Editor’s Diary

Islamabad is a fine microcosm of Pakistan in more ways than one given its composition of ethnic backgrounds with citizens from all over the country eking out a living here and making the seat of the federation their temporary or permanent abode. Like elsewhere in the country, the preceding buzz to the 2013 general elections […]

For a major part of my journalistic career, I have had to make the graveyard shift — the price you pay for editing the broadsheet. Also, one has had the good fortune of employing skill in advertising and a substantive stint in the electronic media where “time is scant and competition tough” as they say […]

There must be something common between Shahid Afridi and retired generalissimo Pervez Musharraf. They both tend to believe in their indispensability for Pakistan although, as we have conclusively seen, that is an exaggeration in the extreme. While Afridi’s war of terror — assuming that it has anything to do with the blade — has long […]

It is some irony that prime time television was probably at its best during the time of the worst dictatorship this country suffered. To think that the fare etched itself in the minds of my generation in spite of the suffocating code of morality — and on that inert worm called PTV — is to […]

My younger daughter, who’s just six-and-a-half, placed a bet with her older sibling, who’s all of eight-and-a-half, and won. The upstart had wagered that Imran Khan will not join the Qadri long march. I consoled the older one, saying even I had suspected he would! You could say, with some conviction, that this was the […]

Our hospitality is legendary. Ye hum nahi, loag kehte hain (the people, not us, say it) — so goes the refrain. Last month’s D-8 Summit in leafy but security besieged Islamabad provided us with yet another opportunity to display the warmth. As expected we heard ad nauseam about how the coming together of at least […]