Mountains measure time in millennia. The sight of Nanga Parbat’s peak from the plane as we neared Gilgit reminded me that PIA’s aircraft and I had grown older: the Himalayas had not. On an earlier trip to the northern areas years ago, I had missed a detour to Fairy Meadows. Guidebooks persuaded me that what […]
WHICH school serves its country better — a single-sex school or a co-educational one? There are advocates for both. The most vociferous are the alumni of elite mono-sex institutions, amongst them Pakistan’s 139-year-old Aitchison College, Lahore, and India’s 89-year-old Doon School, Dehradun. Almost since their foundation, both have been haunted by the issue of gender
History has been in love with Lahore since forever. It was not its only admirer. The Mughals remained enamoured of it. Akbar made the capital of his kingdom for fourteen years, from 1584 to 1598. Jahangir chose to be buried within sight of it. Shah Jahan embellished its fort. Aurangzeb commissioned a magnificent mosque opposite
Few writers can occupy Theodore White’s seat on the balcony of history. White is more famous for his quartet of books, each titled The Making of the President, covering the election campaigns of John F. Kennedy (1960), Lyndon B. Johnson (1964), and Richard Nixon (1968, re-elected in 1972). Less well-known was his memoir In Search
At the height of the Roman empire, all roads led to, and from, Rome. In Britannia alone – a province conquered in 43 AD and held for 400 years – the Roman legions built about 8,000 miles of roads. The historian Plutarch records that these roads ran ‘perfectly straight through the countryside’. Remnants of them
The West and Russia are two cyclops who have never been able to see eye to eye. Over centuries, they have grown into giants with ambitions beyond their borders and power beyond their dreams. For the rest of the world, they are a nightmare. The present conflict in and over Ukraine is more than a
Lahore dozes in the summer. In spring, it comes alive with LitFests. The Faiz Festival occupied last weekend; the Lahore LitFest the next. In between, there has been the Horse & Cattle Show in the Fortress Stadium. Once the showcase for Punjab’s agricultural livestock and agro-produce, it has been revived as a showpiece by the
To enjoy any LitFest, one needs to be a hyper-active octopus, with eyes and ears at the end of every tentacle. The Lahore LitFest 2025 – the last in a trilogy before the abstinence of Ramzan – offered a banquet of intellect, spread over four halls in cruel competition. To attend one was to forgo
The first Karachi Literature Festival (KLF) 2010 was the crucible. Since then, each year, it has moved higher up the ladder to its present maturity as the 16th KLF, held this year on 7-9 February and as usual at the Beach Luxury Hotel. The first KLF 2010 had an attendance of 5,000. This year, the number
