Pakistan’s media opinion - the column industry

Raza Rumi
On the flourishing ‘column’ industry despite the slow growth of readership’
What is so peculiar about the Pakistani media opinion factories churning out problems and solutions products day after day? Frankly, they are self perpetuating oligarchies and boring at best. The slightly discerning mortals who browse the daily newspapers in English and vernacular languages or [...]

ashes to ashes jalo aur jalao

temporal
photo- rumana husain
flare glares
burns, rages
kehti hay jalo jalao
jalo aur jalao
fire prostrating
to clay, as
satan twirls
moustaches
this is not the ire of rome
nor the liquid rave
that separated noah
beware for He is father
of all fire, fury and furor
merciful, graceful
wrathful, unforgiving

maloom hay humaiN
yeh aag nahiN bajooz oos aag kay
jo kisi aanay walay lumhay maiN
sub aalamouN ko [...]

Dummy Online

temporal
Dummy Online is hosted by a clean-cut, metrosexual, chikkoo. Dr.2. He is reputed to have bought a second doctorate from a mail order university for $250.
Why he did that will be examined in another post.
Dr. 2 fancies himself a lot. He jerks off looking at himself, it has been reported.

grain of sand

temporal

a granite rock ensconced on a peak
aloof, majestic, on top of the world
fell in love with a coquettish cloud
floating miles from ocean
spreading shadow-relief
over parched fields and plains
hiding in its bosom water, sound, fury and

Tennyson’s Brook: Pakistan’s Crook

temporal
I come from haunts of boot and ‘urn,
I make a sudden sally,
And sparkle out a new pattern,
To bicker down a valley.

segueing slogans of the year that was (2007)

by temporal
in forms and flavours
— none tasty, it descends
for the thief of baghdad
it was sudden blackness
amidst shouts of allah o akbar
for the feudal daughter of sind
shouts of ji’yay bhutto
reverberated between shots
between denial implosions
…………………and self explosions
cremations and burials
life collected shards of dreams
conscience shriveled, hope sighed
and …………………..lucifer danced
slogans segued colours of death
—parched brown, uranium tipped gray
hopeless-muddy [...]

“Arey LaRkay” - Remembering Mushfiq Khwaja (1935–2005)

by temporal
“Arey Larkay, go to the fourth room, third shelf from the right and fourth from the top, and bring me the seventh book from the right.”
I looked in amazement as the servant whom he always referred to as Larka or larkay reappeared in a few minutes with an autographed book by historian [...]

Mushtaque Ahmed Yusufi - An Introduction

Baithak
 
We are the music makers,
And we are the makers of dreams
…We are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever it seems

What ‘trilingual’ mess?

When Guru Dutt Sondhi, the first Indian principal of Lahore’s Government College staged his Shakespeare plays there, he could hardly have imagined that someone in his Sondhi Translation Society would complain that Pakistan’s “trilingual” system has killed all creativity. This is what has happened on Tuesday at a seminar on Trend of Translation in Social [...]