The Idle Stance of the Tippler Pigeon opens with Nadia, an office worker married to unemployed and intoxicated Mubashir. Her menial office job just about pays the rent for a small shack in Gulberg, Lahore. During the day, she is at the mercy of her lecherous boss.
It is appropriate (and perhaps not entirely coincidental) that John Zubrzycki’s Dethroned: The Downfall of India’s Princely States—the story of how India came to be a unitary state rather than a patchwork of autonomous if not independent polities—appears during India’s 75 anniversary.
Shah Hussain was a 16th-century Punjabi Sufi poet based in Lahore. His kafis, (mostly) short rhymed poetry with refrains, referring to the relationship between God and devotee with metaphors of lover and Beloved, or Murshid (literally, the master but also a metaphor for God as well) and mureed (disciple), are sung and relished even today…
South Asia is bound by a strong cultural currency. It is not uncommon to find restaurants run by Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in the diaspora marketed as serving “Indian” cuisine, freely expressing shared roots and ways of life. It is also not uncommon to find citizens of the three nations to welcome each other into their…
Negotiating Borders and Borderlands, edited by Gorky Chakraborty and Supurna Banerjee, delves into the intricate dynamics of India’s borders and the everyday experiences of those living in its borderlands. It features a diverse collection of articles contributed by various authors, aiming to analyze and portray how borders have influenced the destiny of countries and their…
There once was a tradition of storytelling that enthralled kings and beggars, mixing simple language and lofty poetry, while deploying ingenious tricks to retain the audience’s attention. Usually there were three or four stories embedded one within another, like a Russian doll. Just when you thought you were coming to a denouement, a new story…
When Hazel Selzer Kahan’s parents left their homes in Germany and Poland in the early 1930s to study medicine in Rome, they envisioned spending the rest of their lives helping patients in Europe. But as Fascist governments deepened their hold in both Germany and Italy during their medical studies, Hermann and Kate Selzer did not…
From news about World War II to the broadcasting of music from popular movies, radio played a crucial role in an increasingly divided South Asia for more than half a century. Radio for the Millions examines the history of Hindi-Urdu radio during the height of its popularity from the 1930s to the 1980s, showing how…
Coming from a literary family, Hajra Masroor and her sister Khadija have been referred to as the Brontë sisters of Urdu fiction. While Khadija was known for her novels, Hajra was a writer of short fiction and plays. A new translation of a collection of Hajra Masroor’s work, The Monkey’s Wound and Other Stories, by…
Sorayya Khan has published a number of novels that touch upon her family background—as the daughter of a Pakistani father and a Dutch mother—and the 1970s Pakistan of her youth. In her latest book, however, she turns to non-fiction and writes a family memoir, the content of which has informed her previous works of fiction….
The history of India and Pakistan since Partition has been marked by countless skirmishes—and four major wars. The second conflict—the 1965 war between India and Pakistan along the long land border—featured some of the largest tank battles since the Second World War and some of the first skirmishes between the Indian and Pakistani air forces….
Shiv Kunal Verma, an acclaimed historian and filmmaker, has written an encyclopedic history of the 1965 India-Pakistan War, which began when Pakistan attacked Indian forces in the Rann of Kutch in April 1965, stalled as a result of a temporary ceasefire brokered by the British, and restarted in August when Pakistan launched Operation Gibraltar by…
Following a long period of exile in the Western suburbs, Berlin’s Asian collections have returned to the spotlight. Since this autumn, they are on permanent display at the Humboldt Forum, a controversial new museum located in the heart of the German capital. The Forum, named after the Prussian polymaths Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt, is…
We’re celebrating our one-year anniversary with this interview, and so I wanted to introduce a special guest for today: Nur Nasreen Ibrahim, talented writer, journalist and dear friend.
This book provides a local journalist’s perspective on a four-decade long regional contribution to global news production. Fixers are local journalists hired to help global media outlets in developing news stories on wars. The book shows how the fixers’ risky news pursuits made possible for global media to access distant regions and dangerous caves on…