Every year as the month of August dawns, the air fills with an inexplicable surge of enthusiasm and emotional fervor. Green and white crescent flags fluttering in the streets, small paper flags held tightly in children’s hands, and buildings glowing under night lights proclaim that a nation is celebrating the birthday of its homeland. August...
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August 13, 2026August 13, 2026Columns
Why Doesn’t Pakistan’s Gen Z protest?
We are huge in numbers, educated, skilled, ambitious and full of passion. We carry degrees, build careers, learn new skills, create businesses, make art, produce content and dream of lives bigger than the circumstances we were born into. We are talented, deeply connected and eager to build lives that mean something. Yet beneath all that...
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August 6, 2026August 6, 2026Columns
More Than a Tradition: The Guru–Chela System, Khwaja Sira Culture, and the History of Chosen Families
Long before the words transgender or LGBTQ+ entered public conversation in South Asia, Khwaja Siras had already built communities rooted in care, dignity, and survival. Our history is not a recent one. It stretches across centuries, carrying memories of royal courts, Sufi shrines, neighbourhood gatherings, and chosen families that protected one another when the rest...
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August 5, 2026August 5, 2026Columns
Traditional Thinking : The Foundation of Human Progress
Today, almost everyone talks about leaving old ways behind to make room for progress. In Sindhi, this old-fashioned mindset is called Rawayati Soch (روائتي سوچ), which means “traditional thinking” or “conventional thought.” Most of the time, people use this phrase as an insult. They use it to describe someone who is stubborn, backward, or afraid...
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August 4, 2026August 4, 2026Columns
Painting Resistance: The First Transgender Woman on Scaffolding in Peshawar
In a city where transgender women are too often pushed to the margins, I climbed a scaffold. Not to hide. Not to survive. But to paint. For the first time in Peshawar, a transgender woman stood high above the street on scaffolding, transforming a towering 25-by-25-foot wall into a public artwork. Every brushstroke became an...
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The War That Exposed The Double Standards Of The Progressive Left
The Iran conflict has done more than reshape Middle Eastern geopolitics: It has exposed deeper contradictions in contemporary political discourse and become a revealing test of the consistency with which universal principles are applied. Governments have reacted largely as expected: Israel through the prism of security, Iran as the self-styled standard-bearer of “resistance,” the...
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July 25, 2026July 25, 2026Columns
The Declining Tower of Urban Politics
If there is one political party that transformed the character, language, and style of urban politics in Pakistan, it is the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM). More than just a political party, MQM emerged as a political phenomenon that gave millions of Urdu-speaking residents of Karachi and Hyderabad a sense of identity, representation, and political empowerment....
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July 23, 2026July 23, 2026Columns
The Arc of Existence: Reconciling Cosmological Idealism, Pessimism, and Cosmic Process
To view the universe solely through the prism of absolute beauty or unyielding suffering is to isolate two fragments of a single, vast, and unfolding reality. Throughout the history of human thought, scholars, jurists, and philosophers have wrestled with a fundamental conundrum: what is the true moral and structural nature of the cosmos? When we...
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July 22, 2026July 22, 2026Columns
Why Women Journalists Are Leaving Newsrooms in Balochistan
When Aqsa Durrani enrolled in journalism institute, she imagined herself sitting behind a television news desk, delivering headlines to millions. Like many young women in Balochistan, she believed journalism would allow her to tell stories that mattered and give a voice to communities often left unheard. But the profession she entered was far different from...
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July 20, 2026July 20, 2026Columns
The New Era of Maritime Power
“Indeed, the laws of history do not remain confined to their original forms; rather, they renew themselves in different manifestations.” The study of history bears witness to the fact that the destiny of civilizations is not always determined amid the dust and turmoil of battlefields. More often, it is inscribed in the silent waves of...