Category: Columns

Shahzad Manzar, whose real name was Ibrahim Abdul Rahman Arif, is known as a respected short story writer and critic in Urdu literature. He was born on January 1, 1933, in Calcutta, India. His father’s name was Abdul Rahman Ahmed Arif, from whom his full name was derived. After the creation of Pakistan, he moved...

Bullying, neglect and violence leave marks that linger well into adulthood. Childhood is described as a formative period. The entire span of childhood carries deep vulnerability. These years do not merely shape a person but they can make or break them. With the brain at its most malleable, childhood is when experiences, environments and relationships...

More than five decades after 1971, a community of Pakistanis remains largely erased from Pakistan’s collective media memory: the Urdu-speaking, non-Bengali Pakistanis commonly referred to as Biharis who were left behind in Bangladesh after the fall of Pakistan (fall of Dhaka). As a journalist, I am trained to observe dispassionately. But this subject is not...

(Acknowledgment: Mr. Mirza Hamid Baig) Shabnam Minarvi, whose real name was Malik Muhammad Hussain, is counted among those Urdu poets who managed to bring together literature and professional responsibility at different stages of their lives. On one hand, he held a respected position in the field of engineering; on the other, he is remembered in...

The escalation in South Asia’s hydro-politics has reached a fever pitch, signaling a shift that could fundamentally alter the region’s stability. When New Delhi issued a formal notice to modify the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) earlier this year, the diplomatic alarms rang loudest in Islamabad and Lahore. The ensuing discourse has predictably centered on the...

On Friday, October 17, 2025, between ten and eleven in the morning, my office welcomed two dear, worthy, and diligent students of the Class, Bint e Shafique and Bint e Faiz. They came with questions related to the lesson, thoughtful ones, the kind that show a student is not only listening but living with what...

I began writing and speaking publicly about dowry-related violence at a time when it was still dismissed as a private family issue or an unfortunate cultural excess. Over more than three decades of sustained advocacy, policy engagement, and public writing, my position has remained consistent: dowry is not tradition, generosity, or celebration. It is a...

I begin with a simple but uncomfortable truth: poverty has never been eradicated. Not by revolutions, not by religions, and not by economic systems. It has survived monarchies and republics, capitalism and socialism, colonialism and independence. It has changed its appearance and its victims, but it has remained present. This persistence itself proves that poverty...

Rawalpindi has always been a city of literature, thought, and living dialogue. Its streets and neighborhoods have long borne witness to gatherings where words were not merely spoken but deeply felt, and ideas did not remain abstract thoughts but shaped attitudes and ways of life. Within this tradition, one gentle yet firm voice is that...