quit India Movement

It should be worrisome for the international community to see the direction that India is heading in due to its bigoted government. On October 10, Indian actor Imran Khan — a nephew of Bollywood big gun Aamir Khan — took part in a protest in Mumbai alongside the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP), demanding the resignation of the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar. The CEC has been accused of unfairly deleting the names of 16 crore people from the voters’ list. Imran K, who holds an Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card because he lives in the US, was briefly detained by the police. Two weeks later, the authorities issued him a ‘leave India’ notice, ordering him to leave the country by October 28. How chicken-hearted the Indian government is! It thinks that by sending people away it will be able to hide its nefarious actions.

Hoo-ah! For Pacino

It has been announced that the legendary American actor Al Pacino, who won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in the film Scent of a Woman, will receive a lifetime achievement award for his awesome acting career and inspiring humanitarian work at next year’s Sag-Aftra actors’ union awards. The 86-year-old will be the 62nd recipient of the award. The ceremony will take place on February 28, 2027, in Los Angeles, and will be live-streamed on Netflix. Congratulations to Al P! His tremendous body of work, impressing us in movies such as The Godfather, Scarface and Serpico among others, is already a masterclass in acting, both for budding and seasoned actors.

Published in Dawn, ICON, October 25th, 2026

“We have become mature now. Earlier, we used to feel bad about what people said. Now it’s the people themselves who seem bad.”

— Naumaan Ijaz, actor

“I hate Naumaan Ijaz.”

— Khalilur Rehman Qamar, writer

“If we deliver our work a day late, we’re called unprofessional. But if our payments are delayed by 30 days, we’re told that the accounts department is still ‘processing’ them.”

— Sahar Hashmi, actor

“In the ’70s I could wear a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and walk from the NCA to my home. Men would whistle, but from a distance. No one dared to lay a hand on me. Things have changed very much for the worse.”

— Seemi Raheal, actor

Published in Dawn, ICON, October 25th, 2026

Q. I live in Dhabeji in Karachi and would like to grow purslane as ground cover. Please let me know how to proceed.

A. Purslane, or portulaca, would be an excellent ground cover in Karachi. The plant does not thrive in cold weather and its flowering varieties flourish in full sunlight and temperatures ranging from 20 to 35 degrees Celsius. Compared with other plants, it also requires very little water. Purslane can be grown from September to November and again from February to April. The plant takes about two weeks to a month to establish itself and can spread extensively under favourable conditions.

Q. I am 89 years old and, for the last 60 years, I have fancied amaryllis. I brag that I have the best amaryllis in Lahore by size and texture. While your advice has been to use a nursery potting mix, my experience suggests that it makes the soil hard and soggy, hindering root growth. However, most gardeners use it. What is your personal experience? Secondly, depending on your experience, can you tell me which are the best months to transplant bulbs from pots into the ground?

A. Compacted, waterlogged soil can be disastrous for any plant. Nursery potting mix that lacks organic matter or contains too much clay can be unsuitable for amaryllis. If the mix is otherwise suitable, ensure that it drains properly. Waterlogging deprives the roots of oxygen, weakening the root system and affecting flowering. Adding perlite or pumice can improve aeration and drainage, while compost can add organic matter.

All your gardening queries answered here

Regarding your second query, the best time to transplant amaryllis bulbs from pots into the ground is from September to December.

Q. I live in DHA Karachi and have two 30-year-old coconut trees. They have not produced fruit in the last 10 years. They flowered last year and produced small coconuts, which dropped off. The coconuts the tree would produce earlier were of a very large variety. I have tried all sorts of fertilisers, including DAP, NPK and urea, and even added fish scraps, Epsom salt, potash and calcium to the roots. I have hammered both trees with a sledge hammer and put cuts on the bark with an axe to wake the trees from their dormant state, but nothing has helped. Some people have told me to add salt to their roots. If so, which salt should I put — rock salt, sea salt, iodised or non-iodised salt — and in what quantity? I am afraid my trees will die if I use salt. Somebody pointed out that coconut trees require a lot of water. Is it true and, if so, how much should I water? Also, can anything be done for their trunks, which are very thin?

A. It is puzzling that your 30-year old coconut trees have not borne fruit for the past decade. You seem to have tried a wide range of remedies already, but it is commendable that you are continuing to seek a solution.

Based on the photographs, the tree appears to have a relatively slender trunk. Although some gardeners recommend applying salt to coconut trees, I would advise against it in your case, particularly if the soil is already saline. Rather than applying more fertilisers, have the soil tested to determine whether the trees have any nutrient deficiencies. Please also avoid striking the trees in an attempt to stimulate fruiting.

During summer, ensure that the trees receive adequate water, adjusting the frequency according to the weather and soil drainage. In winter, water when the topsoil begins to dry. Coconut trees require ample moisture, but proper drainage is equally important. Water the soil across the root zone rather than concentrating solely on the area around the trunk.

It is essential to identify why the trees are not fruiting properly. Pest infestations, poor pollination, nutrient deficiencies and improper watering can all cause young coconuts to drop prematurely or remain undersized. Inspect the trees, fallen leaves and undersized coconuts for signs of pests, disease, discolouration or abnormal growth. And as mentioned earlier, have the soil tested for pH and nutrient deficiencies so that any corrective measures can be based on the findings.

Q. The wind blows from our sunlight-exposed balcony into our rooms in Karachi. I want to grow some fragrant flowering plants so that their scent can reach the other rooms. Please suggest fast-growing, quick-fix solutions.

A. Raat ki Rani (night-blooming jasmine) and Din ka Raja (day-blooming jasmine) would be good choices for your sunny balcony. You can grow them from seeds or cuttings, although established plants or rooted cuttings may provide fragrance sooner.

Please send your queries and emails to doctree101@hotmail.com. The writer is a physician and a host for the YouTube channel ‘DocTree Gardening’ promoting organic kitchen gardening

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 25th, 2026

I recently learnt that the fancy red and yellow capsicums displayed in refrigerated supermarket shelves, often at a premium, are frequently the same capsicums sold green at the sabziwala [greengrocer], simply harvested at different stages of ripeness.

Of course, each colour has its own distinctive flavour. Red and yellow capsicums tend to be sweeter and fruitier, while green ones are usually crunchier and sharper in taste.

I enjoy all three colours, choosing whichever is available and affordable. Capsicums are easy to cook with and add colour and appeal to a dish. Here are a few of my favourite ways to cook them.

MEXICAN STUFFED PEPPERS

Stuffed bell-peppers are known as Gemista or Yemista in Greek cuisine and Biber Dolmasi in Turkish cuisine. They also have a local name: bhar-wa shimla mirch. More on that in a bit.

For Mexican stuffed peppers, use capsicums of any colour. Cut off the tops around the stems and remove the cores and seeds to create hollow shells. In a pot, sauté two chopped onions and one tablespoon of chopped garlic. Once the onions turn translucent, add 500g of minced chicken, mutton or beef. Sauté for five minutes on low heat. Add a little water as needed to prevent the mixture from sticking to the bottom.

Whether green, red or yellow, capsicums are versatile kitchen staples. Try them stuffed with spiced mince and rice, or packed with potatoes and cheese

Add salt to taste and half a teaspoon each of ground cumin, white pepper and red chilli powder. Add half a cup of tomato paste and mix well. Stir and sauté till the ground meat is cooked.

Add one cup of washed white rice, a drained 350g can of sweetcorn and two cups of chicken, mutton or beef stock. If you don’t have stock, dissolve two chicken stock cubes in two cups of hot water and add to the mix. Cover and cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, until the rice is tender and the liquid has been absorbed.

Once the liquid has been absorbed, remove the pot from the heat and stir in half a cup of chopped spring onions. Let the filling cool slightly before spooning it into the hollow capsicums. Replace the tops to cover the filling.

Transfer the stuffed capsicums to a baking pan. Add half a cup of water, cover the pan with aluminum foil and bake in a preheated oven at 150 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes.

Remove the pepper tops and sprinkle each pepper with some shredded mozzarella.

DESI-STYLE BHAR-WA SHIMLA MIRCH

For the desi [local] variant known as bhar-wa shimla mirch, heat oil in a pot and fry chopped onions until golden. Add two chopped tomatoes, one teaspoon each of ginger and garlic paste, salt to taste, and one teaspoon each of red chilli powder, turmeric, cumin seeds and coriander powder. Add a quarter teaspoon of garam masala and cook until the tomatoes soften. Add 500g of thawed minced meat and cook, stirring occasionally and adding a little water as needed to prevent sticking, until the meat is cooked through.

Add two cups of cooked, drained rice into the minced meat. Stuff the hollow capsicums with the rice-and-meat mixture and arrange them in a baking dish. Add water, cover with aluminium foil and bake in a preheated oven, following the method used for the Mexican stuffed peppers.

If any stuffing remains, hollow out a few large, round tomatoes, fill them with the mixture and bake them alongside the peppers.

STUFFED CAPSICUM SLICES

My favourite way to make stuffed capsicum, though, is a recipe I recently came across in a Facebook reel and adapted with a few tweaks of my own.

Take three medium-sized capsicums of any colour, ideally one each of green, red and yellow. Boil five medium-sized potatoes, peel and mash them, then season them with salt to taste. Add half a teaspoon each of chilli flakes, ground turmeric, ground cumin and oregano, followed by one chopped onion, half a bunch of freshly chopped coriander and one tablespoon of lemon juice.

Take a whole capsicum and press gently around the stem end to create an opening. Remove the core and shake out the seeds. Fill the capsicum with the potato mixture, pressing it firmly into the cavity so that the filling holds together when sliced.

Cut the stuffed capsicum horizontally into shallow slices and shallow-fry them in a little oil over low heat, turning to cook both sides. Transfer to a paper-towel-lined plate to absorb the oil and cool slightly. If you like, sprinkle the slices with grated cheddar or mozzarella while they are still hot, allowing the cheese to melt slightly.

The writer is a member of staff. X: @HasanShazia

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 25th, 2026

Dear Auntie,

I am writing to you because I have been struggling with family problems for as long as I can remember. I do not know whom to turn to and hope you can guide me.

My parents have been arguing for as long as I can remember, and these problems existed even before I was born. My older siblings grew up witnessing the same problems. Although my parents reconcile after their disagreements, the conflicts keep recurring, leaving me mentally and emotionally exhausted.

One of the differences between my parents is their educational backgrounds. My father is a teacher, while my mother never attended school. These differences are part of our family’s circumstances, and I feel that the issues between them have affected our family life for many years. Despite their reconciliations, they have not been able to put an end to these recurring conflicts.

Another sensitive issue concerns my family relationships. After his brother died, my father married his widow, who already had children of her own. These children are my cousins. However, I feel that my siblings and I are treated differently from them. This difference in treatment has added to the emotional difficulties within our family and has made our situation even more painful.

‘My Home Life is a Source of Stress’

How can I cope with my parents’ long-standing conflicts and the feeling that my siblings and I are treated differently from our cousins? Is there anything I can do to improve our family relationships without taking responsibility for problems that are beyond my control?

I do not expect you to solve our family problems, but I hope your guidance will help me understand how to handle this situation and protect my emotional well-being.

Yours sincerely,

A Distressed Daughter

Dear Distressed Daughter,

You have grown up witnessing this cycle of arguments and reconciliation, so it is understandable that you feel exhausted. But it is important to realise that your parents’ marriage is not your responsibility. Their disagreements, including their educational backgrounds and any other issues they have between them, are theirs to resolve. They may argue and reconcile on repeat, but you cannot control this pattern. You do not have to keep everyone happy or mediate every argument.

Regarding the situation with your cousins, it is obviously quite painful. Feeling that your father treats your cousins differently can leave you feeling rejected or less than them. It is difficult not to be upset about it. At the same time, you shouldn’t let comparisons determine your worth. There may be reasons for why he is treating them differently, which you may not be aware of.

Whatever the reasons, you deserve to be treated with love and respect. Focus on building healthier relationships with your siblings and cousins rather than competing with them for attention. They are not responsible for the decisions made by the adults in your family.

Most importantly, prioritise your peace of mind. When your parents begin arguing, you don’t have to listen, take sides or get involved. Give yourself permission to leave the room. Focus on your education, spend time with friends or siblings, or find a quiet space where you can relax.

You cannot choose the family you were born into, but you can choose how much family drama you carry with you.

Disclaimer: If you or someone you know is in crisis and/or feeling suicidal, please go to your nearest emergency room and seek medical help immediately.
Auntie will not reply privately to any query.
Please send concise queries to:
auntieagni@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 25th, 2026

The lineage of both left and right ideological extremes can be traced to two historical junctures. Left-wing radicalism finds its genesis in the 18th century French Revolution and right-wing extremism in the ascent of Nazism in 1930s Germany. In both instances, the working classes served primarily as foot soldiers. They were mobilised by middle class concepts and aspirations. The French Revolution was animated by the theories of ‘enlightened’ middle-class intellectuals and Nazism was built upon convoluted race theories conceived by middle-class thinkers.

In 18th century France, radical philosophies emerged from an ascending and fledgling middle class that felt its economic and social progress impeded by the remnants of the ancien régime, such as decadent monarchs, landed nobility and an exploitative clergy. These were overthrown through bloody upheaval, driven largely by downtrodden mobs. However, when this triumph’s middle-class architects attempted to translate their radical philosophies into governance, they plunged the nation into further turmoil.

This instability was checked by the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, who established a dictatorship. The resultant political trajectory finally matured into the secular democratic system that endures in France till today. The maturation was a synthesis of clashing ideas, crystallised by an overwhelming need for moderation and stability in a country that had been turned on its head.

From revolutionary France to contemporary Pakistan, radical movements have repeatedly demonstrated how the pursuit of political absolutism can become an instrument of self-destruction

By the 1930s, Europe’s middle class was expanding its influence within this evolving arrangement. But the arrangement was suddenly unsettled by the expansion of socialist movements following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. As socialist ideologies gained political traction among the growing working classes, the middle class began to experience severe insecurity. They felt they were being squeezed between entrenched elites and increasingly active working class constituencies.

In Germany, this middle class anxiety manifested as hostility toward democracy. It began being blamed for Germany’s economic ruin, military humiliation and the perceived infiltration of communism. To the middle classes, communism threatened the socio-economic hierarchy through which their own aspirations were sustained.

As a result, in 1933, a significant portion of the German middle class cast its ballots for Adolf Hitler’s radical far-right Nazi party, viewing it as a bulwark against communism. Many middle class intellectuals, professionals and jurists aligned themselves with traditional economic and religious elites to elevate a fanatic to power. But Hitler’s ensuing radical agenda plunged Germany into catastrophic warfare and widespread devastation, underscoring the destructive capacity of radicalism when integrated into mainstream statecraft.

Political radicalism in mainstream politics often operates through a self-consuming dynamic, ultimately destroying the very leaders and movements that champion it. According to American political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, when radical movements enter the political mainstream, their rejection of political norms invites counter-mobilisation and their own downfall. Radical actors trigger a chain reaction that eventually dismantles their power, fractures their movements, and leaves them vulnerable to judicial and political prosecution.

Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that the main problem with bringing radical ideas into mainstream politics is that they simply do not work with normal governance or the art of working together. Governing effectively requires making deals and knowing when to compromise. Radical political figures who refuse to compromise or work within institutional rules eventually undermine their own ability to govern.

They view political rules and traditions not as guidelines, but as traps set by their ‘corrupt’ rivals. Their strict ‘no-compromise’ attitude makes it nearly impossible to build stable alliances. Moderate voices inside the party are slowly pushed out or silenced. This leaves the leader surrounded only by yes-men and extreme loyalists, destroying the party’s ability to think pragmatically or adapt when a major political crisis hits.

On a social level, political radicalism creates deep divisions in society and leaves the public exhausted. Indeed, tapping into anti-establishment anger can be an effective way to turn economic frustration into massive street rallies, but keeping that radical momentum alive requires the constant sustaining of the outrage. This leads to protest fatigue.

According to the Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde, radical populism splits society into hostile camps, turning normal debates over policy into dramatic ‘us versus them’ battles. Over time, average citizens, the more thoughtful voters, and the business community grow weary of the continuous turmoil. The country becomes politically exhausted and economically fragile.

The researchers Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan concluded that when society begins to crave stability, radical politics rapidly loses its broad electoral appeal. Its practitioners become isolated. When radical leaders urge their followers to confront state authorities directly, public sentiment gradually begins to move toward the desire for order and security, legitimising the state’s countermeasures.

In 1972, the British psychologist Irving Janis demonstrated that radical movements are driven by collective arrogance and a charismatic leader’s illusion of invincibility. Such leaders often develop “hubris syndrome”, mistaking mass rallies for absolute mandates. They believe they are immune to legal or institutional limits and begin to couple their personal political survival with the destiny of the nation itself. This prompts them to make constant strategic blunders.

A modern illustration of all this is Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI). PTI entered mainstream Pakistani politics by mobilising public discontent against established political parties. Khan put forward a radical agenda that mostly attracted the middle classes. However, after bumbling across his three-year government, and losing parliamentary support in 2022, he and his party escalated their anti-establishment rhetoric to unprecedented levels, framing the struggle for Khan’s political survival as a ‘national liberation’ movement.

This radical route culminated in the violent events of May 2023, and November 2024, where party supporters targeted state and military installations. The state responded with crackdowns, mass arrests and judicial trials. Khan’s strategic reliance on populist radicalism and uncompromising confrontation resulted in his imprisonment, and then his party’s gradual organisational paralysis, demonstrating how mainstream radicalism provokes its own undoing. PTI’s undoing now seems complete with the sidelining of its one remaining provincial government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. What’s more, the party’s core middle class constituency followed it all the way till it crumbled into a political black hole.

Radical populists destroy their own political longevity by rejecting formal and informal political norms, and confusing their irrational bullheadedness as an uncompromising commitment. The German sociologist Max Weber warned of a mindset where leaders prioritise absolute moral purity over pragmatic political outcomes.

Weber argued that political figures driven by radical moral conviction inevitably produce catastrophic results and trigger their own downfall, whereas enduring statesmanship requires an “ethic of responsibility”, grounded in compromise, foresight and restraint.

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 25th, 2026

This is the first major European solo exhibition by Toor, who now lives and works in New York. The exhibition’s curator, Elena Crippa, says Toor’s paintings are akin to “short stories, if not portraits.” We encounter people partway through an evening, without knowing everything that brought them there.

The central dancer in Salman Toor’s Ghost Ball (2023) wears a traditional Pakistani khussa on one foot while the other foot is bare. His mismatched feet suggest the difficulty of inhabiting several cultural realities and the pleasure of moving between them without explanation. Around him, bodies whirl through an emerald atmosphere, accompanied by musicians, embracing couples and a voguing figure. The dancers share a space without sharing an emotional state. Exuberance sits beside solitude and pleasure itself seems to require effort.

In The Bar on East 13th (2019), a bartender with plaits, ribbons and painted nails faces the onlooker across a counter. A cut citrus fruit, knife and shallow glass occupy the foreground, a couple kiss at the right. He seems both available and withdrawn, his working expression withholding his feelings. Toor’s encounter with Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882) during a Courtauld visit in 2017 helped conceive this painting. Returning his bartender to that collection makes the exhibition a conversation across time.

In his first major European solo exhibition, Salman Toor explores desire, cultural identity and distance

Crippa draws attention to how everyday technology brings these inherited pictorial languages into the present. In Bar Boy (2019), a phone illuminates a young man’s face within a crowded room. In Pillow Fight (2022), two naked figures tumble across luminous bedding, one raising a pillow overhead. The laptop at the foot of the bed complicates their intimacy. As Toor asks in the wall text, is the scene being watched by technology or performed for it? Domestic pleasure acquires an audience, whether invited or imagined.

In Museum Boys (2021), a sleeping figure shares a vitrine with an inverted urinal recalling Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917), as intimacy becomes an exhibit. Fag Puddle with Carriers (2026) draws upon Lorenzo Lotto’s The Entombment (c.1550–55), highlighting the solemnity found in Toor’s vulnerable figures. In Wandering Beggars (2022), ragged companions move with an unstable, almost dancing rhythm. Their closeness turns dependence into companionship. The recurring clown nose lends Toor’s figures a self-mocking air, while making their vulnerability harder to overlook.

Such vulnerability extends beyond the canvas. Against the pressures surrounding openly expressed queer desire in Pakistan, the ordinary intimacies found in these paintings carry a particular weight. In Back Lawn (2021), lovers embrace among vegetation while a family gathers nearby. Affection for home persists alongside the need to escape its supervision.

The art writer and curator Aziz Sohail’s accompanying catalogue essay, ‘You Probably Think This Work Is About You’, offers a Pakistani artistic context. Toor admired Colin David’s portraits and nudes, and Zahoorul Akhlaq also belonged to the visual culture of Toor’s upbringing. Anwar Saeed provides another connection through queer desire, solitude and green’s sensual possibilities. Sohail’s discussion of dosti and yaari situates friendship within South Asian emotional histories.

The drawings offer another entrance into this world. Their gestures, postures and spaces between bodies make relationships legible with an economy that complements the paintings’ luxuriance. Humour passes through both, sometimes as invitation, sometimes as a defence against the discomfort of being seen. Even in company, these characters retain something inaccessible. Their freedom includes the right to remain partly unknown.

The longer one looks at many of Toor’s drawings and paintings, the more they invite an autobiographical reading, their figures emerging as possible alter egos, leaving us to wonder where a life revisited ends and a life reinvented begins. ‘Someone Like You’ gives them the freedom to be complicated and leaves us awestruck for how we look and interpret.

‘Salman Toor: Someone Like You’ is on display at Courtauld Gallery, London, from October 2, 2026-January 10, 2027
The writer is an art critic, curator and educator who spends his time between Birmingham and Lahore. He can be reached at
aarish.sardar@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 25th, 2026

On March 29, 1857, Mangal Pandey, a sepoy [infantry soldier] in the British East India Company (EIC) army, set in motion the great Indian ‘Revolt’. By the time the ‘rebellion’ was quelled, more than half of the 9,000-strong British forces were dead or wounded and 5,000 of the estimated 40,000 rebels. Members of the Mughal royal family and the elite were hunted down and killed, while others tried to blend into the populace to escape.

However, the reprisals of the 1857 revolt did not just result in the loss of life. There was a systematic effort to erase the memory of the Mughals altogether. The crown of the last emperor, his throne, the royal hookah, wall panels, manuscripts, jewels and artwork were looted and taken to Britain. What could not be transported was destroyed. Eighty percent of the walled city of Delhi was razed to the ground — including the magnificent palace, gardens, mosques and homes of elite residents, guards and servants. It was only stopped from complete erasure by the intervention of Sir John Lawrence, Viceroy of India from 1864-1869.

The Jama Masjid survived but would be used as stables and an army camp. The Diwan-i-Aam [Hall of Audience] became a military hospital. The tree-lined canals were filled to build paved military roads. More than a palace, the Delhi fort represented the Mughal way of life, with craft workshops, markets, kitchens and leisure spaces for public or private use. Destroying it was a deliberate act to humiliate, disempower and erase the culture of 600 years, to break the spirit of the people so completely that they could never rise again.

The Egyptians and Romans struck off the noses of statues of deceased or rejected rulers, the Spanish Conquistadors built cathedrals on flattened temples, coins were defaced in an act of damnatio memoriae [damnation of memory]. Statues have been toppled — Vladimir Lenin, Saddam Hussein, Bamiyan Buddhas and, more recently, statues of slavers and colonialists.

From the ruins of Mughal Delhi to Karachi’s disappearing heritage, the destruction of the past has long served as a means of power, profit and cultural erasure

Sometimes, the past is erased in the name of progress, as in the remaking of Paris between 1853 and 1870 by the architect Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, displacing the memories of the old city. Almost every modern US city is built on lands that belonged to Native American nations. Ironically, the United Nations headquarters in New York City was built on the site of a slaughterhouse.

In Karachi, the past is destroyed by indifference. Heritage buildings are pulled down but, unlike Paris, the new buildings make no aesthetic statement. Iqbal Centre on M.A. Jinnah Road was built upon a historic Christian cemetery. Karachi’s beautiful Amil houses with Nusserwanji tiles are not only being rapidly pulled down, they don’t even make it into the list of Government of Sindh’s heritage buildings. An apartment block in Gulistan-i-Jauhar was built over a site where prehistoric tools were found. Destruction for achieving power transforms into destruction for profit.

Religious or ideological zeal destroyed many libraries across the world, as an act of culturicide (killing a culture). The domes and grave markers of Jannat al-Baqi, the oldest and one of the most sacred Islamic cemeteries in Medina, were razed to the ground by Wahabi ideologues. The much-cherished 14th century market, Souq Al-Qaisariya, a symbol of Gaza’s history and resilience, was reduced to rubble by Israeli strikes in 2024.

Along with physical destruction, there is also the intentional erasure of languages, oral traditions, social rituals, music and traditional skills, to dismantle a community’s identity, history and sense of belonging. Journalistic iconoclasm exposes powerful figures or institutions, destroying their carefully constructed personas. Modern day politicians try to win over electorates by destroying an opponent’s reputation rather than by the policies they would implement if elected. Demeaning labels, including racial slurs, pejorative terms for women, humiliating terms for class and caste, make individual personalities and achievements invisible.

While the public domain sways towards prescribed aspirations and opinions, at a people level, cultural memories, dyed in centuries of tradition, refuse to be erased. Wedding clothes, family recipes, religious festivals are celebrated as they always have been. A poet or novelist may write in an international language, but the story told may remain deeply connected to cultural roots.

The Moroccan city Fez has uniquely maintained a policy since the ninth century of seamlessly adding to rather than removing what was built by past rulers, honouring rather than defacing the past.

Durriya Kazi is a Karachi-based artist.
She may be reached at
durriyakazi1918@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 25th, 2026

Of all the things that unsettled the famous Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta on his travels across Sindh in the 14th century, one was surprisingly small.

No lion, no crocodile, no monster of the river — just a lizard, dug out of the sand, cleaned, stuffed with turmeric and cooked. The people of the region ate it happily. The Moroccan traveller, who had crossed deserts and kingdoms and sat at the tables of sultans, flatly refused. The Ibn Battuta passage on the lizard eaten in Sindh is discussed in M.H. Panhwar’s account of Ibn Battuta at Sehwan.

The animal Ibn Battuta describes is almost certainly the spiny-tailed lizard, known across Pakistan and western India as sanda or sandha. In Sindh it carries stranger, gentler names too: patt machhi [ground fish] and reg mahi [sand fish] — as if the desert, having no rivers of its own, decided to grow its fish in the dunes.

It is a squat, dusty, short-legged creature, sand-coloured and thick-tailed, a grazer of desert grasses and leaves. It lives in burrows and suns itself with the patience of an old resident. Its range stretches from Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan into Rajasthan, Kutch and Cholistan.

From a dish that horrified Ibn Battuta to sanday ka tail, the humble desert lizard has acquired an extraordinary place in South Asian food, folklore and folk medicine

Nothing about it is glamorous. Yet, in the folk imagination of the region, this plain creature has carried an extraordinary weight of meaning.

Desert communities ate it for centuries — for taste, for perceived strength and medicinal value, and also for the reputation that surrounds its oil. In villages of Sindh, lower Punjab and Cholistan, the sanda was spoken of as warm food, power food, something that put heat into the body. Older systems of medicine sorted every food into hot or cold, strengthening or weakening, and the sanda, like much that survives the desert, was placed firmly on the hot side of the ledger.

That belief carried it far beyond the cooking pot. Fat rendered from its body became the famous sanday ka tail [lizard oil] sold in old bazaars, at bus stands and roadside stalls, in small bottles wrapped in loud claims: a cure for male weakness, a tonic for vigour and virility, an oil for massage.

The seller mattered as much as the oil. He sat among bottles, roots, dried herbs, talismans, sometimes a half-dead lizard laid out as proof, and talked like a street performer, healer and psychologist rolled into one — bold, comic, conspiratorial. Men gathered around, pretending to listen casually while absorbing every word. The subject was intimate, the setting public; shame and curiosity stood shoulder to shoulder.

That is how the sanda slipped into folklore — into jokes, whispers, truck-driver tales and village remedies. In a society where men rarely spoke openly about sexual health, a bottle of lizard oil worked as a coded language, a promise in glass. Whether it actually worked came second to the faith placed in it.

There is no reliable scientific evidence behind the aphrodisiac claims; the oil’s reputation lives in folk medicine, kept alive by secrecy, repetition and the human hunger for a simple cure to a private fear. The more hidden the problem, the more powerful the remedy appears.

Ibn Battuta, then, caught half the story. He watched people eat the reptile, recorded his disgust and moved on. He could hardly have guessed the long career the animal would go on to have — food, medicine, joke, desire and business all at once.

Even the cooking he described says something. The creature was dug from the sand, its belly slit and emptied, and turmeric packed inside before it went on the fire. Turmeric was purifier, colour, medicine and deodoriser in one — the ingredient that turned a desert reptile into acceptable meat. In an arid landscape where water could be scarce and harvests uncertain, people learned to eat what the land offered, and learned how to make it palatable.

Nor was Sindh alone in this. Among Bedouin communities of Arabia, the dhab — another spiny-tailed lizard — served as survival food and, occasionally, a delicacy. In Rajasthan and Kutch, too, the animal became associated with strength and medicinal oil, carried along by hakeems [practitioners of herbal medicine], hunters, nomads, herders and bazaar men.

What was once ordinary use has now become a conservation worry. The lizard has been hunted hard for its meat and oil, while cultivation, grazing, roads and expanding settlements eat into its habitat. A creature once common enough to be dug up for dinner is under real pressure. There is a bitter irony here: people believed the sanda contained strength, and that very belief has weakened the species. The louder the myth of the oil grew, the more dangerous life became for the animal.

Still, it would be unfair to look back at mediaeval Sindh with urban distaste. Ibn Battuta reacted as an outsider, and food is always cultural; what shocks one table is ordinary at another. The people who ate the sanda were drawing on their own ecology and inherited food traditions — a world of sorghum bread, buffalo milk, acacia shade, hot winds and sand-burrows.

The real story was never simply that people ate a strange lizard. It is how a small reptile came to sit at the crossing point of hunger and desire, desert and bazaar, folk belief and bodily anxiety — and stayed there.

Ibn Battuta pushed the plate away, perhaps wisely. But had he lingered a little longer in the bazaars of Sindh and Punjab, he might have seen the creature’s second career waiting in the wings: not on the dinner plate, but in the whispered world of virility, where sanday ka tail would outlive the traveller’s disgust by many centuries.

The writer is a researcher with a focus on history and anthropology.
He is also the founder of the Clifton Urban Forest, Karachi.
X: @masoodlohar

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 25th, 2026

It produced stories so spicy, there was a meme circulating across social media that ‘we don’t want club football to return.’

MANCHESTER CITY’S COLOSSAL MESS

The first and the most significant bombshell dropped when the anonymous third party commission investigating Manchester City and the 115 charges of financial irregularity levied on them by the Premier League delivered its verdict against City.

The 115 charges consisted primarily of the club failing to provide accurate financial information pertaining to inflows and outflows, namely revenues and payments to players and managers. Other charges were merely implications of the former, namely, breaching multiple articles of the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) and UEFA’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations.

Finally, there were about 35 charges of the club not cooperating with investigators and withholding information. The commission found Manchester City guilty on 114 of the 115 charges.

The financial impropriety charges against Manchester City and FC Barcelona have the potential to rewrite the history books and change the two biggest football leagues on the planet. Here’s why

Now how did we get here? A slight recap.

In 2008, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan bought Manchester City after its previous owners were caught in a corruption case in Thailand. He’s the son of UAE’s founding father, Sheikh Zayed. And as is customary in that part of the world, Sheikh Mansour serves as the Vice President and Deputy Prime Minister of UAE, while his brother is the current President.

Being the Vice President comes with its perks: Mansour oversees the Central Bank of the UAE and the Emirates Investment Authority. You can guess where I’m going with this.

Manchester City invested heavily in its squad soon after the takeover, bringing in the likes of David Silva, Yaya Toure and Sergio Aguero. Big players soon brought in trophies, the pinnacle being that ‘Agueroooo’ goal to clinch the Premier League title for 2011/12. This soon became a normal — City has won eight league titles out of 14 since 2012, along with seven EFL Cups, four FA Cups and a UEFA Champions League.

In 2018, the German investigative magazine Der Spiegel published a report detailing financial irregularities in the City infrastructure, obtained through phishing attacks carried out by hackers. City refused to comment on “out-of-context materials purportedly stolen.” An investigation by UEFA brought about a two-year ban from European competition, which was overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Then came the independent commission formed by the Premier League’s Judicial Panel, which took three years to come to their decision.

Manchester City was, according to the findings of the commission, deploying sham contracts, which essentially ballooned up sponsorship deals on paper without getting that revenue. The delta? Funnelled in by the Sheikh. Similarly, some officials and players were paid more than what City’s financial books stated. Again, the delta being paid off by the Sheikh. In an age where FFP rules dictate a club cannot spend more than it earns, and where clubs like Everton are docked 10 points by the Premier League for a £20 million overspend, a question pops up: how did City get away with alleged gross misreporting of more than £900 million for over a decade?

There are two things to bear in mind here. For the most part of the decade, Gianni Infantino was the General Secretary of UEFA. It is rumoured that he used his influence to sweep everything under the carpet, making sure no anomaly makes it to the media. The hacks that led to Der Spiegel’s report contain email correspondence between Infantino and Khaldoon Al Mubarak, an Emirati statesperson appointed chairman of Manchester City. The most powerful man in world football approved, facilitated and helped protect the blatant smash-and-grab by the sheikhs, most famously covering up FFP breaches by City in 2014.

Secondly, the rise of City closely mirrors that of current British Prime Minister Andy Burnham. Burnham is Mancunian and served as the mayor of Greater Manchester from 2017 till he became prime minister in 2026. During his mayorship, he attended hospitality dinners with Al Mubarak, supervised official contracts with companies owned by Sheikh Mansour, and saw the UAE pump millions in real estate and economic development, in line with his vision to eradicate homelessness.

He even showed public support to Manchester City on an official tour to Japan. And now as prime minister, he has issued a statement saying he hopes the Emiratis do not pull investments from Manchester as a result of the guilty verdict.

Manchester City has filed an appeal against the decision of the independent commission, claiming clear material errors of law, principle and fact. The result of the appeal is expected in the first quarter of 2027, with huge implications regardless of the outcome.

If the decision is upheld, City could possibly be stripped of all their titles since the UAE takeover, fined, and relegated to the lower divisions, which would spell the end of the club as it is. If the decision is reversed, it would probably just confirm to many the modern reality that deep pockets always prevail.

BARCELONA’S REFEREEING MESS

The second major news from the international break featured FC Barcelona and the infamous Negreira case. The Negreira case centres on payments worth €7.4 million made by Barcelona between 2001 and 2018 to the official bank accounts of companies owned by Jose Enriquez Negreira, then serving as the vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees of the Spanish Football Federation. The payments coincide with a period wherein Barcelona was accused of benefitting from preferential refereeing.

Both the club and the individual deny allegations of bribing and sports corruption, maintaining that the payments were for analytics and refereeing advice. The Barcelona Provincial Court dismissed one of the charges in 2024, maintaining that Negreira was not a public figure and hence bribery charges cannot be upheld.

So why have the charges come back? Well, bitter rivals Real Madrid presented a hardly believable 50,000 pages worth of evidence to UEFA to reignite their disciplinary investigation into sports corruption charges. The criminal case against the same allegations also remains open in the Spanish courts, with hearings scheduled for November.

The Negreira case adds to the financial mishaps that have plagued Barca under presidents Josep Bartomeu and Joan Laporta. And the new evidence submitted by Real Madrid has caused further divide, as evidenced by the backlash over Vinicius Jr’s red card in the first game after the international break.

Current La Liga president Javier Tebas has become embroiled in the situation too, calling the campaign by Real Madrid TV Nazi-esque propaganda. Real Madrid has officially condemned the statement and demanded Tebas resign.

While the Negreria case resembles the infamous Calciopoli scandal that saw Juventus relegated in 2006, it is much harder to prove, since there is no documentation of payments to match referees. If the court deems the payments to Negreira influenced refereeing in Barca’s favour, Barca could also be facing a nullification of trophies in the seasons the club was allegedly favoured, a docking of points which could result in relegation, and significant fines.

RONALDO’S EGOTISTICAL MESS

In the middle of all this, even CR7 and his ego seem like small fish. Cristiano Ronaldo walked out of a training session and left the squad after an altercation with new Portuguese coach Jorge Jesus over not being played in a match. A 1,700-word Instagram post ensued from Ronaldo, before he was suspended for 30 days by the Portuguese FA.

People may call it pettiness at 41 years of age, but the real fight for survival is elsewhere.

The writer is a sports enthusiast with a background in supply chain management. X: @tahagoheer

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 25th, 2026

The video glides over the crowded bazaars in the heart of Dera Ismail Khan before pulling back to reveal buildings packed tightly together. As the camera pulls back, rooftops fill the frame, covered not in the usual clutter of water tanks and laundry lines but in sleek black and blue solar panels, stretching as far as the eye can see.

The video has garnered roughly a million views and more than 25,000 likes on TikTok alone. Its popularity has spawned a host of copycat videos, with some content creators dubbing the city “Solar Ismail Khan.”

The city’s urban area covers approximately 40 square kilometres and has a population of roughly 210,000, according to the 2023 census. Beyond the spectacle of thousands of solar panels covering the city’s rooftops, Dera Ismail Khan’s solar transition is beginning to reshape the local economy. It is creating new opportunities while making some traditional trades less viable in this dusty, conflict-affected city in southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, roughly 300 kilometres from Peshawar.

From specialised solar markets to farmers abandoning diesel-powered irrigation, an unreliable grid is driving a new economy in Dera Ismail Khan — but not everyone can afford to join it

A SOLAR BOOM

Over the past few years, three specialised solar markets have emerged in the city, at Khushal Market, Bannu Adda and Tank Road. Circular Road alone has up to 70 shops dealing exclusively in solar equipment, serving as a major distribution hub for neighbouring Tank, and Upper and Lower South Waziristan.

The boom has extended beyond retail, creating work in solar installation, electrical wiring and the supply and maintenance of batteries, tube wells and related equipment.

Muhammad Saeed, a local solar appliances dealer, says that, by his estimates, the majority of households in the city have adopted solar power. “Those who installed solar [systems] earlier are now upgrading to lithium batteries as prices fall,” says Saeed.

The solar transition has also created ancillary jobs in supply chains and logistics, as well as work for solar-panel cleaners and wiring technicians. At the same time, traditional electricians are seeing a decline in conventional electrical-appliances repairs.

“If consumers use solar energy instead of grid electricity, there is less need for repairs,” electrician Muhammad Naveed tells Eos. To supplement his income, Naveed now also takes on jobs involving solar systems, including for tube wells, alongside specialised wiring work.

THE PRICE OF POWER

Saeed and other solar traders say the city’s crippling, year-round power outages are the biggest driver of the transition. Data from the Peshawar Electric Supply Company (Pesco) show that 43 of the city’s 83 electricity feeders record line losses of at least 80 per cent. Pesco also identifies widespread electricity theft as a problem in the area. A spokesperson for the power utility tells Eos that such areas may face outages lasting 16 to 18 hours a day.

Rising temperatures add to the pressure on residents. During summer, daytime temperatures in Dera Ismail Khan frequently reach 40–45 degrees Celsius, adding to the incentive to seek alternatives.

Dera Ismail Khan’s solar boom is part of a wider shift across Pakistan, driven in part by falling prices for Chinese-made panels and rising electricity tariffs over the past four years. A report by the UK-based energy think tank Ember, titled The Solarisation of Pakistan’s Energy Economy, estimates that Pakistan’s solar power generation rose by 21 terawatt-hours (TWh) in just two years, taking the total increase to 33 TWh. Distributed solar accounted for 28 per cent of Pakistan’s electricity generation in FY25, up from 10 per cent in FY23, the report says.

Eight 585-watt panel solar systems have a combined rated capacity of 4.68 kilowatts (kW). According to local traders, a system of this size can power an air conditioner, refrigerator, lights and fans, with battery storage providing back-up when solar generation is insufficient.

According to solar trader Ali Jan, an individual panel that sold for Rs75,000 not long ago now costs roughly Rs16,000, following a global glut that drove down solar-panel prices. The price per watt has fallen from Rs128 to around Rs28, he says. The cost of an eight-panel set-up fell to around Rs220,000, says Jan, adding that households could recoup the investment within one to two years through savings on electricity.

The imposition of general sales tax on solar imports last year, along with geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, has pushed prices back up, Naveed explains. “Today, solar panels sell for up to 32 rupees per watt in Dera Ismail Khan, bringing the cost of an eight-panel installation to approximately 280,000 rupees,” he says.

THE UNEVEN DIVIDENDS

Dr Aijaz Ahmed has had small solar panels installed at his home and clinic for more than a decade. “In most months, I do not have to pay for electricity,” he tells Eos. “At the clinic, too, the electricity bill is a fraction of what it used to be,” he says.

The savings extend beyond households. Small industries and commercial enterprises, facing high grid-electricity tariffs and rising fuel costs, have also embraced solar power.

One businessman estimates that running a stone-crushing plant on a diesel generator costs up to Rs1.8 million a month. Converting it to solar would require an initial investment of around Rs10.5 million, he says, which could be recovered in just under three years.

Commercial markets and wedding halls are also installing solar systems, with some businesses seeking to reduce or eliminate their dependence on grid electricity. Farmers are following a similar trend. A solar-powered irrigation system, capable of serving 10 acres of farmland, now costs around Rs9 million, according to Ali Jan.

Rising fuel costs are also encouraging farmers to switch to solar-powered tube wells, reducing their dependence on diesel-powered irrigation. Local solar-equipment prices are now closely tied to those in Karachi. Dealers say that a one-rupee-per-watt increase in Karachi is quickly reflected in local prices. Freight charges from Karachi to Dera Ismail Khan have also risen, from around Rs270,000 to Rs350,000 per container since the conflict involving Iran began.

The city’s newer commercial markets, including Gomal, Khyber, Anarkali, Mian Commercial and Gulf Plaza, also face the challenge of keeping shops lit and cooled. Their enclosed spaces and cooling requirements make reliable electricity particularly important. Rising electricity tariffs and fuel costs have made diesel generators increasingly expensive to operate, encouraging businesses to invest in solar power.

WHO GETS LEFT BEHIND

But the transition has also created a divide between those who can afford solar installations and those who cannot. While households and businesses with sufficient resources can reduce their dependence on an unreliable grid, poorer residents remain reliant on electricity they may struggle to afford — or continue to endure long power outages.

Amir Khan, a social worker who runs the “Amir Bhai” Facebook page to help families in need, says poor single women are particularly disadvantaged when it comes to accessing solar power. Khan, who has more than 500,000 Facebook followers, began financing his welfare work himself in 2018.

He says he now receives numerous requests from low-income families seeking help with solar installations.

The solar panels that now dominate Dera Ismail Khan’s rooftops tell only part of the story. Beneath them, new businesses are emerging and old trades are adapting, while families unable to afford the transition remain dependent on an unreliable grid.

In a city increasingly known as “Solar Ismail Khan”, access to electricity is becoming a question not just of supply, but of purchasing power.

The writer is a Peshawar-based reporter for Dawn, with over 15 years of experience covering governance, climate and the economy in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
X: @Manzoor

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 25th, 2026

As the November midterm elections approach, many people in the US are feeling rather pessimistic about their futures. An Economist/YouGov survey in the US asked how respondents felt about their futures compared with ten years ago. Altogether, 23 percent said they were more optimistic, with 48 percent saying they were more pessimistic.

Another question in the survey, conducted from October 10-12, just over three weeks out from the November 3 election, asked: “Do you feel that things in this country these days are under control or out of control?” Only 19 percent thought they were under control, while 70 percent thought the opposite. A third asked about the direction the country is taking. Altogether, 27 percent thought that it is “generally heading in the right direction” while 66 percent thought it is “off on the wrong track.”

Americans are pessimistic about the country’s direction and inflation remains a major concern. The midterm elections on Nov 3 will test whether that mood translates into votes against President Trump and his ruling party

Explaining the pessimism

There are numerous factors which can explain the pessimism but two stand out: attitudes to the US president, Donald Trump, and the state of the economy under his administration. Respondents were asked if they agreed or disagreed with various descriptors of the president. The chart below shows the percentages who agreed with each of them.

It is readily apparent that large numbers of Americans really dislike the president — corruption being the most prominent descriptor followed by perceptions that he is dangerous. Only 28 percent thought he is effective and 23 percent that he is honest.

A second explanation for the pessimism is the state of the US economy, particularly the impact of inflation on the day-to-day lives of citizens. Altogether, 34 percent of respondents thought that the economy and inflation were the most important issues facing the country. When asked about the president’s handling of inflation, 28 percent of respondents approved while 67 percent disapproved.

It is important to note that Americans were very much focused on domestic issues when responding to questions about the most important issues facing the country. Only 6 percent of them thought that foreign policy was the most important issue.

Voting intentions for the midterms

Typically, the incumbent president’s party loses seats in Congress in the midterm elections. In the 2018 midterm elections in Trump’s first term, the Republicans had a net loss of 39 seats in the House of Representatives — but they actually gained two seats in the Senate. So, on the face of things, we would expect the Democrats to gain in the House given Trump’s current unpopularity, while the Senate race remains uncertain.

But the federal structure of American politics means that while presidential popularity influences the way people vote in Congressional elections, it is not the only thing that matters.

Tip O’Neal, the Democrat speaker of the House of Representatives from 1977 to 1987, used to say: “All politics is local.” State politics and issues are important in these elections, allowing members of Congress to distance themselves from the president and focus on local issues. That said, there is evidence that national political issues are growing in importance in Congressional elections over time.

The second chart shows voting intentions of respondents in the House of Representative elections classified by sex, ethnicity, age and education. The Democrats were ahead by seven percentage points overall, registering 46 percent in voting intentions compared with 39 percent for the Republicans.

Looking at different demographic groups, the Democrats were ahead or level with the Republicans in all groups except white voters. Also, there were some striking differences between support for the parties. Women, Black and Latino voters, the young and voters with college degrees all strongly support the Democrats. In general, this means that the likelihood of the Democrats winning control of the House is very high in these elections.

The third chart shows voting intentions in the Senate elections. The demographics of support are quite similar to the House elections except that the gap between the Democrats and Republicans is narrower. Some 45 percent of respondents intend to vote Democrat, with 40 percent supporting the Republicans. The Republicans were ahead among whites, in the 45-65 age group, and respondents with no college degrees.

Democrat Senators and their independent allies Bernie Sanders from Vermont and Angus King from Maine, currently have 47 seats in the Senate. Therefore, the party needs to win in at least four states to take control of the chamber. If, for example, they won three seats, this would give them 50 percent but their votes could be overridden by the vice-president, J.D. Vance. He is the president of the Senate and has a casting vote in the event of a tie.

Key senate contests

NBC news has suggested likely Democrat wins in North Carolina and in Maine, both of which are currently held by Republicans. In addition, it classifies Alaska, Iowa, Ohio and Texas, all currently held by Republicans, as “toss-ups” as far as Democrat wins are concerned.

We can look at the winning margins in the previous Senate elections in these states to provide a rough guide to how easy it will be for the Democrats to take them. In the 2020 Senate elections, when Joe Biden beat Donald Trump for the presidency, the Republicans took Iowa with a margin of 6.5 percentage points over the Democrats. In Texas the margin of victory was 9.5 points and in Alaska 13 points. In the 2022 midterm elections the Republicans beat the Democrats by 6 points in Ohio.

Clearly, if the Democrats win North Carolina, Maine, Iowa and Ohio, they would take control of the Senate. In addition, according to the Forbes newsletter, recent polling shows the Democrats lead by 50 percent to 43 percent in Alaska and 51 percent to 49 percent in Texas.

Depending on the turnout, one or both of these traditionally Republican states could be a win for the Democrats. Ultimately control of the Senate will depend on the extent to which Trump’s unpopularity influences these Congressional races.

The writer is Professor, Department of Government at the University of Essex, UK

Republished from The Conversation

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 25th, 2026

INTRODUCTION

This story should have been written long ago. Much earlier. But, as always, life intervened. Now, here I am, at the age of 75, with a breast cancer diagnosis in hand, wondering whether time will grant me the luxury to finally tell my story. As Munir Niazi once wrote, “Hamesha dair kar deta hoon main [I am always too late].” I suppose that verse was written with people like me in mind.

When I say life got in the way, I mean it in every sense: my temperament, the weight of world affairs, years of activism and, now, the relentless demands of grandmotherhood. I often imagine my late husband, Ahfaz [journalist Ahfaz-ur-Rahman], smiling down from the heavens, amused: “So now you’re doing for the grandchildren all that you never managed to do for me or our kids.” And yet, knowing the perfectionist he was, I can just as easily imagine his disapproving frown: “You should be asserting yourself. Why are you putting up with their tantrums? You’re 75 for God’s sake. What’s wrong with you?”

Ahfaz was never pleased with my domestic efforts. My children, thankfully, are more generous. They tell me I may not have been the most structured or hands-on mother, but that my love was unwavering, that I cared for them in the best way I knew how. What I was lax in providing, they say, was tarbiyat, that essential Urdu term for life training and everyday discipline.

And they’re not wrong. What else could you expect from someone like me? I was raised under the wing of an overprotective, sheltering mother. Well into my university years, I still relied on her to buy my clothes. Me, the so-called independent leftist and feminist, was hopelessly ill-equipped for life’s practicalities.

The recently published memoirs by Mahnaz Rahman detail her life as a journalist, leftist activist and rights advocate, presenting an unvarnished account of its challenges, triumphs and setbacks, especially during Gen Ziaul Haq’s 11-year-long dictatorship. This was a time when Pakistan’s journalists faced censorship, arrests and brutal state reprisals. It is a story of youthful idealism, resistance and quiet determination. Eos presents, with permission, excerpts from Love, Life and the Left, published by Jumhoori Publications…

A walking paradox, I could live alone in a university hostel in Karachi in the sixties, embrace socialism and communism in my youth, defy my parents and marry for love… and yet, I couldn’t cook a decent meal or manage a household without chaos. As my mother often said, I was sifar bata sifar (zero upon zero) in practical life.

That same impracticality, of course, followed me into marriage. Despite being a revolutionary and a man of rare integrity, Ahfaz had certain traditional expectations of me at home; expectations I simply could not meet. I remember telling him once, quite sincerely, “Apart from your temper and your traditional expectations from me, you are like a saint.” But true to his sensitive nature, he didn’t take it as a compliment. He sulked. He grumbled. He took offence. And there I was thinking I was praising him. Such was our chemistry: spiced with friction, layered with love.

Today, ironically, I perform acts of service for my grandchildren with a kind of reverence that I never afforded my husband or even my children. They’ve succeeded in enlisting me into their army, one where I march to their tunes, attend to their smallest whims, and revolve my world around their joy and comfort. It is for them too, partly, that I have delayed writing this memoir for so long. Only now, when cancer has knocked on the door, have I finally sat down to write. Better late than never, they say. I hope that sentiment holds true for both of us, dear reader.

Let me be clear: this is not an act of self-congratulation. If I were a writer of books for the sake of books, I could have published volumes drawn from the thousands of columns and articles I’ve written. But this is something else. This is an attempt, perhaps my only real attempt, to make peace with the whirlwind of a life I’ve lived. A life of relentless movement, sporadic reflection, and very little calm contemplation. This book is my bid to reflect, not in guilt, but in peace. I won’t sugarcoat anything. You will find, in these pages, my story warts and all.

This memoir is also, in part, for the young activists and leftists of today. I hope you’ll learn from our generation’s missteps, but also from our moments of grace, our acts of resistance, our quiet strength. Yes, I have inverted the cliché. In these dark times, you deserve to hear not only what we did wrong but also what we did right. And if ever you feel disillusioned, remember what our beloved Rosa Luxemburg once said: “You lose, you lose, you lose, you lose, and then you win.”

BEFORE ZIA, THERE WAS BHUTTO

It’s easy to forget now, drowned in the inky shadow cast by Gen Ziaul Haq’s dictatorship [1977-1988], that the seeds of oppression, and thus resistance, were sown earlier, under the regime of none other than Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Though Bhutto inspired a generation with his populist slogans, his government did not shy away from cracking down on a free press. In the foreword to Ahfaz’s Freedom of the Press: The War on Words (1977–1978), [journalist] Wahab Siddiqui recalls how the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ), buoyed by the clear promises of the [Pakistan] Peoples Party [PPP] upon its rise to power on December 20, 1971, held high hopes, only to see them quickly shattered.

Within just two months, the government banned three publications: the Lahore-based fortnightlies Punjab Punch and Zindah, and the monthly Urdu Digest, all under martial law orders. Their editors were not only imprisoned but also barred from editing any publication for 10 years, without even the chance to face trial under normal legal procedures. Notably, even though Zindah and Urdu Digest had previously attacked the PFUJ with serious accusations, the union still protested the ban and the editors’ arrests. The PFUJ demanded their release and the lifting of the bans or, at the very least, that they be tried under the regular legal system.

The Bhutto regime used economic pressure to suppress dissenting media, withdrawing government advertisements and cutting off newsprint to critical publications such as Hurriyet, Nawa-i-Waqt and Jasarat. These tactics intensified, culminating in the closure of several newspapers under emergency laws in 1973. By 1974, the dismissal of 18 workers at Musawaat (Lahore) triggered a significant resistance movement led by APNEC [All-Pakistan Newspaper Employees Confederation] and the PFUJ.

It is important to note that the above is not intended to draw a false equivalency between the monstrous dictatorship of Zia and Z.A. Bhutto. For all his flaws (and there were many), Bhutto was a democratically elected leader with a visionary agenda and a deep connection to the people, qualities that set him entirely apart from Zia. Whatever criticisms one may have of Bhutto, he is in no way, shape or form comparable to a brutal autocrat like Zia.

Rather, the intention of the preceding paragraphs was twofold: first, to underscore that the trend of press suppression, entrenched during [Gen] Ayub Khan’s rule, had only intensified during Bhutto’s tenure in the 1970s; and second, to highlight that the PFUJ had already begun to resist such repression.

In that sense, the confrontations with Bhutto’s government served as critical preparation for the graver battles the PFUJ would face during Zia’s brutal regime.

‘ZULMAT KO ZIA KYA LIKHNA’ [WHY WRITE DARKNESS AS LIGHT]

Then came July 5, 1977, a date burned into our national memory like a scar. Gen Zia overthrew a democratically elected government and unfurled a regime so repressive, so suffocating, it nearly crushed the country’s spirit.

Almost immediately, Zia issued a secret memo to his martial law administrators warning them: “Beware of the left. Beware of a united front of journalists, workers, and students.” And yet, ironically, and beautifully, it was precisely that alliance, with farmers joining in, that would coalesce just months later.

The first blow was personal. Zia’s regime terminated PFUJ president and Pakistan Times Karachi Bureau Chief, Minhaj Barna. Barna was my friend Rukshana’s uncle (and the brother of [leftist politician] Mairaj Muhammad Khan). He was also Ahfaz’s guru in trade unionism, someone Ahfaz respected and loved above anyone else in the journalist fraternity.

The allegation against Barna sahib was hilarious in that he was charged with writing articles for Al-Fatah, whose editorial policy was deemed contradictory to the dictates of the [state-owned] National Press Trust [NPT]. Al-Fatah was further deemed guilty of promoting ethnic nationalism (sound familiar? Nothing in the ruling elites’ attitude has changed!).

On the 23rd of December, 1977, the PFUJ roared in response. The national action committee of PFUJ and APNEC issued a fiery ultimatum: reinstate Barna or face a national uprising. Under growing pressure, Zia’s government relented, for then. But the beast was only licking its wounds.

THE SILENCING OF MUSAWAAT

[The PPP-owned] Musawaat, my former, and Ahfaz’s [then] current, paper became the martial law regime’s next victim. It never had a huge circulation but that had changed in the wake of Bhutto’s incarceration, wherein Musawaat’s circulation had now soared. That alone made it dangerous in Zia’s eyes.

The regime seized the Sheikh Sultan Al Nahyan Trust, the trust that owned Musawaat’s printing press, and issued a decree: no printing without clearing massive dues and obtaining a no-objection certificate. Every other [printing] press, afraid of Zia’s wrath, refused to touch Musawaat. And so, in a single swoop, two hundred journalists and press workers found themselves without a job, including Ahfaz.

Every morning, journalists and workers would gather in the paper’s Karachi office, clutching hope like fools, only to return, empty-handed by evening. Though writing for another newspaper at that time, on a couple of occasions I accompanied Ahfaz to Musawaat. I still remember those tired faces. And among them was the editor, the legendary writer Ibrahim Jalees, who ran from ministry to ministry trying to revive the paper. However, this was all to no avail, as the government had no intention of allowing Musawaat to publish again.

One day, while sitting in that broken-down office, Jalees suffered a heart attack and was gone by morning. A giant felled not by illness but by the quiet violence of censorship and despair.

‘MS BHUTTO, IS THIS A NEWSPAPER OFFICE OR A WAREHOUSE?’

In honour of Jalees sahib, the workers organised a memorial at the office, an office, as I mentioned earlier, so run-down and dusty, it barely looked like a workplace. Broken furniture, leaking roofs, creaking floorboards. Still, the city’s literary and journalistic luminaries came to pay tribute. I wasn’t personally present at this memorial, but it turned out to be a significant one. What follows was recounted to me by several journalist friends.

Shabbar Azmi was the president of the Musawaat Employees Association while Ahfaz was, at that time, the general secretary of the Karachi Union of Journalists (KUJ). As the event was going on, a loud commotion was heard. The attendees were greeted with the unannounced arrival of [Z.A. Bhutto’s wife] Nusrat Bhutto and [daughter] Benazir. My former office’s infamous staircase creaked under the weight of history as they climbed up. Everyone was surprised, because it was the first time any prominent PPP leader had visited the Musawaat office since the crackdown began.

Nusrat Bhutto looked visibly dejected due to what her husband was enduring at that time. When she saw the office, she seemed gobsmacked by its pathetic condition. There weren’t any proper, fully functional chairs available to offer them. Some colleagues managed to unearth two chairs which were in a relatively better condition, so that they could eventually sit down. After Shabbar gave his introductory remarks, he asked Ahfaz to come and speak.

However, Ahfaz said that he would speak from the audience, where everyone turned to look at him. As I’ve mentioned before, Ahfaz was, at that time and indeed throughout his life, the embodiment of the proverbial “angry young man.” Apart from lambasting the Zia dictatorship, he took the opportunity to also lambast the PPP leadership for their apathy. He turned to Nusrat Bhutto and said, “See for yourself, is this an office or an abandoned warehouse? The roof leaks, the floor creaks, the furniture is broken!”

Nusrat Bhutto listened to his remarks and later got up to give her own speech. During her speech, she criticised the Zia regime for its oppression. Ahfaz, still angry, interrupted: “The Bhutto regime was also very oppressive.” Ms Bhutto was stunned for a few moments. She continued her speech. The event proved to be an important milestone in the movement. Later, we discovered that Nusrat Bhutto had been quite impressed by Ahfaz’s honesty.

Three days later, Musawaat’s chief photographer Altaf Rana came running to Ahfaz: “Nusrat Bhutto wants to meet you.” Ahfaz was incredulous: “She doesn’t even know my name.” But she did. She had asked to meet “the young man with bitter words.” That was Ahfaz; raw, blunt, burning with honesty.

And that was the movement: willing to speak truth even when it burnt bridges, even when it cut through allies. Because what we were fighting was bigger than party, ideology or reputation. We were fighting a regime built on fear and silence. And we chose to speak.

THE CHEQUE FOR 180,000 RUPEES

When Ahfaz arrived at the Bhutto residence, the air was thick with tension. Waiting there were Musawaat’s top administrative officers: Chief Editor Badruddin, Manager Noor Muhammad and Chief Accountant Hashim. But it was Ahfaz whom Begum Nusrat Bhutto was waiting for.

She welcomed him warmly and asked directly: “What do you think we should do?” Ahfaz replied: “Your senior party leaders would know better than me.” But Nusrat Bhutto insisted. “No, I want your opinion.”

With characteristic clarity, he laid it out: “The government claims it shut down Musawaat over unpaid dues. If we pay those dues, we remove their pretext. And we expose their real motives for what they are.” She sighed deeply. Not because she disagreed, but because she was surrounded by voices urging her not to waste the money. “They all say it will be for nothing,” she admitted. “That Zia is just using this as an excuse.” “Yes,” Ahfaz said, “but let’s take away that excuse.”

Ahfaz’s insistence on paying the dues stemmed from a strategic reason: many members within the PFUJ were anti-PPP and were arguing that the closure of Musawaat was not an attack on press freedom but merely a legal issue arising from non-payment. By ensuring the payment of dues, Ahfaz aimed to strip those opportunistic elements within the PFUJ of that excuse, leaving them no place to hide behind procedural justifications.

At that, Nusrat Bhutto called for a cheque that had evidently already been prepared. She signed it, one lakh and eighty thousand rupees, and extended it toward Ahfaz. “These people are telling me not to give this,” she said, “but I want you to take it. Do what needs to be done.” Ahfaz, stunned, pushed the cheque back. “I’m just a magazine editor. It should go to the administration.” She refused. “I want to give it to you.”

Eventually, they struck a compromise: she would hand it to the officers, but only if Ahfaz went with them. Together, they marched off to the Press Trust office to submit the cheque. The Press Trust took the cheque, but the printing ban on Musawaat remained. The deception was plain. As Ahfaz had predicted, this would be the final straw.

Now, the moral high ground was no longer up for debate. The PFUJ and APNEC had been handed the justification they needed to escalate the struggle. The state had lied. Musawaat had paid. And still, the voice of dissent was silenced. As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the PFUJ was primed for action and this latest act by the brutal martial law administration served as the last straw. Barna sahib, as the president of PFUJ and APNEC chairperson, took immediate notice of this deception by the government.

In December 1977, PFUJ started a full-fledged movement against the closure of Musawaat. However, unlike its earlier fights against Bhutto, this was going to be a tougher fight, with the martial law administration ruled by army boots.

There was no political support that could be found, save for the PPP and some small leftist groups. The rest of the political parties either joined the government or were, at the very least, supportive of Zia’s regime. Even senior leaders such as Wali Khan supported Zia insofar as he (Wali Khan) supported the slogan of “Accountability before elections”, basically ratifying Zia’s stance.

LT GEN MUJIBUR RAHMAN AND JAMAAT-I-ISLAMI’S UGLY ROLE

In this movement, Minhaj Barna led the charge, supported by a formidable core team: Nisar Usmani, Hafeez Raqib and Ahfaz. The PFUJ’s plan was audacious. Journalists from across Pakistan would travel to Lahore and Karachi in coordinated waves to voluntarily court arrest, a nonviolent strategy that would keep the flame of protest alive and the jails full.

The movement gained momentum and journalists from all over the country came to Karachi to court arrest in batches. From April 30-May 30, 1978, more than 120 journalists who came from various cities to court arrest in Lahore were arrested and sent to different jails of the Punjab province. Ahfaz was one of these journalists.

Then, in July 1978, journalists from all corners came to Karachi for courting arrest and were sent to different jails of the Sindh province. After going to jail in Punjab, Ahfaz was released and barred from entering Punjab. He returned underground in Karachi, helping coordinate the next round of protests. Now joined by workers, students, peasants and members of the Hari Committee, the movement grew teeth.

Zia’s regime struck back. His information secretary, Lt Gen Mujibur Rahman, a master of psychological warfare, unleashed a campaign of vilification and infiltration. The Jamaat-i-Islami, always ready to act as the establishment’s attack dog, called the PFUJ “seditious”, “communist” and “traitorous.” They even turned comrades against each other.

I still remember one particular day very well. Ahfaz had to go to Lahore in connection with the movement. I came to see him off at the house-gate. A white-bearded gentleman had come to pick him up. He was a calligrapher and, if I remember correctly, his name was Naseemul Haq Usmani. Both left Karachi together but did not return together. Their paths diverged. Why? Zia’s government had succeeded in infiltrating the ranks of the PFUJ and it turns out the calligrapher had sold out. But this was just the start.

A few days later, [sports journalist] Rashid Ahmed Siddiqui, in cahoots with the martial law administration, formed a separate PFUJ! About this traitorous act by those shameless journalists Ahfaz wrote in his book: “Two deeply shameful and reprehensible incidents occurred during this movement. On May 13, 1978, three journalists were publicly flogged on the orders of a military court, an act so disgraceful that it drew strong condemnation from journalists and democratic voices across the world. Just five days later, a group of four journalists arrived in Islamabad. They were welcomed at the airport by senior officials from the Information Department, and both national television and radio broadcast the news of the ‘arrival of PFUJ and APNEC leaders in Islamabad.’

“On the very same day, Zia’s information secretary, Gen Mujibur Rahman, met with these turncoats. In this meeting, all parties agreed that PFUJ and APNEC were ‘subversive’ organisations, a label that was not new. (Zia had once publicly declared that he would hang Minhaj Barna and his next seven generations.) The result of this meeting was a treacherous plan to form a puppet union, later known as the Rashid Siddiqui Group.

“These traitors struck the deal in exchange for promises of power and money. Rashid Siddiqui, an otherwise ordinary reporter, was later elevated to the top position at Daily Mashriq and NPT. The other three collaborators were similarly showered with lavish rewards. They certainly received their material prizes from Zia, but history, too, gave them a reward of its own, branding them forever as immoral cowards.”

Gen Mujibur Rahman may have been a master of psychological warfare, but he failed to break the spirit of Minhaj Barna and his associates. The PFUJ and APNEC executive committees ensured a steady stream of activists stepping forward to court arrest, an unrelenting pressure that proved nerve-wracking for the military junta. The Workers’ Coordination Committee also announced its participation in the movement. In addition, the Hari Committee and several student organisations joined the struggle.

Nisar Usmani, Hafeez Raqib and Ahfaz-ur-Rehman went underground to organise the court arrest campaign. The three constantly changed their hideouts, sometimes staying at [architect] Arif Hasan’s house, at other times at [then university teacher] Taj Haider’s place, or occasionally at the home of [journalist] Ghazi Salahuddin’s father. Shamim Alam and Altaf Siddiqui handled the duties of communication and coordination. As Ahfaz mentions in his book, [journalist] Irshad Rao and Wahab Siddiqui also played key roles in organising batches of potential arrestees.

The Karachi police were desperately searching for Ahfaz. They swore they’d catch Ahfaz. “Once we get our hands on him,” they sneered, “we’ll beat him senseless.” During this time, while Ahfaz was in hiding, I would occasionally go to meet him in secret, often taking little Fayfay [daughter] along with me. I remember, one day, Ahfaz smiled shyly and said to me, “Hafeez Raqib says Mahnaz will get us all arrested with these rendezvous.”

Once, Ahfaz was hiding at Taj Haider’s house and Fayfay and I went to see him. Taj Haider, who later joined electoral politics and became a senator, was Ahfaz’s close friend. That day, he took Ahfaz and me in his car all the way to ‘Bund Murad’, a secluded spot by the Hub River. At that time, this remote area outside the city was rarely visited, even by picnic-goers. Perhaps he simply wanted to give Ahfaz a break from the constant mental stress he was under. The two of them thoroughly enjoyed splashing about in the water while I sat on the bank with my feet dipped in the cool river.

On the drive back, I couldn’t shake the thought: what if the police stopped us and discovered that the very man they were frantically searching for was right there, sitting in Taj Haider’s car? They wouldn’t have spared Taj either. And yet, that was the kind of bravery and unwavering commitment our friends showed without hesitation.

IF INDIRA GANDHI HAD FACED PFUJ

Despite all this, despite betrayal and oppression, the movement held strong. On October 10, 1978, the struggle reached its end. More than 400 people had been jailed, including workers, peasants, students, journalists. The final blow was delivered by the moral force of hunger strikes.

When Minhaj Barna began his hunger strike in Sukkur Jail, it sparked a chain reaction across the prisons of Sindh. The state’s iron fist trembled. The newspapers may have blacked it out, but the nation heard the roar of defiance. The government backed down. The prisoners were released. And Musawaat, silenced for so long, returned to print.

This was a landmark movement and a historic victory, one so significant that even our neighbours took notice. India Today, in a powerful editorial, observed that had India possessed a principled and formidable organisation like the PFUJ during its own political crisis, Indira Gandhi would never have succeeded in imposing the Emergency in the country!

Excerpted with permission from Love, Life and the Left by Mahnaz Rahman, published by Jumhoori Publications

The author is a journalist, writer and women’s rights activist

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 25th, 2026

Ghazza Ke Shareer Bachay
[The Rascal Children of Gaza]
By Mustansar Hussain Tarar
Sang-e-Meel
ISBN: 969-35-3775-0
80pp.

They were permitted to execute anyone from that neighbourhood without hesitation. Thus, when she spotted the weary woman on her claimed property, she shot her and immediately ended the woman’s life. At that moment, the deceased woman’s father arrived in the field to retrieve his daughter’s motionless body; the woman then fired again and also took the life of the elderly man.

The tone of this scene is one of cold and ruthless violence. The description of the killer’s actions is matter-of-fact and devoid of any emotion or remorse. The fact that the victims were allowed to be executed without hesitation adds to the perception of a brutal and lawless society. The lack of hesitation from the killer also suggests a chilling indifference to the value of human life. Overall, the tone conveys a disturbing and unsettling atmosphere, leaving the reader to contemplate the dark and lawless world in which these events take place.

The above scene unfolding in the pages of Mustansar Hussain Tarar’s novella Ghazza Ke Shareer Bachay [The Rascal Children of Gaza] is not taken from any Hollywood action movie, but from the harsh reality faced by the unfortunate and helpless people who call Gaza home. Regardless of age or gender, no one is safe from the relentless attacks that occur on a daily basis, even in hospitals and schools.

The basic story revolves around one of the many Muslim families of Gaza, which includes the parents and their three children. Their residential apartment building has been completely destroyed due to Zionist bombardment. A child, trapped under the rubble and counting his last breaths, is thinking about his siblings and parents. An unseen voice persuades the child to keep speaking continuously.

Mustansar Hussain Tarar’s new novella builds a mosaic about the Gaza genocide, combining snippets of real news and existing poetry with a fictional narrative that is torn from the pages of newspapers

The child does not know what has happened to the rest of his family, but the circumstances are such that he understands that, just like him, his remaining family members are trapped under the debris and have probably died. Meanwhile, his hand somehow catches hold of his little sister’s hand, which goes completely still after moving for a short while. Thus, the child narrates the painful account of the catastrophe that befell him and his family.

The protagonists shift continuously. The narrative focus pivots from the child lying under the debris to his grandfather, whose unnamed village is located just four kilometres outside Gaza City. The old man shares his own grievance: how his beloved olive groves were unlawfully seized, forcing him into an adjacent wasteland, where he could only watch from afar and mourn the ruin of his orchards. He used to care for his olive trees the way a parent might care for their children, bathing them and talking to them. Now, those who forcibly took his land from him neglect his trees.

This elderly man’s daughter is the mother of the children buried under the rubble described at the start. He recounts how he repeatedly implored his daughter and son-in-law to flee Gaza City with the children and seek refuge in his village, but his son-in-law steadfastly refused to abandon their home. In any case, he does not have his village anymore either.

This story is fiction, but the reality is real. It captures the current devastation in Gaza — not bound to a single day or hour, but charting the grim map of an active genocide. To strip away the fiction, Tarar has included actual newspaper headlines and few interviews from volunteer doctors on the ground.

Tarar starts his novella with a famous poem ‘Oh Rascal Children of Gaza’, written in August 2014 by Palestinian poet and songwriter Khalid Juma (born 1965 in Rafah, Gaza) during an earlier Zionist slaughter. The poem contrasts the lively, mischievous noise of children with the devastating silence left in their absence, ending in a plea for their return. This poem’s title is also borrowed by Tarar for the novella’s title.

Through calling his story a “mosaic novel”, Tarar has cleverly used a metaphor to convey a deeper meaning. Just like the ancient art form of creating images with small fragments of materials, this novel pieces together different poems and stories to form a bigger picture.

The most heartbreaking aspect of the inhumanity and barbarism on display is the lack of action from the rest of the world. It’s as if we are all spectators, watching a movie, but with the realisation that it’s, in fact, happening in real life. Tarar’s tone throughout this novel is of despair and frustration towards the inaction of the world in the face of such atrocities.

The novella may have few characters, but the story that unfolds holds the essence of what the writer wants to draw attention to. As the rest of the world goes on with their day-to-day lives with the assurance of another tomorrow, there are people in Gaza who are trapped under collapsed roofs, taking their last breaths as they reminisce about their past lives.

Tarar employs a profoundly poignant and sombre narrative style that allows the reader to experience the events he describes. He aims for each reader to not merely read but to deeply empathise with the suffering of the innocent who were cruelly slain, as well as to witness the brutal actions taking place every day.

I would recommend this book to readers of all ages and genders, as it is crucial for everyone to begin understanding the horrors the real world can unleash if we fail to take action to stop it.

The reviewer writes short fiction in Urdu and is currently working on her first novel

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, October 25th, 2026

How Pakistan Transformed As A Deep State: Power, National Interest and National Security By Moonis Ahmar
Ethics Press
ISBN: 978-1-83711-892-2
196pp.

Pakistan’s political history has long been a topic of interest for historians, political scientists, scholars in international relations and journalists. Each expert has sought to analyse how a country that was created as a homeland for the Muslims of British India lost its anchor, went astray from the secular and democratic vision of its founders just a few years after its inception, and splintered in less than a quarter century.

From 1958 onwards, the army seized power four times and ruled for 33 years. In How Pakistan Transformed As A Deep State, academic Moonis Ahmar finds that, as early as 1954, at a meeting held in London with fellow generals, Gen Ayub Khan, then commander-in-chief of the army, stated that civilians were unfit to govern. In 1958, he seized power, declaring himself president, elevating himself to field marshal and ruling through a diluted system called ‘Basic Democracies’.

After 2008, the army did not explicitly govern the country. Instead, it governed from behind the scenes, by co-opting the bureaucracy and political elites. It also entered the economic hemisphere and created several organisations governed by retired or serving generals, admirals and air marshals, leading several analysts to call it ‘a praetorian state.’

Ahmar nails it on the head when he says that the army “made at least three bids to shape the political system to its satisfaction and bring forward a co-opted political leadership to create a civilian front for its continued political domination.” As a result, he says that “Pakistan’s security problems are no longer India-specific. State security is threatened from within by economic and social collapse.”

A recent book explains how military dominance, political instability and entrenched elites shaped Pakistan’s evolution — and what it would take to reclaim a democratic future

How did it do all of that? He says that the army created an unholy alliance of the clergy, tribal and feudal lords, rich industrialists and the bureaucracy. Such an alliance allowed it to suppress the voice of the people and to give more weight to military security than to human security, which consists of social, economic and political development.

Ahmar correctly concludes that the emergence of a ‘deep state’ — where unelected state and non-state actors covertly shape national policy — cannot just be laid at the door of the army. Maybe the founder’s vision was idealistic. He quotes Stephen Cohen, America’s leading scholar on South Asian politics, who says “Pakistan was unstable from the outset. Jinnah’s vision of a liberal Pakistan lacked roots.”

Ahmar nails it on the head when he says that the army “made at least three bids to shape the political system to its satisfaction and bring forward a co-opted political leadership to create a civilian front for its continued political domination.” As a result, he says that “Pakistan’s security problems are no longer India-specific. State security is threatened from within by economic and social collapse.”

The founders failed to understand the ethos of the nation and died too early to create the type of democratic institutions that India did. Political ineptitude and infighting led to frequent changes of government in the first 11 years of Independence, paving the way for the army to seize power. The public initially welcomed the change, because it brought stability and economic growth. The army claimed it was the only institution that could save the country from collapsing from within and from the wars with India over Kashmir. Even after the country broke up on the army’s watch, it retained its status as the saviour of the nation and, in just six years, seized power once again.

Ahmar’s book is unique in that it provides an exhaustive review of the literature on the subject. Widely known as well as more esoteric works are cited, including books, scholarly articles and newspaper articles written by Pakistani and non-Pakistani experts across a variety of disciplines.

The book introduces the notion of the ‘deep state’ and illustrates it by drawing upon case studies of Egypt, Russia, Turkey (where the term seems to have been first used), and the US. These set the stage for taking a deep dive into Pakistan’s political evolution. The book doesn’t just analyse the last 79 years of Pakistan. It ventures into the future, by laying out alternative scenarios for 2047, when Pakistan will complete its first century.

It lays out several conditions which could extricate Pakistan from the deep state paradigm. These include a strengthening of the political process, upholding the Constitution by revoking all amendments that institutionalise the army’s role in governance, creating an independent judiciary and respecting the rule of law, eradicating a culture of sycophancy, greed and lust for power, eradicating corruption and nepotism and upholding of merit, ensuring freedom of expression, and focusing on human and social development and vibrancy of the economy rather than defence spending. This is a very tall order.

This book is not the only one laying out a rosy future for Pakistan. One recently argued that Pakistan could become an Asian Tiger by 2050. Another suggested that, once institutions were reformed, Pakistan could become a model in the Global South. Even Goldman Sachs argued that Pakistan could become one of the world’s top economies by 2075.

Unfortunately, nepotism and bribery are sewn into the social fabric. From peon to chairman, everyone expects to either pay a bribe or take a bribe to get the simplest things done. In the middle, if there is someone who neither takes a bribe nor offers a bribe, he or she is frowned upon by people under him or her and by the people over him or her.

If Pakistan could not change its strategic culture in 79 years, why will it do so in the next 21 years? The author concedes that point. He states that progress will only occur when the people rise and demand a viable democratic system with no curbs on media, the judiciary and civil society. Sadly, the people have arisen a few times to demand their human and social rights, but they have failed every time. They may well rise again? If they do, will the results be any different?

I also have a few minor issues with the book. The pivotal term, ‘deep state’, should have been defined on the first page, not until several pages later. There is also considerable repetition within the case studies of Egypt, Russia and Turkey. And not all references cited in the book appear in references at the end.

Even then, the book is a provocative read and should interest all students of the deep state phenomenon in the Global South.

The reviewer is the author of Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan: The Price of Strategic Myopia. X: @ahmadfaruqui

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, October 25th, 2026

Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale,
The Official Film Companion
By Emma Marriott with Amy Moore
Weldon Owen
ISBN: 979-8886743067
224pp.

I tried watching Downton Abbey two or three times after it first aired in 2010 and, each time, I found it rather tedious and serious, as it begins on the day the Titanic sank. Then, perhaps in the right frame of mind, I gave it another try.

By that time, all six seasons had been released and, for some reason, this time round I found it so addictive that I promptly purchased all the DVDs and binge-watched the entire show. Since then, I have bought the beautifully packaged DVD box set from Amazon — it looks almost like an album — and watched the series at least 10 times and bought at least 10 books about it.

For the uninitiated, Downton Abbey was a hugely popular period drama that ran from 2010 to 2015, following the Crawley family and their servants at the fictional Yorkshire estate of Downton Abbey (Highclere Castle in real life). At its centre are Robert Crawley, the Earl of Grantham, his American-born wife, Cora, their three daughters, Mary, Edith and Sybil, and their household staff. And let’s not forget Robert’s mother, the Dowager Countess, Lady Violet played by Dame Maggie Smith.

It was created and written by Julian Fellowes, who won an Academy Award for his screenplay for Gosford Park and went on to win two Emmys for Downton Abbey and has also created The Gilded Age. After the show ended in 2015, three films were released: Downton Abbey (2019), Downton Abbey: A New Era (2022) and, last year, Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, sadly the final film — for now — which was possibly the best of the three.

The official companion to the final film of Downton Abbey celebrates a beloved series — and makes parting with its characters a little easier

However, this means the world of Downton is over for good, which is why, when I found out there was a companion book for the last movie — Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, The Official Film Companion — I promptly got my hands on it via some relatives abroad. Needless to say, it was a pleasure to read.

In a nutshell, change is at the heart of the finale. “We see in The Grand Finale a handing off of the baton from older to younger generations,” writes author Emma Marriott. Lord Grantham finally gives the reins to the newly divorced Lady Mary; Andy and Daisy take over from Mr Carson and Mrs Patmore as butler and cook respectively. And, as Julian Fellowes explains in the book, “Every generation reinvents how these great houses are lived in.”

The first section, ‘Bright Lights’, takes us into the heart of London, amid the bright lights of the city’s Theatreland. It is 1930, and the Downton household has gone to London to be part of the ‘Season’. It is also where Lady Mary’s divorce becomes a very public scandal, and she is asked to leave a party because royal guests are arriving and a divorced woman is considered unsuitable. The storyline gives the film an interesting glimpse into the changing times, and the deeply restrictive, attitudes towards divorce.

The Great Crash of 1929 is also used in the plot, with its repercussions felt by the Crawleys. The family considers downsizing from their London house to an apartment, as the economic realities of the Depression begin to emerge. Robert is comically bewildered by the idea of living in a “layer cake of strangers” in the movie.

The book provides considerable historical details about the state of divorced women, the Crash and its aftermath, and other plot-related events, giving readers a sense of what was actually happening at the time. This is one of the companion’s real strengths: it offers a historical perspective viewers may not otherwise know.

For example, it offers a fascinating account of London’s disappearing palaces, including Devonshire House, home to the Dukes of Devonshire, which the film mentions as having been demolished in 1924. Photographs of its grand ballroom and other historical images illuminate details that the film leaves unsaid.

There is a particularly enjoyable section on Noël Coward (who appears in the film) and his play Private Lives (1930), which was one of Coward’s most successful plays and concerned a divorced couple (in the film, Coward takes inspiration for the play from Lady Mary). The book includes photographs of Coward, images from the play’s productions, and even an image of the indomitable Maggie Smith performing in Private Lives in 1972. The juxtaposition is as wonderful as it is informative.

The book also character biographies, analyses of the movies and show, and plenty of behind-the-scenes material, with team members explaining how particular scenes, sets and costumes were created. The photographs offer views of sets we never see on screen.

The epilogue, ‘Memories of Downton’, becomes increasingly emotional as the team looks back at their time together. Michelle Dockery (Mary) talks about Laura Carmichael (Edith) and how they have spent so much time together that saying goodbye does not feel like saying goodbye. They were both in their 20s when the series began. “We’re like family,” she says.

Elizabeth McGovern (Cora) says the DNA of Downton is now in the cast’s bones, in Julian Fellowes’ imagination, and in the audiences’ as well. It is difficult to disagree. After six seasons and three films, these characters have become part of their viewers’ lives. There is a section after the epilogue that is a tribute to the late Maggie Smith, who was at the heart of Downton Abbey and for whom Fellowes wrote the role of Violet.

I felt one character’s absence particularly keenly: Sybil (Jessica Brown Findlay), who dies in Season 3. I wish the book had included more photographs of her as well as quotes by Findlay. Of course, Sybil wasn’t really part of The Grand Finale, so there was a limit to how much space she could be given. But because this book also celebrates Downton’s journey, I think she deserved more space.

The book includes snippets and quotes from cast and production members, which the publisher has advertised as “interviews”, rather than substantial conversations. I would have liked more personal reflections from the cast, Julian Fellowes and production members — they would have been an added dimension to what is, after all, the grand finale and culmination of a 15-year journey. Those reservations aside, the book is impressive. The photography is superb, though it would have benefited greatly from more captions, ideally detailed ones; the material is fascinating, and the historical background gives the film greater depth.

Emma Marriott is well suited to the task: she is a Sunday Times bestselling author of more than 15 history and non-fiction books and wrote the official companions to the first two Downton films, as well as The Costumes of Downton Abbey. The book is priced a little high ($40) but, for a Downton devotee, it’s simply a must-have because, after all these years, it’s difficult to say goodbye and the book makes it a tad easier.

The writer is a member of staff. He can be reached at mamun.adil@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, October 25th, 2026

This column is a continuation of the happy scene when, having published The Adventures of Amir Hamza, a major internationally acclaimed translation, my second novel, The Story of a Widow, by Canada’s biggest publisher, and The Cobbler’s Holiday Or Why Ants Don’t Wear Shoes, a children’s picture book by one of the most celebrated children’s publishing houses in the US, I was justifiably basking in hard-earned glory.

I had already been working on my third novel, Between Clay and Dust, and the translation of Tilism-i-Hoshruba. One of the reasons I had published The Adventures of Amir Hamza was to provide the background to Tilism-i-Hoshruba, the world’s greatest and longest magical fantasy, whose translation I had hoped to complete in 10 years’ time.

My agent-editor, Bob Wyatt, a veteran publisher himself, warned me that, with the current publishing industry trends, it would not be easy for a publisher to commit to a large project like Tilism-i-Hoshruba — 24 volumes of approx 500 pages each — and even if they did, they may discontinue publishing it if sales lagged. At the same time, he encouraged me to not give up, and consider self-publishing for the Hoshruba project, through which I could exercise control over the publishing rights, as opposed to a situation where a publishing house sits on the rights after discontinuing publishing it for slow sales.

Here I must acknowledge the role Bob has played in shaping me as a writer and publisher. Those interested may look up the celebrated publisher Robert B. Wyatt on Wikipedia, who has led several major publishing houses, where he ran his own imprints. A feisty 86-year-old, he is still one of the sharpest minds in American publishing. We had become friends and, after my first book, Bob worked pro-bono, refusing his professional fee for the books he placed for me.

Beyond a great friend, I could not have found a better guide for my work, as he helped me understand the thinking and working of large publishing houses, and the importance of small, editor-led publishing houses. He also taught me to not let the publishing industry trends perturb me, and to develop a long term, patient view of my career as a writer. It is the same counsel I give to new writers who approach me for publishing advice.

Bob tried his best to find a home for Hoshruba, and we worked on more than one plan of “presenting” Hoshruba for newly launched digital-publishing-only platforms, none of which were successful. Chiki Sarkar, who headed Random House India and had earlier acquired the South Asia rights for The Adventures of Amir Hamza, proved to be the bravest of international publishers, by committing to publishing Hoshruba in India. I self-published it for the international market, using Ingram’s Lightning Source service under my Urdu Project imprint. Both the Urdu Project International edition and Random House India edition came out in 2009.

I had prepared my own marketing strategy for the Hoshruba project and, other than approaching literary bloggers, I sent out over 400 personal emails to members of The Middle East Studies Association (MESA), a private learned society that promotes scholarship in Middle Eastern, North African and Islamic studies. I explained Hoshruba, its importance as a great fantasy originating from the Indo-Islamic culture, and included references to the international acclaim its introductory book, The Adventures of Amir Hamza, had received upon its publication. Out of those academics, only one wrote back, asking for a free copy. I still remember that as a hilarious insight into the nature of Middle East studies in the US.

I had planned to return to Pakistan by that time, and went to meet a Canadian editor to discuss my new novel, Between Clay and Dust, on which I had been working for several years. The editor brought me a book with the theme of Pakistan and terrorism, and suggested that a novel like that would have a good chance of being accepted by the publishing house.

In June 2009, I returned to Pakistan, where Oxford University Press Pakistan invited me to join them as publisher for their English language programme. I made a counter offer to them, to join them as Urdu publisher instead, and create a vibrant Urdu language adult and children trade publishing programme, encompassing both classical and contemporary literature, which I felt Pakistan needed more than an English language publishing programme. Happily, they agreed, but this engagement lasted only for 13 months, during which I supervised the preparation of over 20 titles, including Urdu classics, modern Urdu classics, contemporary Urdu literature, criticism and travelogue.

For a year after leaving Oxford University Press Pakistan, I worked on my novel. Both Chiki Sarkar and David Davidar were interested in acquiring it. David had just founded Aleph Book Company in collaboration with Rupa Publications, one of India’s largest independent book publishing and distribution houses. Between Clay and Dust was chosen as Aleph Book Company’s inaugural title.

A small back story here: David assigned the book to a new editorial hire, Simar Puneet, who later rose to the position of Aleph Book Company’s editorial director. Simar told me that, during her job interview, David asked her about her favourite novels from the last few years. And Simar began: ‘There’s this novel, The Story of a Widow by Musharraf Ali Farooqi…’ David listened quietly, without letting on that he had already acquired Between Clay and Dust; he hand-delivered the manuscript to Simar’s desk on the day she joined.

Between Clay and Dust was later shortlisted for the 2012 Man Asian Literary Prize. A new US publisher, Restless Books, launched their publishing house with Between Clay and Dust, and thus it acquired the rare honour of being the inaugural title for two newly launched publishing houses. A small Canadian publisher, Freehand Books, later acquired the novel’s US and Canadian rights.

[To be continued.]

The columnist is a novelist, author and translator.
He can be reached via his website: micromaf.com

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, October 25th, 2026

Younger listeners know her for ‘Banjarapan’ — the OST of the recent drama Jinn Ki Shaadi Unn Ki Shaadi — while those with more mature tastes remember her for other soulful renditions, including the popular 2018 ‘Shikwa Jawab-i-Shikwa’ from Coke Studio, with the qawwal troupe of Fareed Ayaz and Abu Mohammad.

But few people know she recently also collaborated with one of China’s most popular singers, Lay Zhang, on a song called ‘Pak-Cheen Dosti Zindabad’ which celebrated the 75th anniversary of Pak-China relations. It is available on major platforms, including YouTube and Spotify.

Despite her Hunzai roots, Natasha behaves more like a Karachiite than many of the Karachiites I know. She was born in the city and raised there in part; however, people often mistake her for a foreigner in her own country. In fact, on her recent trips to China, people mistook her for Chinese.

From Allama Iqbal and Parveen Shakir’s poetry to a collaboration with the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the singer has taken some unexpected turns in her musical journey. Add a Chinese pop star, a love of cricket and a determination to do things her own way, and there’s plenty more to her story than meets the ear

PARVEEN SHAKIR AND THE POETRY THAT STAYED

Since making her mark in the music industry, Natasha has released several albums. If her debut album Zariya (2020) introduced her to many new followers worldwide, Khirad (2022) came out as a tribute to the legendary poet Allama Iqbal, whose poetry was the backbone of each song.

The album featured the massively popular ‘Shikwa Jawab-i-Shikwa’, as well as ‘Wajood-i-Zan’, a women’s empowerment song; the title track ‘Khirad’ and ‘Ne Mohra’ were also praised for their Western-style composition with an Eastern touch. However, she admits she knew little of the late Parveen Shakir’s work before starting Khushboo (2026), her third album in six years.

“I hadn’t read Parveen Shakir’s poetry in depth before this album,” she says. “I knew of her, obviously, but when I started working on her poetry, I realised how much there was to it.”

What stayed with her was Shakir’s ability to write about love without losing dignity. “Her writing gave me a lot of validation and dignity. The way she talks about love, accepts love and expresses herself — it empowered me.”

Natasha also mentions the graciousness of Parveen Shakir’s son, Murad, who gave her permission during a video call to use his mother’s poetry and wonders what she would have felt had she been alive. Shakir passed away in a car accident in 1994.

“I don’t know whether she would like it, but I hope she would understand that we are trying to honour her writing,” says Natasha.

THE CHINESE CONNECTION

In her mind, if the Shakir album requires her to stay attuned to Urdu’s nuances, her international collaborations demand the opposite — communicating through music even when words fail.

The songstress made two trips to China this year: first to record the Pak-China Friendship song, and second to perform as a showstopper at an international event. She was overwhelmed to realise that, by sharing the recording booth and the music video with Chinese sensation Lay Zhang, she became huge in China, where local girls apparently told her, ‘You must be big in Pakistan to record a song with Lay Zhang!’

Her collaboration in China led her to a well-equipped international studio, where she recorded material in Chinese and Urdu as part of celebrations marking the 75th anniversary of Pakistan-China friendship.

“The Chinese were looking for someone from Pakistan who could sing a few verses in Chinese and found me on YouTube,” Natasha explains. “At first, I wasn’t that thrilled, because I viewed it as just another collaboration with any other artist. But when I saw their internationally equipped studio and their passion for their work, my perception changed.”

She adds that during the music video shoot, she filmed at the Great Wall of China, a feat no other Pakistani artist can claim.

“Thank God Lay Zhang could speak English because of his K-Pop connection. Despite being a major star in China, he served as an interpreter during the song’s production.”

THEN THERE WAS JIMMY CHOO…

On her second trip to China, she was invited to appear as a showstopper at the World Dance Competition. She tells me, in her usual rapid-fire style, that while she was responding to the many people who came to congratulate her on her performance, an older gentleman approached her, took her hand and asked for a picture.

He then directed his friend to take the photo, beaming with pride. Only later did Natasha discover who they were. The friend who took the photo was an ambassador attending the event; the polite older gentleman was none other than the legendary designer Jimmy Choo.

“I had no idea who he was at the time. He was just a very sweet and humble person who wanted a picture with me. Later, when someone asked me, ‘Do you know who that was?’ I was like, ‘What!’” Natasha is nothing if not expressive.

“That is one of the things I love about travelling and performing,” she adds. “You meet people from completely different worlds, and sometimes you don’t even realise who you are standing next to.”

CANADA, KARACHI, HUNZA AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN

Natasha also had a successful tour of Canada this year, where she performed for a crowd that featured many people who didn’t understand Urdu. Their reaction afterwards surprised her.

“I couldn’t believe how they were meeting me,” she says. “Their eyes were almost bursting with excitement and appreciation. And I thought, ‘You don’t even understand the language.’ They informed me that it didn’t matter to them whether they understood the language or not. They loved the way I performed.”

She adds that by going to different countries and interacting with locals, she can safely vouch for the saying that music is a universal language. It does not need known words to connect.

Natasha is a happy-go-lucky soul who embraces cultures wherever she goes, and credits her upbringing in both north and south Pakistan for it. “I am a very good blend of a Hunzai and a Karachiite,” she offers. “I wear the route I have come from as a badge, because it made me unique.”

Karachi, meanwhile, instilled in her the confidence and independence that became central to her personality. “Karachi has made me who I am. This personality — it has been given to me by this city.”

BEFORE MUSIC, THERE WAS CRICKET

Natasha credits her perseverance, adap­­tability to different surroundings, and never-say-die attitude to sports, particularly cricket, which taught her a lot.

Cricket? Natasha Baig? That was news to me, even though I was active in the sports scene. I realised why it was a miss — she represented the Karachi region as an off-spinner at the Under-15, Under-17, and Under-19 levels in the domestic circuit as Natasha Zakir, not Natasha Baig.

“Cricket was my first love,” she enthuses. “I didn’t want to leave it, but it was difficult for me because, when you play, the player’s mind is focused on the game.”

She believes playing with the best, including Sana Mir, who later captained the national side, helped her a lot. However, despite her potential, her career was cut short because she lacked support at home. Natasha still had another year of under-19 cricket remaining and was offered another trial with the Karachi team, but she declined. Another reason was that music had already entered her life.

“I was very depressed after leaving sports,” says Natasha, then adds: “I was basically dating sports. So when I broke up with sports, music entered my life as a friend. I fell in love with music. I think I was meant to do this.”

It’s an analogy that amuses me. But I hold off on asking her about her personal life.

FINDING A VOICE OF HER OWN

But how did the young Natasha find her voice? Unlike youngsters who know they want to become a singer when they grow up, Natasha was late to the party; only in her teens did she consider her voice a singer’s voice.

“In my mind, Lata Mangeshkar, Noor Jehan, Nayyara Noor and Alka Yagnik — these were voices. When you hear them, you think, ‘This is what a singer sounds like.’ I never thought I could sing.”

Only after people who listened to her sing in private told her she had a good voice with a unique tone did she believe it. “And I thought, okay, there are so many singers. Will people accept me?”

Hassan Ali Effendi, her manager and long-time collaborator, played a key role in helping her understand her talents. Their creative partnership also extended to Laal Series, the production company and media consultancy firm they co-founded, which has released all her albums and promotes original music, folk tunes and artistic projects.

She also credits Sounds of Karachi with her early musical development, when Ahsan Bari invited her to join the ensemble soon after she appeared on the scene in 2013.

Although she has performed all kinds of songs, Natasha is still largely regarded as a Sufi singer. “I don’t want to put myself in that bracket where I’m just a Sufi singer,” she says honestly. “However, when I perform a Sufi song, the fun comes naturally. It is very effortless.”

THE FEAR OF A POWERFUL WOMAN

How does she see herself as a female artist, I ask. “I have never tried to see myself as a woman artist,” she responds immediately. “I have only seen myself as an artist.”

But she believes powerful women still make people uncomfortable. She says her voice has sometimes made other musicians reluctant to collaborate because they fear she might overpower them.

“People think I will overshadow them. I used to ask, why? How? You bring your expression, and I will bring mine.”

Her recent collaboration with Kashmir reinforces the point. The band approached her for ‘Kyun’ because they heard something in her voice that she couldn’t initially recognise.

“I was amazed when they approached me for a collab because they could hear only me singing those verses. Even though I felt the song could have done better with another artist, they saw in me what I couldn’t see.”

She also joined a project called Ustad: Chapter One that centres on the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s music and reimagines his work with a new generation of artists.

“The project was offered to a lot of individuals a few years ago by Universal Music, who were reviving Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s music, and I was part of one of the collaborations. I worked with Haider Ali and Bol Jani and we chose ‘Maikhana’ as it was one of my favourite Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan songs.”

Natasha adds that she nearly forgot about the whole episode until she learned her collaboration was selected as the best and that they would digitally add her voice to Nusrat sahib’s.

“I didn’t even ask about the money. I just heard Nusrat and thought, ‘I want to do this.’ Now it has made my checklist. Even Nusrat sahib is with me. I got to collaborate with him. It’s a big deal.”

THE PEOPLE WHO STAYED

Natasha’s journey has not been effortless or without its heartbreaks. Her father never accepted her decision to pursue music. They remained estranged over it, and he died during the Covid pandemic without the two resolving their differences.

“Some people came and told me he was really proud of me, but maybe he didn’t have the heart to say so,” she says, subdued for the first time in our talk.

She attributes her success to her mother, who has been instrumental in her journey. “If she hadn’t supported me and believed in me, I wouldn’t have made it here today.” Natasha reveals that her mother was a huge Nazia Hassan fan in her youth and loved music, but an early marriage ended her dreams.

“Maybe that’s why she supported me and my younger brother, Sameer, who is less active on the scene these days. By making music and performing together, we fulfil the dream my mother had before it was taken away.”

WHAT KEEPS HER GROUNDED

For someone who represented her city at the national level in cricket and continues to be a proud ambassador of her country through music, Natasha’s ability to stay grounded is a remarkable achievement. She credits her ‘faith’ for it.

“If people see any talent in me, it’s because of sports,” she says. “I have played so much that it has kept me very grounded. God has blessed me.”

I finally ask her about her personal life. Away from music, her life is surprisingly quiet, she tells me. Happily single, she spends time with her rescued cats, declutters when she feels overwhelmed and sometimes picks up a guitar.

“My favourite thing to do when I have nothing planned is to open YouTube and watch an artist play the handpan for hours,” she says. “It’s a kind of meditative therapy that relaxes me. I sing along to the songs or sometimes create one.”

Perhaps that is the best way to understand Natasha Baig at this stage in her career: an artist who keeps moving between worlds without feeling the need to choose one.

She can return to Parveen Shakir’s Urdu, sing Sufi music for an audience that cannot understand the words, reproduce a Chinese phrase after hearing it once, collaborate across borders, be mistaken for a local in China — and then return to a Karachi coffee shop to speak perfect Urdu in the fast-paced Karachi style, as if none of it were unusual.

“I once left music to prepare for the CSS exam, but music never left me behind,” Natasha informs me.

The detour was temporary, but the music wasn’t.

The writer is a broadcast journalist who writes on sports, film, television and popular culture.

X: @omair78

Published in Dawn, ICON, October 25th, 2026

Alarmist fantasies of superintelligence — where artificial intelligence surpasses that of the most gifted human minds — are criticised for distracting from real concerns and threats. AI is energy hungry, environmentally damaging, and has prompted urgent calls for legislation relating to a slew of ethical concerns.

Apocalyptic AI visions drawn from science fiction engage public interest. One fascinating scenario can be found in the 2018 movie Annihilation, starring Natalie Portman and Oscar Isaac. The film has been released in the 4K Ultra HD home media format in the UK and US this October.

Annihilation features an “alien intelligence” — a popular analogy for AI among tech leaders — which embeds itself within Earth’s environment. Can such visions be useful to the current real-world doomsday debate?

Alex Garland’s 2018 horror sci-fi film Annihilation has just been released for home media. It offers a new way of looking at artificial intelligence and the usual doomsday narratives…

ANNIHILATION AS A METAPHOR

Sci-fi could help reframe the real-world narrative in positive ways.

There are strange techno-futurist and eugenicist visions at play within Silicon Valley, which appear popular with some tech billionaires. These are linked to dark enlightenment thinking — a movement that rejects liberal democracy and egalitarianism — as well as effective altruism (attempting to impartially calculate benefits to provide the greatest good). These visions encompass long-term perspectives that accept present-day sacrifice for future well-being.

The future-oriented visions expressed by some tech leaders can be surreal, but they reflect the belief systems fuelling the drive for AI superintelligence. And that raises important questions, right now, about whose vision of the future we are investing in.

Alex Garland’s sci-fi horror film Annihilation takes us into these issues through one of the weirdest sci-fi visions that’s out there. It is loosely adapted from a novel by Jeff VanderMeer. Termed the Shimmer, because it radiates energy, the AI steadily expands its reach (starting from Florida swampland) by operating as a networked entity beyond human control. It changes everything within its domain. People, animals and plants mutate in unpredictable ways, seemingly infected by a strange parasite.

The story focuses on an expedition team, including genetics expert Lena (Portman), who enter the Shimmer seeking answers. They discover that all electromagnetic waves and DNA are being disrupted and reconfigured. The Shimmer is interfering with the fundamental patterns of life, redefining evolutionary code.

Among other things, the Shimmer learns to clone humans. This enables it to exist within human-type bodies anywhere on Earth.

BOTH EXTINCTION AND IMMORTALITY

Annihilation toys with different types of human extinction. Terminal extinction refers to humanity dying out while leaving a successor species, a bit like the concept of a human’s consciousness being uploaded on to a machine. Final extinction is when humanity ends, full stop.

When tech billionaires stumble over questions about wanting humanity to endure, they are probably thinking of terminal extinction. Surreal as it sounds, this magical thinking is a recurrent feature of the AI landscape.

Annihilation leaves the viewer to decide which form of human termination is occurring. The film draws on Garland’s deep fascination with AI. His debut as a director, Ex Machina, explored a humanoid robot passing the Turing test and breaking free from human control. His television series Devs visualises a world where a quantum supercomputer has “godlike” capabilities.

Annihilation’s organic body horror uses imagery of destroyed, mutated and cloned bodies to reflect profound social anxiety about humanity’s future. As Garland himself has suggested in an interview, there is a form of digital spirituality fuelling the tech billionaire drive for AI superintelligence and his sci-fi work explores this concept in various ways.

AI AS PARASITE

Annihilation is weird but it makes sense through the parasite theory of communication. The French philosopher and historian of science Michel Serres expanded upon biological parasites to develop a media and communications theory. In it, he argued that all forms of interaction involve disruption and noise.

Whether intentional or not, within every interaction there is always some kind of human or non-human disruption at play. Think in terms of glitches and interference while using digital devices, background noise, changeable environments, uninvited guests and any other distraction. According to Serres’ idea, these can all be visualised as forms of parasite feeding on attempts to interact.

In some instances, the parasite takes over — the disruptor displaces the host. If the impact of a parasitical disruptor is significant, it can change society forever. Disruption is a popular term in technology, and AI can be seen as a global disruptor.

But disruption shouldn’t be viewed as inherently negative. In fact, disruption is generally considered a form of positive change, because it offers new tools, systems and processes that displace the current methods and structures available to humans in everyday life. But it raises the key issue of whose interests, ethics and beliefs are being propagated and served by the impact of AI as a disruptor.

Annihilation visualises a paras­itical disruptive force embedded within the environment, which invites comparison with the darker areas of techno-futuristic visions from Silicon Valley and beyond. Like the Shimmer, AI is not going away; it just keeps changing form.

More importantly, Annihilation shows how small-scale changes can build towards global impacts. The story to engage with isn’t the fantasy that AI superintelligence is about to dominate humanity — it’s the one about disruption, and whether that is a net positive or negative for human society. Changing how we think about and use AI requires critically examining it, disrupting the fantasy narrative and redefining the discourse and direction of travel of this world-changing technology.

What Annihilation tells us is that becoming a disruptor can change our future visions and current realities in a positive way. It helps us see possibilities for a technological future that move beyond the human extinction trope.

The writer is Director of Doctoral Programmes in Art & Design and Senior Lecturer in Culture and Context at Nottingham Trent University in the UK

Republished from The Conversation

Published in Dawn, ICON, October 25th, 2026

When Mango Jutt opens with Murad Jutt (Faysal Quraishi) entering a villains’ den wearing the most ridiculously fake prosthetics ever shown in the history of cinema, you begin to fear for the next two hours of your life. But then, you notice a few things.

The cheap mask is most likely a production mistake (I hope so), yet Quraishi wears it with perplexing ownership and a sheer will to milk the absurdity. The scene probably wasn’t written as a comedy, but it became one, and worked better than it should have. The result is as disarming as it is entertaining: an actor owning his film, for better or worse, and pushing whatever skills he has to elevate it.

As far as initial reactions go, one cannot help but sympathise. My sister — a hard-to-please fellow film critic — and I had already steeled ourselves. The grapevine wasn’t good, and it showed. After nearly three years in the making, one cannot help but notice that the cast members’ appearances have visibly changed. A bigger eye-opener, though, is that Mango Jutt carries no writer, director or editor’s credit.

The editor is from India and therefore uncredited, probably because post-production and release funds came from the Punjab government’s film grant (its first release); a local company, Post Fusion, gets an all-encompassing ‘post-production’ credit. The creditless writer-director is Abu Aleeha (Mera Lyari, Taxali Gate), who apparently directed nearly the entire film before Syed Nini replaced him, reshooting and streamlining sections. Nini, too, gets no credit.

After years in the making and a troubled production, Mango Jutt arrives as a chaotic mix of slapstick, missed opportunities and spirited performances. Faysal Quraishi does his best to turn a muddled film into an entertaining romp

One expects, and sees, a wonky, half-baked storyline, missed opportunities and a score that ill-fits most scenes and never lets up. As these issues (minus the score) are typical of an Aleeha film, there’s little doubt whose hands shaped the spine of the film. That spine, however, has been violently adjusted by producer and lead actress Hareem Farooq to create the best possible version. The manhandling (or is it woman-handling?) works better than one anticipates.

Quraishi’s Murad Jutt is a Karachi-based cop with a spunky, vaudeville-ish streak, who can throw punches and punchlines simultaneously. After beating the ruffians in the first scene, Murad gets a ride home from his superior (Aijazz Aslam in a special appearance), who also speaks Punjabi. Aslam’s unnamed character says Murad’s vacation is sanctioned and that, once in Punjab, he must infiltrate a land-grabbing mob.

Murad says not to worry, for it is “Mango Jutt”, not he, who goes to Punjab. Why that name, Aslam’s character asks? Because Murad wants to be a common man, and common means ‘aam’ in Urdu, and that the word ‘aam’ is also used for mangoes. Say what?!?

Murad has an estranged, recently widowed sister, Mariam (Ayesha Jehanzeb), who lives in Punjab with her three kids Deju, Eeloo and Qalboosh (Hiba Kiyani, Adan Kashif, Arham Khan). As expected, Murad gets stuck with the kids who don’t like him much, and their self-proclaimed butler Ramzani (Qaiser Piya), a comic relief whose punchlines don’t always work, while his sister Mariam flies off to Dubai on a family business trip.

As if two caretakers weren’t enough, enter Noor Jahan (Hareem Farooq), his sister’s friend and the vice principal at the children’s school, who also agrees to look after them. With the hero and heroine under one roof, there’s bound to be romance. Imagine Main Hoon Naa’s Shah Rukh Khan-Sushmita Sen romance mixed with One 2 Ka 4’s children-caretaking; however, neither angle has a clear storytelling trajectory here.

Before flying off, Mariam also puts her late husband’s former partner, Munawar Mirza (Shamoon Abbasi), in his place. Mirza, in an expensive car and sharp-looking suit, has the aura of a magnate who bullies first and ruins people later. Smarting from Mariam’s ridicule, he hires goons (read: comic reliefs) — led by Honey Albela, Muhammad Ali (aka Motu Bhai) and Shahid Khan — to kidnap the children and seize the widow’s business and property.

However, post-interval, we flashback and see a 180-degree flip avatar of the man. This Mirza — sporting a menacing beard, surma-laden eyes and a dark kurta pajama — is the kind of ruffian one sees in backwater towns. Like any villain, he wants to marry the town belle, Noor Jahan. But the underlying reason for the character’s rural-to-modern transformation is simply left unexplained!

Storytelling-wise, not much happens in either half. The film is a smattering of ideas pushed and pulled into sense by the film’s unnamed editor. The hastened pace nearly covers up the slack, yet the missed opportunities go beyond what editing can fix.

October releases have never worked in the history of films, and adding to the problems is that there’s a visible lack of PR strategy and the plot points go nowhere. For example, there really is no reason for Murad to take on the alias of Mango Jutt, since he does no police work. The screenplay forgets to build a relationship between Murad and the children, which should have been central. And, late in the film, an acid attack on Noor Jahan is thrown in as a twist that never comes together.

The comedic supporting cast doesn’t work. Piya gets the most screentime, but none of the screen worth. The others do something far worse than ill-timed jugaarr [improvs]: they huddle around Mirza, turning his ferociousness into farce. These are writing and directing problems; a quality-control pass could have nipped them in the bud… but I’m told the film was re-written several times, so one shudders to think what it originally was.

Quraishi, Abbasi and Farooq — in that order — shoulder the burden, layering their scenes with heightened performances and quips. The punch-up, mostly in Quraishi’s and Abbasi’s scenes, turns dullness into entertainment in an effort to turn dirt into gold. The rest of the cast — Albela, Piya, Ali, Jehanzeb, and the three kids — come and go in patches.

Technically, one wishes the production wasn’t trapped within a house, a school and a farmhouse, or that the usually reliable Asrad Khan hadn’t opted for painful split-lighting setups (the stark shift in colour temperatures is ugly). The songs by Ali Allahditta, Faysal Abbas and Master Abdullah are quite good. The main theme in music director Ali Mustafa’s score is among the most ear-catching pieces of music one has heard in Pakistani movies. However, being too good is a detriment in this case — the theme is slapped on to most scenes, regardless of the mood.

But despite this laundry list of foibles that no edit can mask, Quraishi — the film’s heart and soul — alongside Abbasi and Farooq, make Mango Jutt fun and dismissible at the same time. Compared to what Pakistani cinema has disgorged in the last year or so, it is still one of the better releases of the lot. A film that makes up for what it lacks with sheer will to entertain.

It is a pity that what could have been Aleeha’s best film doesn’t carry his credit.

Produced by Hameem Films and released by Mandviwalla Entertainment, Mango Jutt is rated U — as in, suitable for “U” and the entire family, Punjabi-speaking or not

The writer is Icon’s primary film reviewer

Published in Dawn, ICON, October 25th, 2026

Hurmat | Hum TV, Mon-Tues 8.00pm

While other channels have worked hard on creative scripts and invested in big stars and outdoor location shoots, Hum TV has managed to pull in ratings with a low-budget story and a Gen-Z pairing. Starring YouTuber Shahveer Jafry and ex-YouTuber-now-proven-actress Dananeer Mobeen, the serial initially seems like a simple chick-lit romance.

Hurmat (Dananeer Mobeen) and her mother (Uzma Hassan) live under the constant oppression of her strict and violent father, Akram (Ali Tahir). Akram had a wild past, which he spent in love with a bored-looking courtesan (Anoushay Abbasi), and is obsessed with preventing the past from repeating itself. Hurmat manages to get to college, where she meets two good friends, Kainat aka Kenny (Raheen Basharat) and Fenny (Muajha Kashif), and it is this cute friendship that actually makes the show worth watching most of the time. The interactions between the young girls feel fresh and authentic, especially when compared to the usual deadly rivalries.

Writer Kashif Anwar has written meaningful serials such as Sabaat (2020), Neem (2023) and the amazing Nauroz (2023), so hope remains for some interesting twists and turns here. Shahveer is not a trained actor and has received some criticism for his performance.

Dar-i-Nijaat | ARY Digital, Fri-Sat 8.00pm

Zaryab (Durefishan Saleem) is slowly pulling the broken pieces of her psyche together in the less metropolitan city of Hyderabad, while blindly following the slower rhythms of her mother-in-law’s life.

Despite Zaryab’s angry outbursts, rooted in self-hatred and mistrust, her mother-in-law Khushbakht (Sania Saeed) remains in a state of unbelievable, otherworldly patience. The flashbacks of Khushbakht’s past suffering are chilling and explain the reason for the older woman’s determined good nature. Zaryab asks Abu Bakar (Sheheryar Munawar) to marry her, to prove a point to her manipulative ex-boyfriend Zamil (Nameer Khan). Zaryab’s self-loathing and anger at Zamil find an outlet in Abu Bakar, whose patience for his broken young wife is a miracle in the context of South Asian culture.

Excellent performances from the entire cast and the growing chemistry between Sheheryar Munawar and Durefishan Saleem make this one of the most watchable serials currently on-air. Director Saqib Khan has taken what could have been a difficult-to-accept script and made it into a showpiece of Pakistani television, while capturing the imagination of audiences worldwide.

Bano | Geo TV, Daily 9.00pm

Noor (Saima Qureshi) is an ambitious woman who forced her son Sheheryar (Haris Waheed) into a marriage of convenience with the spoiled daughter of her business partner. What exact advantage this confers is unclear, but details in this Indian/Turkish-style drama are not important.

This is a self-aware Cinderella story, where a middle-class girl, Bano (Hina Tariq), loses her first love and ends up being Sheheryar’s second wife. Sheheryar is the better-written character and, despite the ‘soap-style’ leaps of credulity required to watch the show, Haris Waheed makes his character believable. Hina Tariq as the street cricket-playing ‘bholi, bhaali larrki’ [innocent girl] is still a tough sell, but that determined look in her eyes will come in useful for the difficult situations that follow.

The show has gained a lot of currency because the dialogues are reasonable with zero attempts at flowery pretension, and not everyone is a cartoonish villain. However, that will change soon, as the competition for Sheheryar’s attention will become intense, according to the initial teasers. This is a show purely for escapism and entertainment, reflected in the fast pace of the story, with crisp direction from Furqan Adam.

What To Watch Out For (Or Not)

Lahu | Geo TV, Coming soon

Hamza Ali Abbasi joins the cast of Abdullah Kadwani and Asad Qureshi’s 7th Sky Entertainment’s upcoming Lahu, a thrilling serial about succession politics, starring the ever-popular pair of Bilal Abbas and Sajal Aly.

Published in Dawn, ICON, October 25th, 2026

It’s a remarkable film. But Sorkin’s obsession with his monstrous characterisation of Zuckerberg at times obscures the hideousness of the social media business model.

In The Social Network, Eisenberg brilliantly played the young Zuckerberg as super smart, conflicted and socially awkward, as he channelled his frustration with Harvard girls into the misogynistic attractiveness-rating site FaceMash.

Zuckerberg initially resisted commercialisation, fearing The Facebook would lose its cool. But by the film’s end, he was shown to have betrayed his friends to launch Facebook into Silicon Valley’s techno-capitalist machine. The Social Reckoning follows Zuckerberg to the Valley, but summons a very different beast. This time, Sorkin writes and directs, pushing his depiction of Zuckerberg to the limit.

Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning is a true American horror story but focuses more on the monstrosity of individuals than the social media model

Method actor Strong steps confidently into Eisenberg’s shoes. At one point, his Zuckerberg admits that his media portrayal hurts his wife and kids. It’s a rare glimpse of empathy in an otherwise Zodiac-like performance. Eisenberg, it seems, had run out of that. Sorkin says he declined the role because “he just doesn’t like being conflated with Mark Zuckerberg anymore.”

By the end of the events depicted in The Social Network, Facebook had amassed over 500 million users. The Reckoning begins with 2.3 billion — more than the population of any country. As Zuckerberg declares in the film, Facebook is “post-government”, beyond conventional regulatory frames. This is the new world — one increasingly shaped by big tech billionaire oligarchs, who line up on the White House lawn alongside President Donald Trump.

The Meta business model is depicted as hiding behind the language of connection. Even whistle-blower Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison), the product manager and data engineer who leaked thousands of internal Facebook documents to The Wall Street Journal in 2021, is seen to remain devoted to this cause. She “loves Facebook.” She “believes in its mission to connect.” The film tells us that workers learn the refrain from the get-go, then sign NDAs when the ideological mask slips to reveal the ugly business beneath.

The Social Reckoning reflects a world increasingly managed by Silicon Valley logic. HR managers tell Haugen: “Don’t be the friction.” When Haugen leaks research on Instagram’s damaging effects on teenagers’ mental health, we are shown how toxic leadership has become a contagion, spreading from the platform into personal lives. And when the ideology starts to unravel, another monster appears.

Zuckerberg calls in a crisis PR consultant (a stunning performance by Wunmi Mosaku) to coach him through the Senate hearings. The advice? Look them in the eye and repeat: “We are aware of that problem and currently doing something about it.” A month after The Wall Street Journal published “The Facebook Files”, Facebook changed its name to Meta.

Virality

Depending on your political persuasion, you might find some sympathy for Zuckerberg’s rationale: simply connecting people is virtuous, but protecting unchecked free speech is fundamental, at any cost. But that is also the film’s problem. It fixates on Zuckerberg as the ultimate villain, even though it exposes other horrors behind the scenes.

As set out in my book, A Sleepwalker’s Guide to Social Media, I have some direct experience of this pernicious business model. In 2012, shortly after publishing my social theory of virality/growth, which argues that emotions, feelings and affects, more than rational choice, drive what goes viral online, I was invited by a social media start-up to meet its visiting US CEO.

I politely explained that the book was a sociological account of virality, not a guide to growth. The emails stopped. The company wasn’t Facebook, but the anecdote captures something crucial about the unfolding catastrophes of social media: when platform growth depends on virality, the content matters less than its velocity.

In 2018, Facebook claimed that tackling passive consumption and outrage-bait required supercharging its engagement system around “meaningful social interactions” (MSI). But, as Haugen reveals to Horwitz in the film, MSI did nothing to resolve the underlying problem: profit remained ahead of public safety.

Research at The Wall Street Journal warned that the system would amplify harmful and divisive content. Yet, MSI remained an engagement-optimisation system, ranking what users were most likely to react to, share and discuss — including misinformation, conspiracy theories, race hate and political polarisation.

Facebook did not always hide its research from public scrutiny. Its controversial 2014 study with Cornell University academics experimented with emotional contagion, showing that the company already understood how positive and negative content could spread through its platform. Engagement and outrage were not simply unforeseen side effects of social media.

The Social Reckoning’s reliance on The Wall Street Journal’s “Facebook Files” reopens the growing abyss between what Meta knows and what it is prepared to do about it.

The film confronts some recent political viruses: misinformation, polarisation, Covid, Trump and the January 6th attack on the Capitol. Indeed, Sorkin blames Meta directly for the Capitol insurrection. The question is whether the same addictive interactions that took Facebook from Harvard dorms to 3.6 billion users across Meta’s platforms have become machinery for the destruction of Western democracy. The film ends with Zuckerberg watching events at Capitol Hill unfold in the Facebook war room. Should he pull the plug?

As lawsuits mount and new whistle-blowers emerge, what will happen to Silicon Valley’s corporate monstrosities? Like most horror franchises, expect more sequels.

The writer is Reader in Digital Communications at the University of Essex in the UK

Republished from The Conversation

Published in Dawn, ICON, October 25th, 2026

For this version of Street Fighter, embr­acing the campiness is paramount (pun inte­nded, since the film is released by Paramount).

In all seriousness, this adaptation of one of the most popular — if not the most popular — beat-em-up video games of all time takes pride and joy in its unseriousness.

I mean, take a gander at the story: in 1993, Chun-Li (Callina Liang), a secret Interpol agent, recruits Ryu (Andrew Koji) and Ken (Noah Centineo), along with master fighters Dhalsim (Vidyut Jammwal, excellent) and Guile (Cody Rhodes), to enter the World Warrior tournament in Metrolao City in the fictional country of Shadaloo — a dictatorship run by the power-hungry M. Bison (David Dastmalchian).

The roll call of contenders includes popular characters E. Honda (actor and professional wrestler Hirooki Goto), Zangief (Olivier Richter), Balrog (50 Cent) and Vega (Orville Peck)… while Cammy (Mel Jarnson) and Juli (Rayna Vallandingham) serve as Bison’s unhinged officers. The villain’s master plan is to siphon power from the world’s best fighters to augment his own ‘Psycho Power’, which fuels his power moves.

This campy, kooky adaptation of the iconic video game Street Fighter embraces its outlandish fighting moves, colourful characters and anime influences, even if its villain fails to inspire dread

The entire tournament, though, is a ruse to lure Ryu, the winner of the last tournament in 1987, who disappeared off the face of the Earth after defeating Sagat. In the fight, Ryu lost control of his own restraint, unleashing his dark side, which ultimately brought forth the fabled power-mad villain Akuma (Joe Anoa’i, aka Roman Reigns, the WWE wrestler). Akuma wants Ryu to lose power once again so that he can beat a worthy rival in combat. When Ryu chooses restraint, Akuma kills his teacher, Gouken (Don Lee).

The death fractures the relationship between Ryu and Ken, who were raised as brothers by Gouken. Chun-Li, meanwhile, wants revenge because Bison killed her father. All that’s left to say is: Round One, Fight — Hadouken! (For the uninitiated, Hadouken is the game’s signature power move.)

Story writers Dalan Musson and Gary Dauberman, along with screenwriters T.J. Fixman and Kitao Sakurai (who also directs), have reverence for the material. It is quite cool that the production happily trades reality for faithfulness.

For once, the fighting moves — including the Whirlwind Kick, Shoryuken (Dragon Punch), Hadouken (the blue fireball), Dhalsim’s elongated limbs and E. Honda’s Hundred Hand Slap — look as they do in the video games. Unlike other adaptations, which save a big fighting move for a crucial, climactic finish, here every fighter unleashes their real-world-defying special attacks as if they come naturally in this reality.

Fans will be pleased not just by the moves but by the costumes, sets, cars, props, background score, and minor video-game characters in good supporting roles (two in particular are Jason Momoa as Blanka and Andrew Schulz as Dan Hibiki, an admirer of Ryu and Ken from the games).

There’s also an absolute indebtedness to the 1994 anime feature film Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie which, to this day, continues to be a benchmark for all serious beat-’em-up game-to-film adaptations.

In fact, the flashbacks in this movie are animated in an anime style; these sequences strengthen the film’s connection to the wider world of Street Fighter, including its anime and cartoon projects.

While the 1994 anime movie took pride in its seriousness, this film also takes inspiration from another Street Fighter release in 1994: the live-action Street Fighter movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme as Guile, Ming-Na Wen as Chun-Li, and the late Raúl Juliá as M. Bison (Juliá died before the film’s release). At times, one wishes it hadn’t.

Dastmalchian, a fine character actor who has been in Dune, Prisoners, The Dark Knight, and Oppenheimer, feels as caricaturish and ill-fitting as Juliá was; the latter too was a celebrated actor best known for his roles in Kiss of the Spider-Woman and the two Addams Family movies in the 1990s. No matter the campiness of the enterprise, the villain, at least, should inspire dread.

That is, in my opinion, the biggest turn-off in an otherwise fine, compact, kooky action-comedy spectacle whose narrative stakes never rise above video-game level. Don’t expect excellence; settle for an entertaining two hours — minus a hasty last 20 minutes — and you’ll be fine.

Released internationally by Paramount and HKC Entertainment in Pakistan, Street Fighter is rated U, and is suitable for all audiences… provided they are fans of ‘Hadoukens’.

The writer is Icon’s primary film reviewer

Published in Dawn, ICON, October 25th, 2026

And there is no doubt you already have a pen or pencil holder, but there is always room for one more, especially when you can make it free of cost with a few things readily available at home.

With a carton of any sort and some colourful sheets, you can make this rainbow pencil holder that looks like a bunch of pencils standing together. Let’s start!

Things you need:

1. Pieces of foam sheets in 8 colours (you can even use less than 8)

2. Markers

3. Scissors

4. White glue

5. Hot glue (optional)

6. Ruler

7. Small carton (any shape; you can use a Tetra Pak)

8. One pale peach-coloured foam or felt sheet to make the sharpened part of the pencils.

Directions:

1. Draw a pencil shape on the foam sheet according to the size of your Tetra Pak carton. I chose to have two pencils on each side, so I cut out eight pencil shapes from the foam sheet pictures 2 and 3.

2. Cut the sharpened parts of the pencils from the pale peach-coloured sheet to match the size of the pencil shapes. Paste these pieces on top of each pencil, as shown in pictures 4 and 5. Notice the curved bottom edge, which mimics the sharpened part of a pencil.

3. Draw a dotted line along both sides of each pencil to add detail. Then draw a simple smiley or any face you like, as shown in picture 6.

4. Once the glue on the pencils is completely dry, paste them neatly on the carton, pictures 7, 8 and 9.

Your handy little rainbow coloured pencil holder is ready!

The writer can be contacted at ithecraftman@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, Young World, October 24th, 2026

Then something unimaginable happened. A golden shimmer pierced the dark clouds and everyone gasped in relief. It was the golden dragon! It flew across the sky, filling it with golden light and, suddenly, nobody was afraid anymore.

Do you want to know what happened next? Of course you do! That itch to know what happens next is the whole point of storytelling.

This was an old tale my mother once told me. She loved reading folklore from different cultures, often in translations into her own language. She would then tell us these stories with such excitement that it felt as though she had experienced the adventures herself. It was impossible not to get lost in the moment. She loved telling stories, and we loved listening to them. Even now, as I write this, I feel as though I’m reliving those moments.

A story can travel across centuries, cultures and generations. All it needs is someone willing to tell it

Like me, many of you may have enjoyed listening to stories at bedtime or reading them yourselves. Some of you may love folklore and fairy tales, while others prefer spooky stories, brave heroes or adventures featuring strange and mysterious creatures. Whatever your favourite kind, storytelling has been part of human life for thousands of years. Stories travelled from one generation to the next, changing a little with each telling but always holding people’s attention.

If storytelling is still alive in your home or family, you’re carrying on a rich tradition shared by cultures around the world. It deserves to continue, no matter how much our lives change or how advanced our world becomes.

Before anyone could write

Storytelling is older than writing. Long before books existed, people shared stories whenever they gathered. Someone might begin with, “My grandfather used to tell me…” or “Long, long ago…” Stories helped people remember important events, pass on knowledge about dangerous animals, learn about their ancestors and understand what happened to the greedy and the kind.

One of the oldest surviving works of narrative literature is The Epic of Gilgamesh, which originated in ancient Mesopotamia. Its stories circulated before being recorded in writing, with some of the surviving versions inscribed on clay tablets thousands of years ago.

Similarly, cave paintings and drawings on tomb walls around the world depict animals, hunting, battles and mythical creatures. While we cannot know the exact stories behind every image, some may have been ways of recording or sharing experiences and beliefs.

Storytelling continued in different places and forms. It wasn’t just ordinary people who enjoyed stories; kings did too. In ancient and medieval times, royal courts often had storytellers, poets and musicians who entertained rulers and their guests with tales of heroes, monsters, mythical creatures and brave warriors. Some stories also carried moral lessons.

Outside royal courts, storytelling was part of everyday life. Traders and travellers met at inns, resting places and other gathering spots, where they shared tales of the places they had visited and the people they had encountered. Our own story bazaars

Our part of the world has a rich storytelling tradition. One famous example is Peshawar’s Qissa Khwani Bazaar, whose name means “market of storytellers”. In the past, merchants, travellers and caravans passing through the region gathered here to rest, drink tea and exchange stories of adventure, war and distant lands. The bazaar has changed over time, but parts of its old architecture still offer glimpses of its history.

Delhi and Lucknow also had their daastaan-go, or traditional storytellers, who narrated long, elaborate tales such as Dastaan-e-Amir Hamza. With their expressive voices, dramatic gestures and clever delivery, they could keep audiences spellbound for hours. Storytelling was a way to entertain people, share experiences and bring communities together.

How it changed

Sadly, not everything remained the same. As life grew busier, earning a living and managing daily responsibilities took up more of people’s time. Finding a few hours to sit together without worrying about the next task became difficult, and storytelling sessions gradually became less common.

Stories also began to reach us in new ways. They moved from spoken words to books, then to radio, where families gathered around a set to listen to dramas without seeing the characters. Television followed, then cassettes and CDs. Today, we can access almost any story on our phones, whenever and wherever we like. That convenience is wonderful, but I believe a story told by one person to another, in the same room, has something a device cannot quite replace.

No matter how familiar the tale, it changes a little with every telling. A storyteller watches the listeners’ faces and adjusts the story accordingly. If you look scared, they build up the suspense. If you seem bored, they add a joke or make the witch appear earlier than expected. My mother did this all the time, changing the story to suit whoever was listening.

Load-shedding time

Back in the day, not everyone had electricity at home, or at all hours. So at night there was little to do. There were no smartphones to keep everyone occupied, so the family would often gather in the dark around a candle, gaslight or lantern. Conversations would begin and soon enough, someone would start telling a story. More often than not, it was a ghost story!

There was usually one particularly brave family member who would challenge everyone else by recounting the scariest encounters, insisting they had really happened.

Not that anyone wants more load-shedding, of course. But isn’t it funny that those dark evenings often gave us some of our best storytelling memories?

Is the tradition alive?

Yes, perhaps not in the same way, but storytelling is still with us in new forms. Many of you watch animated stories on YouTube or listen to audiobooks. You might even create your own stories in games, imagining yourself as a hero fighting a bully, monster or enemy. Some children write fan fiction, while others invent entire worlds with their friends during lunch break.

The format has changed, but the desire to tell and hear stories remains. Perhaps storytelling is one of our oldest human instincts.

Who is keeping the tradition alive?

Stories are everywhere, but opportunities to hear them from family members may be becoming fewer. Listening to a parent or grandparent tell a story offers something special that a screen cannot. You learn the little details of your family’s past. You might discover that your dadi was once afraid of the dark too, or that your abbu used to get into trouble for the very same things you do.

So, if you keep asking for one more story or persuade your aunt to tell you about her childhood, you’re helping to keep the tradition alive. And think about it: when you sit with your sibling and tell them about a story you read during your library period, aren’t you doing the same thing?

Is there someone in your family who always has a story to tell? Try asking them about a time in their life you’ve never heard about. You could say, “You’ve never told me about the time you lived in that secluded house in town. What happened there one night?”

Then sit back and listen. You never know where the story might take you!

Published in Dawn, Young World, October 24th, 2026

Summer friction

This is regarding the story “Summer friction” by Wasfa Khan (YW, September 12).

I found this story funny because even grown-ups can lose their temper over small things. I have seen people arguing on the road over things that are not even worth fighting about.

The story also showed how heat and frustration can affect our moods. I think both drivers were right to apologise rather than make the situation worse.

Ahmed Raza,
Karachi

II

I liked how the two drivers went from shouting at each other to shaking hands in the story “Summer friction” by Wasfa Khan.

Sometimes, when I am tired or hungry, even little things annoy me. Later, I realise my mistake. The story reminded me to take a breath before reacting in anger. A small argument can spoil everyone’s day, but saying sorry can make things better.

Minal Shah,
Hyderabad

Cook-it-yourself

This is with reference to the Cook-it-yourself section, “Mini apple pies” by Muhammad Umar Shaheen (YW, September 19).

I loved this recipe because it was simple and made for a single serving. The cinnamon and apple filling sounds delicious, and the vanilla frosting was a nice finishing touch. It is always satisfying to make something tasty with your own hands.

Aiman Tariq,
Faisalabad

To the moon and back

This concerns the article “To the moon and back” by Anabia Parekh (YW, September 12).

I have always wondered what it would be like to look at Earth from space. This article explained very nicely how the Artemis II astronauts travelled around the Moon and returned safely.

It also made me realise that space exploration depends not just on astronauts, but also on the many people working on Earth to make these journeys possible.

Mohammad Rayan Siddiqui,
Islamabad

Behind the perfect profile

This is regarding the story “Behind the perfect profile” by Hurain Mohy Ud Din Maan (YW, September 12).

People often create a perfect image of themselves on social media to impress others. Ayaan’s experience shows that pretending to be someone you are not can be exhausting and being yourself is far more important than seeking approval from others. We should not compare our real lives with the carefully edited lives we see online.

Hiba Ahmed,
Lahore

Published in Dawn, Young World, October 24th, 2026

Published in Dawn, Young World, October 24th, 2026

Whenever I enter my Nani’s kitchen, I am welcomed by the warm smell of spices from freshly cooked food. It is not a modern or fancy kitchen, but there is something magical about it.

The walls are lined with shelves filled with colourful jars, old utensils and shining copper pots. Sunlight streams through a window, making the kitchen look bright and cheerful.

The kitchen is always full of sounds. I can hear onions sizzling in hot oil, spoons clattering against pots and the gentle whistle of the pressure cooker. Nani moves around with great confidence, preparing one dish after another.

Her hands seem to know exactly what to do, whether she is kneading dough, cutting vegetables or adding spices to a curry.

The most wonderful thing about Nani’s kitchen is its smell. The aroma of freshly made parathas, spicy curry and cardamom tea spreads through the entire house. Whenever I catch these familiar aromas, I immediately feel hungry. Even before the food reaches the table, my mouth begins to water!

One unforgettable moment happened during a family gathering at Nani’s house. Everyone was sitting in the kitchen while Nani prepared her famous biryani. I was helping her by passing the spices when I accidentally dropped an entire bowl of fried onions on the floor. For a few seconds, everyone fell silent. Then Nani started laughing, and soon everyone else joined in.

Instead of getting angry, Nani simply smiled and said, “Don’t worry, these things happen.”

She cleaned up the mess and continued cooking. Later, when we finally sat down to eat, the biryani tasted even more delicious than usual. That moment taught me that mistakes are not always something to be ashamed of. Sometimes, they become the funniest memories we cherish for years.

As evening arrived, the kitchen grew quieter. The golden sunlight faded from the window, and the warm yellow light filled the room. Nani made tea for everyone and we sat together, talking and laughing as she shared memories from her life. I wished the evening would never end.

To me, Nani’s kitchen is much more than a place where food is prepared. It is filled with love, laughter, family and, above all, unforgettable memories. Years from now, I may forget the exact taste of some of the dishes, but I know I will always remember the warmth of that kitchen and the happiness I felt whenever I was there.

Published in Dawn, Young World, October 24th, 2026

Buuaa opened the door, and she went straight to Dadi Jan, who was sitting on her charpoy, reading Ibn-i-Insha’s Urdu Ki Akhri Kitab. On seeing her, Dadi put the book aside and made her sit. Buuaa brought her a glass of water. Izza took it with unsteady hands and gulped it down.

Izza took a few deep breaths, and they waited patiently. After exhaling a chunk of anxiety along with carbon dioxide, she blurted out, “Dadi Jan, I noticed something terribly frightening today. I felt as if the town were regressing to the Dark Ages, with reading, storytelling, art and learning all in decline. Books and storytelling had become scarcer than hen’s teeth. Libraries, bookshops, bus stations and parks seemed to be missing the smell of books and the tranquillity they brought. Books miss the human connection they once had. Now, that connection is totally lost.”

Gasping for breath, she paused before continuing, “I’ve seen it, Dadi Jan. Ibn-i-Battuta Kutab Khana was empty; there wasn’t a single soul in Pitras and Tadrees, and the spacious corridors of Adab Library had become an enchanting residence for ghosts. We have to restore that connection and revive reading and storytelling.”

Listening like a doctor patiently hearing out a worried patient, Buuaa and Dadi consoled her and promised to do their best. Dadi asked her to rest and return at tea time with a fresh mind to discuss the matter.

“Dadi, the town won’t turn into another Qisa Khwani Bazaar, completely deserted of books, will it?”

“It won’t, dear!” Dadi replied. “Don’t worry. The town will experience the magic and charm of storytelling and reading. It’ll become a great hub of books and stories, like the old Qisa Khwani Bazaar.”

Dadi’s reassuring words brought solace to Izza’s aching heart, and she went to her room to rest. To Izza, stories were her whole world, and she couldn’t imagine life without them. They had always been with her. The first sound she remembered was Dadi’s voice reciting Tarzan ki Wapsi. The first syllable she uttered was the name of her favourite character, and the first thing she held was a page from a book.

Unlike Izza, Buuaa and Dadi did not find the issue shocking. They were aware of the growing disinterest in reading and storytelling. While arranging literary programmes and events, they had seen how difficult it was to persuade people to attend. People preferred trendy and cool activities, and such events were considered neither.

That evening, the three sat in the courtyard to devise a plan. Dadi suggested contacting good storytellers and seeking their help in reviving the tradition. Izza picked up a pen and scribbled down their names and whatever details they had. Their next task was to contact the storytellers for advice.

The next day, Izza called everyone on the list, invited them to a meeting and briefly explained what they would discuss.

At the appointed time, they gathered in the courtyard of Bilqees Manzil. Dadi took her seat on the charpoy and invited everyone to sit on the chairs arranged around it.

After a lengthy discussion, they decided to open a trendy café combining books and storytelling sessions to revive people’s interest in both.

Everyone was assigned their duties, and work began. Within days, they rented a place on a busy street and transformed it into an attractive café with the help of expert architects. The walls were painted ivory, brown, beige and taupe, and decorated with abstract paintings and pictures featuring poems. Vintage wooden bookshelves and furniture added elegance and charm.

In a nook, a minimalist chair was placed for the storyteller to cast his spell on the audience. The wall behind it was adorned with The Road Not Taken and excerpts from Nineteen Eighty-Four, Raja Gidh, Wuthering Heights, Zawiya and Khushboo. The nook was named “Qisa Khawani Corner”.

A huge collection of classical and contemporary literature filled the bookshelves. The books were carefully chosen to cater to people’s diverse interests, as varied as Pakistani culture itself.

A highly sought-after barista was recruited. The only thing delaying the café’s launch was its name. Everyone scratched their heads, suggesting names that were promptly discarded.

After hours of deliberation, Dadi proposed “Thoughtful Sips”, and everyone agreed. The name was carved onto a black signboard and hung above the café’s door.

Thoughtful Sips had a grand inauguration ceremony. Hundreds of people were invited, and the event was covered by television channels, magazines, newspapers and online media portals.

Drawn by the hype, crowds flocked to the café. They enjoyed their coffee while the books sat on the shelves, watching people come and go. Some books made their way to the tables, while others got the chance to introduce themselves to curious readers.

Being surrounded by so many books seemed strange to many. Some felt suffocated, thinking the books took up space and blocked the air. Others barely glanced at them, while only a few spent time with them.

The first storytelling session went reasonably well. Some tried to follow it, while others wished they could skip it like an unwanted advertisement. The day ended without too much disappointment. Good things took time, and they were ready to invest theirs.

As the days passed, people’s interest grew. After a year or so, Thoughtful Sips had become the talk of the town. People loved its vast collection of books and storytelling sessions. They came to read and listen to stories, no longer wanting to miss a session and even demanding that it be extended.

Inspired by the café’s success, other cafés began keeping books on their shelves. Vendors sold heaps of books from their carts, and restaurants followed suit. The city seemed to be transforming into a library, with streets resembling the old Qisa Khwani Bazaar and storytellers in every nook.

Izza was overwhelmed by the change. She remembered how little interest people had shown in books on the café’s opening day. Now, books were one of the main reasons they came. People had discovered the magic of books and storytelling. They discussed how true it was that reading maketh a full man and that those who read live a thousand lives.

Voices rose from different tables. Some recited their favourite lines, others appreciated the style and subject matter of literary works, while still others praised their favourite writers.

From a corner, a man whispered to himself, “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

Published in Dawn, Young World, October 24th, 2026

Ali was known for his short temper and arrogance. He had a terrible habit of making a mountain out of a molehill.

Whether he misplaced a document or found too much seasoning in his food, he would make a huge fuss. His family disliked this behaviour and were always walking on eggshells around him, trying to keep everything perfect to avoid his outbursts.

One day, while driving from Karachi to Hyderabad with his family to visit some relatives, Ali’s car was accidentally scratched by a motorcyclist. Furious, he stopped in the middle of the busy highway, got out and started yelling at the biker, completely ignoring the traffic around him. In his blind rage, he nearly got hit by another car.

After this frightening incident, his family tried their best to help him control his temper, but their efforts went in vain.

A few months later, Ali bought a new, luxurious car equipped with the latest features. Naturally, he became extremely protective of it. He grew even more irritable over the slightest close call on the road, constantly honking to warn other drivers to stay away. His family grew concerned as they noticed his obsession with the car making him increasingly short-tempered.

“Maybe he cares more about his car than anything else,” his son remarked.

Sometime later, Ali was on his way to Hyderabad again. The journey went smoothly until he neared the end of the highway. Suddenly, a motorcyclist bumped into his car. It was a deliberate move. The biker was unharmed, but the car had suffered noticeable damage.

Ali immediately lost his temper. He stormed out of the car to scold the biker, carelessly leaving the driver’s door wide open and the keys in the ignition.

The biker calmly listened to Ali’s shouting before smirking.

“Look, I’m really sorry for bumping into your car,” he said, “but trust me, it won’t matter.”

Before Ali could make sense of his words, the biker shouted into a hidden walkie-talkie, “NOW!” and sped away. At that exact moment, a stranger slipped into Ali’s empty driver’s seat, started the engine and drove off. Within seconds, Ali was left stranded on the highway without his precious car.

Devastated, Ali had to take a lift home. He wanted to go straight to the police station, but in his panic, he realised that he could not remember his new car’s registration number. He did not have the registration documents with him either. He hurried home to collect the paperwork before rushing to the police station.

Unfortunately, by the time the police checked their tracking system, the car could no longer be traced.

When Ali returned home, defeated, his family gently reminded him of a hard truth: his temper had made him so careless that he had left his keys in the ignition.

That day, Ali learned a bitter lesson. He finally realised that his temper was his greatest weakness. He began working seriously on controlling it and, over the next few months, gradually changed his attitude. Eventually, he bought another car, focused on his career and learned to live with greater patience and care. His family, too, was relieved to see the change and could finally live in peace and enjoy a happier home.

Published in Dawn, Young World, October 24th, 2026