KARACHI: It’s becoming difficult to watch Javed Akhtar without feeling a profound sense of pity over his descent from a mid-tier writer to a bitter provocateur. And no, that’s not an ad hominem. Bollywood has given Pakistani audiences many icons to love. Even when some of them turn into vitriol-spewing …
KARACHI: At the dinner table, when my family convenes for its routine dispatch of all things political and conspirational, though often it is hard to distinguish one from the other, I do my part by narrating my favourite memes about Pakistan and India’s “upcoming” war. There is one about Sonam …
KARACHI: To say that the latest installment of Black Mirror broke the internet would be a no-brainer. When the show’s first season dropped in 2011, it forever changed the landscape of sci-fi story-telling on the small screen, if not also the silver screen, infinitely extending the boundaries of what cinema …
KARACHI: “If I weren’t a rapper, I would have been a criminal or dead by now” were some of the first words I heard Asif Balli say. Son of a scrap collector and a housemaid, Asif was born and grew up in the Buffer Zone area. He also collected scrap …
One of the most memorable moments in the film Joker (2019) is when Arthur Fleck, a man beaten down by society, commits an irreversible act of violence on live television. What should be a moment of horror instead sparks a wave of sympathy among certain audiences, who see in him …
KARACHI: In the early ’90s, Pakistani television operated under strict limitations: two channels, PTV and NTM, prime-time slots dictated by state-owned networks, and increasing restrictions on cigarette advertising. Yet, within these confines, some commercials managed to transcend their purpose, becoming cultural artifacts rather than mere marketing ploys. One such anomaly …
KARACHI: In the early ’90s, Pakistani television operated under strict limitations: two channels, PTV and NTM, prime-time slots dictated by state-owned networks, and increasing restrictions on cigarette advertising. Yet, within these confines, some commercials managed to transcend their purpose, becoming cultural artifacts rather than mere marketing ploys. One such anomaly …
KARACHI: Sindhi language theatre has gone through many phases over the centuries. While the earliest forms of theatre included oral storytelling and group dance routines and date back to twelfth and fourteenth centuries, historians acknowledge that the first modern Sindhi play was Laila Majnu by Mirza Qaleech Baig in 1880. Since …
KARACHI: If you were to chart Bilal Maqsood’s trajectory in Pakistani music, it would map the soundtracks of a generation. As one half of the pop rock band Strings (with Faisal Kapadia), he helped define a collective sense of longing, nostalgia, and the complexities of love, drawing millions to his …
KARACHI: Before Richard Siken and his puzzling yet seemingly boundless availability to answer fans’ most banal queries on X, there was Neil Gaiman on Twitter. Goodreads. Tumblr. Reddit – though one only hoped so. He engaged with the digital world like a man who had discovered an entirely new stage …
